Thrift Shops

Kathy Stevenson1 Comment

(Originally appeared in my essay collection Lake Forest Moments.)

One of the best places not to be seen is the Lake Forest Thrift Shop. Maybe it’s a leftover feeling I have from the days my mother dragged me around to garage sales, but I can’t walk into a thrift shop without a sense of furtiveness. Like if someone sees me in there, they’ll think I’m looking for cheap, used items, which means I must not be able to afford the new item, which means I must be down on my luck, which means I’m a failure, which means… you get the idea.

Perhaps you have to be brought up poor to get this nervous, sweaty-palm feeling whenever you are confronted with other people’s discarded things. (Think Scarlett O’Hara’s impassioned cry, I’ll never go hungry again…) I react the same way when I see used clothing, I’ll never wear my sister’s shoes again…

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A Summer Fantasy Becomes Reality

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(This essay was originally published in The Christian Science Monitor.)

It was one of those rare days at the beach. The humidity was low, the temperature hovered right around 80 degrees, the sky was washed with watercolor blues and the flags snapped briskly over the boat harbor. Lake Michigan was quiet and waveless and even the water temperature had risen above the frigid level to merely bone-chilling.

So what was wrong with this picture?

Actually, everything was right. I had finally reached that nirvana of motherhood – that fantasyland that mothers of young children only dream of. My adolescent children, who had accompanied me to the beach, had run off with their friends as soon as we’d arrived. I was alone.
I could reach into my canvas beach bag and read a book or magazine uninterrupted. I could roll over and nap. I could buy myself an ice cream and not have to share it. I could float lazily on a raft, write a short story, re-invent my life. Continue reading →

Bittersweet Summer

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(This essay originally appeared in Main Line Today magazine.)

There comes a time every summer when you finally get your well-deserved week at the Jersey shore. You’ve managed to squeeze a week in between sports, dance, sleep-away, and tennis camps and the beginning of school. Your packed and overloaded family car resembles a suburban version of the Beverly Hillbillies as you careen joyously into Avalon or Stone Harbor or Ocean City, the entire family singing along to the soundtrack of The Sound of Music. Summer vacation is here at last – the kids have no scheduled activities, you and your husband have coordinated a week off, and the sun is shimmering benevolently over the Boardwalk. Aahh, the dog days of summer…

Fast forward one week. You never noticed it before but it is quite possible that you are the only truly sane, normal person in your family. How this fact has eluded you when you have lived with these people for decades is a mystery. You start thinking that maybe, just maybe, it is time to go home. If you have experienced any of the following phenomena, then perhaps you truly have been at the Jersey shore too long. Continue reading →

How Writers Deal With Rejection

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First of all, I changed the name of my file where I store my rejections, to “returned.” I know I’m only fooling myself, but I choose not to live as rejected. (Dejected, maybe, but not rejected…)

Second, I look the returned piece over (whether it is a poem, short story, or essay) and then do more research on where I might send it next. By this point I feel as confident as I will ever feel that it is good piece of writing, or I wouldn’t be sending it out. I have been writing and publishing long enough that I think I have a sense now of when something is good.

I don’t really spend that much time sending work out, because most of my writing time is spent actually writing. Or reading, or researching, or attending author events, or tweeting, or writing blog pieces. However, every couple of weeks I set aside a day, or a big chunk of a day, to do what I call a “blitz.” Wherein I do a major perusal of my unpublished work, and try to find a home for it by researching potential publications.

Many of my essays were published by the first places I sent them to, because I had developed relationships, over years of writing, with op/ed page editors. Or I had a regular gig as a columnist. Or I just hit the right chord with the right editor.

It’s hard not to give up on a piece that you love and have faith in, and I’m not sure how you know when to stick a fork in it. I have had several stories and essays that have been rejected (“returned”) after at least twenty or thirty tries. For real! I think you have to keep your faith in your work, or you just couldn’t do this for too many years.

If you want to read a humor piece that appeared in The Writer magazine (“Thoughts on Rejection in the Middle of the Night”) go to my posting on Jan. 17th, or go to the category “Writing” where you will find other essays I have published about writing and publishing.

Here is a note I got years ago from an editor at The New Yorker (when I once had the nerve/guts to send them a short story). In writer pep talks, they always say that a handwritten personal note means something. I still haven’t figured out what…