non-fiction

The Parameters of The Rejection Project

/ H. E. Casson

A project without a framework is…well, it’s often poetry. But in this case, I think The Rejection Project would benefit from a few rules to keep me moving. They aren’t hard, fast rules because those never work for me. They’re more like guidelines. A series of steps to help me get started when I hit a wall.

Step One
Choose a publication to submit to from my rejection pile. I plan to start with the classic, old-school paper rejections, then move on to the digital ones.

Step Two
Makes sure they still exist. This is publishing and we’re all dust in the winds of change here, so some of these markets may be kaput. RIP old markets. Thank you for sharing words, even if it was only for a while.

Step Three
Read their submission policies. There are some insta-no policies for me when it comes to submitting. I won’t pay to submit. I may opt not to submit to publishers who don’t allow simultaneous submission and have extremely long response times. I play this one by ear. Since I’m making up the rules, I can break them, too. This step is also a great time to take note of upcoming themes, contests, or special issues that could act as inspiration.

Step Four
Read a few current issues, if I can. This step will require some flexibility. As much as I’d like to subscribe to everyone—I just can’t. This will be a mix of perusing online content, flexing my library muscles, and grabbing issues when and where I’m able.

Step Five
Write the damn thing.

Step Six
Submit the damn thing.

That’s it. The whole shebang. I’ll post after (and probably during) each submission. If you’re playing along, let me know how it works out for you. 2021 quieted so many of our voices. I’d love to see 2022 be a year full of all the words that were stuck in our collective throats (or pens)(or keyboards).

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The Rejection Project

/ H. E. Casson / 2 Comments

Woof howdie, was last year a tough one. We all have different hows and whys, but almost universally, last year pummelled us. We stumbled into the corner of 2021, like the underdog in the third act of a boxing movie, and no one was there to squirt water in our mouths and tell us we had one more round in us. Because maybe we don’t.

That said, I still want to write. I write for the same reason I clean my house (sometimes)—because my life makes more sense when I do.

I was cleaning my house last week when I came across a pile of papers from about 20 years ago. They were rejection slips from magazines and literary journals. I save all the paper. It’s a thing. I don’t question it too much. Most of these rejections fall into what I’ll call Writer 1.0. I was young. I was trying to write and share it with the world. I had some small success, along with lots and lots of rejection. It’s the nature of the thing. 95% of the responses the average writer gets are rejections. At the same time, my disabilities were kicking my ass, especially my cPTSD and my depression. I ended up hospitalized and survival became my main focus. I wrote as I could through all this, but in the end, there was a multi-decade gap where I knew I was a writer, but I couldn’t access publishing.

A few years ago, I hit Writer 2.0. The circumstances, some privilege, my persistence, the opportunities, they all came together. Now when people ask what I do, I say I’m a writer. I have another job I do that I enjoy, but I’m a writer first and foremost.

Still, writing last year was hard. Often impossible. I follow lots of writers and the struggle was ubiquitous. We couldn’t find the time, the motivation, the words. We were stuck.

The Rejection Project is my plan to un-stick. I’m going to create a piece to submit to every single place that has ever rejected me (that still exists). Why? Because it gives me a framework to create. Because even if a piece is rejected, I have something I created to add to my to-be-submitted pile. Because it’s funny. Because I like a goodly hunk of these markets. They do good work and publish the creations of folks I admire.

I also plan to share the journey here because why the heck not? I can think of no better way to approach 2022 than to turn rejection into creation. Join me if you’d like. Let me know how it goes. We can have some fun, pen some prose, and make it through to 2023, one rejection at a time.

What Language Our Survival Speaks

/ H. E. Casson

Hello good folks (and auto-follow bots). What a noisy, quiet year. Noisy on the input, quiet on the output. Almost every writer I know or follow has spent some (most?) of 2021 living on the writer’s block. I am not immune. I’ve lived there, too.

Just as the year closed out, however, I finally felt that spark. It turned into this piece for the Spoonie Authors Network. Called Welcome to Disability (a House with Infinite Rooms), it’s my letter to the folks with long Covid who are just finding themselves in our ranks, though I think it can speak to anyone who exists in this space called Disabled.

I hope to have more to share soon. I hope you are well. I hope whatever it is you love to create is only hibernating in these wild times. I hope. I hope. I hope. Because I can’t fathom the alternative.

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Pushcart Prize Nomination

/ H. E. Casson

It was a delight yesterday to wake up and find out that one of my creative non-fiction pieces had been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Titled Death Is a Way to Come Home: Rituals for the Estranged, it appeared earlier this year in the heart-rocking collection All My Relations published by The Talbot-Heindl Experience.

I readily admit that between recovering from Covid and hitting the busy season at work, my writing has taken a back seat (if it was lucky enough to get a seat at all). I never begrudge myself these pauses. I’m learning to trust my muse when it rests. Still, this nomination is a bit of a tonic. It came at the right time. And it’s very, very appreciated.

