Writing by Annie Wang
Photography by Annie Wang
I submitted for the 13.2 issue of the Garden Statuary on the night of the deadline.
I had submitted my writing for print before, mostly for fanzines or other small-run projects, from which I’d gotten some acceptances, but also a slew of rejections. Each time I had the same feeling of projecting my writing into a wide yawn of darkness, a void or a vacuum or a swallow, a mouth from which I had no good reason to expect a reply. And this time, as always, I only allowed myself the barest anticipation of a positive one.
It was a month later, in my workplace bathroom, that I found the email in my inbox. Another 3 hours after that, I walked home and told my friends that a story I wrote got accepted into the journal I never told them I applied for because I thought I would be rejected.
After that, things moved quickly. I signed my publication agreement (digitally) the day of, wrote out a slightly sappy author bio, overthought things and printed out my publication agreement instead, signed that, and received and made my edits. My editor was kind but precise in her suggestions, and it was nice to have a second voice alongside mine, another pair of hands to crease the page. Edits were left mainly to my own discretion, and after some quick back-and-forths, we had the final version done.
Around the time I got my edits, I also received a sketch for my piece’s accompanying illustration. In some sense, this was when it really struck me that something I wrote existed to other people. Yes, a panel of people must have had to read my story to have selected it, and my editor had to read my piece, probably multiple times, to do her job, and I’d shared my writing with friends before any of that happened at all–but I had never before had anyone make art from my art, and that was something startling and real and new.
The edits for the illustration were more difficult and took longer; I struggled to find tangible suggestions to direct my thoughts, and found myself turning to the more aesthetically-knowledgeable people in my life for help. It took 18 days, from the day the sketch was sent to me, to my last email, to finalize the illustration, and reading those emails back now, I’m even more grateful for our patient journal coordinator and my lovely illustrator for putting up with my prickly specificity and less-than ideal response time.
For the journal’s launch party, we were given the option to perform a reading of our work or to have someone read on our behalf. I had only read my work aloud for strangers once before, at a creative writing class I’d taken the previous term. My hands had trembled so badly that I couldn’t hold the paper. I performed that reading with my head bowed, both hands white-knuckled around the mic, and after, I left feeling hollowed for a reason I couldn’t explain. When I was up there, I couldn’t look anyone in the class in the eye, not a single one.
I arrived at the launch party from a class, 30-some minutes late, and in the middle of someone else’s reading. I could have been there 20 minutes late, but I’d spent the last 10 minutes pacing around in the 3rd floor bathroom, trying to drum up the same foolish courage I must have had when I sent the email saying I’d do my own reading. In the end, I walked in, realized the unfortunate timing, and sat quietly for a sheepish ten minutes, until intermission started and Kristy and Amy, the editors in chief, came around to say hi.
I had a conversation with Amy that I don’t remember in detail, except that it started with cardigans and ended with nerves, and that I felt remarkably less jittery after, enough so that I could watch the rest of the readings without sinking into the imminent dread of my own. And I am glad, because I think then I would have completely missed the point of being there.
When it was my turn to read, I walked up and just about blacked out for the next seven minutes. I’m sure I must’ve read too fast or too slow, that I may have pronounced something wrong, read too monotonously, too quietly, too anxiously, that my words slurred and stuck and ran into each other, but in the end, when it was over, and I looked up from the page, I could look out into that group of people, look at their faces, and feel that there was no void.
There is something about that size of room, that group of people, that genre of event, that makes a special thing. It is a rare and sweet pleasure to have that opportunity, to share something into the world and feel it so warmly received. I am a writer, and I am, at times, a melodramatic one, and so if you ask me about my experience with this journal, there is no better way I can say it than that.