Group Homes, Death, Myths, Madness, and Rediscovering Reading

/ H. E. Casson

Welp, it’s been a while since I updated my website. I’ve been busy surviving a whole, actual, ongoing pandemic. It’s a thing. You can probably relate. Since my last update, lots of works that were in the pipeline have come out, so with only…

this much…

further ado…

here they are!

Apparition Lit, the funky independent, speculative lit mag that published my flash piece Seeking Same a few years back, shared my new essay about rediscovering reading after being diagnosed with Covid. Called When We Lost Touch, it’s—at heart—a love letter to the literary community and anyone who is creating art in this impossible time.

Stone of Madness Press picked up my stream of consciousness poem, Familiar, that tries to explain/invite people in to a moment of cPTSD-related panic.

Anti-Heroin Chic shared my group home story-verse about the moment I realized the grass on the other side can be a pretty, green lie. You can read Untended here.

Like everything helmed by Chris Talbot-Heindl, All My Relations is a gorgeous, honest collection that spends time in the concepts of death and loss without losing sight of how delicate and necessary mourning can be. My piece, Death Is a Way to Come Home: Rituals for the Estranged, is a creative non-fiction essay that visits the ways I’ve learned to mourn my estranged family members.

Finally, the minison zine’s mythology themed 12th issue includes three of my pieces: heroes villains, my creation myth, and ra was the sun god. Each poems is made up entirely of lines that are also anagrams of the title. I like to give myself a challenge.

That’s all for now! Hopefully I can find the spoons to get back to writing and submitting soon.

Centring our creative community

This week, I’m giving a boost to a new anthology called It Gets Even Better: Stories of Queer Possibility. I backed their Kickstarter, so my copy just arrived in the mail! It’s full of speculative lit featuring all kinds of Queer stories. It takes Queer-friendly space literally and I love it. You can buy it as an eBook, paperback, or audio book here.

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Resilience

/ H. E. Casson

Hello all. I have two more days until my Covid quarantine is over and I can walk in the sun again. This bug is no joke! I can’t remember the last time I was this tired.

Still, it’s also National Poetry Month and I was fortunate enough to be invited to share some words with the League of Canadian Poets. The first piece is an essay, 18 Interpretations of Resilience. It’s an odd year to spend time thinking about resilience. I tried to be honest about the ways the concept has helped and hindered me. The second piece is a poem, Avocado. This is both one of my favourite poems and one of my most rejected. In retrospect, that feels right for the theme.

I’m off for a nap (lots of those right now). But be well, drink lots of water, and hug your humans.

H. E.

Slowing Down, Catching Up

/ H. E. Casson

Welp, it’s been a few months since I’ve updated my website. Working retail—while disabled, middle aged, and mentally ill—means that November and December are the pit into which all my energy falls. During those months, I pause my writing by necessity. While this is tough (and sometimes makes me blue) it also gives me a chance to refill my creative coffers, rethink my output, and allow my fields of inspiration to lie fallow for a season.

In the meantime, I’ve had a few publications come out. I will be posting them for you as I catch up.

To start with, I’m really pleased to be contributing to the Spoonie Authors Network, sharing some of my thoughts about writing while managing spoons. My first piece, Writing Through the Depressive Lens, talks about the gradual process of embracing rather than fighting the way my neurodiversity informs my writing. The second, How to Zoom While Neurodivergent: So Not a Guide, examines how expected behaviours in virtual spaces can read like a list of neurotypical behaviors, making Zoom meetings inaccessible for neurodiverse creatives.

If you’re a disabled creator of any ilk, you’ll probably find something useful in the articles and podcasts up at Spoonie Authors Network. There’s also a weekly Twitter meet-up! It’s a fantastic resource and I’m chuffed to be a part of it.

CENTRING OUR CREATIVE COMMUNITY

While hanging out on Spoonie Twitter™, I heard about an anthology called Nothing Without Us that features short stories by disabled writers, including pieces by other Spoonie Author Network contributors. This collection is especially good for those days when your brain just can’t handle the commitment of a novel. From helper golems to talking canes to the trials of performing disability for cash in a near-future dystopia, the stories run the gamut of genres, styles and perspectives. Truly, one of my favourite books.

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Words in a Storm

/ H. E. Casson

I’m still writing, still publishing. I’ve been overwhelmed, so I’ve been forgetting to post. ADHD/PTSD in a pandemic is a heckuva thing.

BUT! I’ve had a few things published recently.

My short non-fiction piece, All Ten Provinces and Both Territories, has been published in Flash Nonfiction Food: 91 Very Delicious, Very True, Very Short Stories by Woodhall Press. This essay recalls a time I traded something precious for something necessary. It’s also about how delicious pizza is when your belly is empty.

My poem, In Patient, is featured in litmag Serotonin. It’s an oldie, written about 20 years ago while I was an inpatient at a mental health facility. Challenges related to my mental health contributed to the long pause between writing and publishing this poem. Publishing isn’t accessible to neurodiverse and disabled people, in part because it wasn’t built for us. Indie publishers like Serotonin are creating spaces built for us, by us and because of that, pieces like this can find a home. I’m grateful for the small shifts, but it does make me want more change, bigger change.

I will try to post again soon. Until then, may you find the eye of the storm and take a deep breath.

A New Proposal

/ H. E. Casson 
by H. E. Casson
(CW: Pandemic, anxiety, mental illness, homelessness)

“I’ve made a deal with my anxiety,” I say to my partner.
He’s working from home, surrounded by screens. They are a living museum to all of the people he helps.
“What’s that?”
He doesn’t look up.
“I’m not going to worry about anything but keeping you and me alive and together.”

I’m a worrier, both by nature and circumstance. Before I knew him, I’d already been undone, been left unloved and unhoused. We met as teenagers and I brought him into the chaos with me. We lived nowhere, with fingers tangled together. We had no bed, but cushioned each other, blanketed each other, whispered good dreams in each others’ ears.

We sat on a balcony in a snow storm and we knew.
“This is good, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yep”
“We’re going to get married, aren’t we?”
“Yep.”
That was our proposal.

Still, I do not live with a sense of security. This house we’ve since bought belongs mostly to a bank. They might remember its more theirs than ours. Everything is temporary. Clothes wear out. Food goes bad. Cupboards can go from full to bare to someone else’s in no time flat. We could have nothing, again. We could be nowhere, again. I get that. I have to get that. I can’t count on anything.

Except him. Our balcony-promise has lasted more than twenty years. I build fences around him. Make him wear a mask. Clean everything. Put my hand on his neck and search for any trace of fever. I can prepare for losing anything — but not him.

I know that modern people aren’t supposed to love like this. It says something about my autonomy, my self-worth. But I do. I love like hunger. I love like I’m incomplete without him.

I know something else, too. All this insecurity, this planning for the worst, this anxiety, it won’t keep back a virus. The numbers say we’ll make it, but the numbers have never been friends of mine.

So this is my new proposal: if I keep my word, and keep him and me alive, I will learn to revel in good. (Yes, I know that bargaining is a stage of grief, but what’s to be lost by pointing toward what fills me up?)

If we see the end of this together, I’ll believe that we’ll always have a roof. I’ll believe that we’ll always be fed. I’ll believe that only good days are coming. I’ll stand up to my knees in Lake Ontario and shout out my happy to the clouds. I’ll overspend on birdseed and tomato plants and comfortable shoes. I’ll drink hot cocoa in the afternoon and toboggan down high hills.

If we see the end of this, I’ll have faith in our joy.

Or at least, I’ll try.

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Home is an Anti-virus

/ H. E. Casson 
by H. E. Casson
(CW: Homelessness, poverty, illness, neglect)

I am writing this in my home. I am writing it indoors, with heat and clean water, wearing washed clothes, my skin not itching, my partner’s voice rising and falling in the next room. I am safely housed.

This is true now, but for some of my life, it wasn’t. I’ve lived in an unsafe home, a group home, a shelter. I’ve crashed on couches. I’ve slept rough, slept in my school, slept in spaces not meant for humans. I was me, the same me I am now, but alone and hungry, frantic and deadened all at once. I knew I was disposable.

Over 20 years ago, I met a person who was precious and amazing. He was disposable too. I knew him for weeks, not months or years, but I think about him all the time. He was clever and challenging, generous and creative. He caught TB in a shelter. Because of the nature of crisis-friendships, I don’t know how he is now, or if he is now, but I knew him long enough to see him fall apart. I knew him long enough to learn that illness will always come for humans in shelters, in care facilities, in prisons, in mental health wards. As long as it stays in those boxes, we don’t hear much about it.

And what can I do? I tell stories from my own limited perspective, from this warm place that coats the memories in gauze, making them less sharp. I am here in my home, safe, at least six feet from the world.

What is home, in a time like this? Home is an anti-virus. It keeps us safe. Home is personal protective equipment, covering our most vulnerable parts. Home is an avatar of community care. Home is, and should be, a right.

The Pandemic Chapbooks to Support Charitable Giving initiative by 845 Press and Collusion Books includes a poem I wrote called For Chandrahas, Who is Likely Dead. It is about my friend, about illness, and about home. If you donate to a charity — any charity — you can get a copy of the chapbook for free.

There’s a charity in Toronto called Sanctuary that is taking care of people, members of our community, at great risk and in the most challenging time possible. They are doing this in the face of immeasurable hardship and loss. I hope you will consider donating to them, and to the folks they serve.

I wish there was a way to pull all this together, to end it in a way that is satisfying, but much like the situation, there’s no easy conclusion. There is no bow to tie, just a hundred, hundred loose threads that require a communal will and concerted effort to begin to gather.

In all this, I wish us safety. I wish us a thing called home.

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