Recently I went through a (very old) collection of my short stories, looking to discover whether I was any good as a writer. Wait. Let’s rephrase. I was curious as to whether any of those stories, written in the punkish days of my youth, would catch my eye as an editor now. Some of these stories had been published by our university literary magazine; some had never been published; one had been my ticket into graduate school (the first time, now known by me as The Horror). But that was a very different time, mostly pre-2000, and at the very least some of them would be woefully out of date: The climate change story talked of global warming rather than climate change generally, characters didn’t have cell phones, and one of them used Polaroid cameras as a way of getting a photo “instantly” (as otherwise it would have had to have gone to the film developer, and the horror of the story required instant images, which didn’t exist at the time).

How did it go? Let’s say I (the writer) received mixed reviews from me (the editor).

There is definitely promise in those old pieces; there are even a couple or a few that would make it at least to the second round of submissions for Penumbric. There are also a few I look at now and think, My God, why did I send these out to anyone else? I admire my chutzpah, though. And I have to treat that younger me with some ... er ... kindness, remembering that I thought I was ALL THAT and that my major influence was Harlan Ellison, which meant being a bit in-your-face was inevitable. But also, looking back, I think I was somehow both overconfident and insecure—I remember sending some of these stories to big name magazines, the Asimovs and Analogs of the world, venues that accepted fewer than ten stories per issue and probably had thousands of submissions, places I had little chance of getting into as my very first publication ... and then I gave up. I never sent things to the smaller magazines, never tried to build my confidence in any way. Mentally I went from “I’m the best, dammit!” to “I suck and should be stomped to death by dinosaurs before I inflict any more of my writing on the world.” And, as I’ve discovered editing and publishing Penumbric, there is no shortage of brilliant writing being published in those smaller magazines, too (which both exhilarates [the editor me] and frightens [the still insecure writer me]).

So I guess I discovered a message for myself in that old writing that was neither “God, I’m brilliant!” nor “God, I suck!” It was the value of continuing to try, of reading, of valuing what I’m doing enough to really give it a chance out in the world, of not giving up, of ... well, just writing, maybe having a few close and trusted people read it, editing, and sticking with it. (And learning ... growing ... getting better and not just assuming I’m Harlan Ellison from the get-go, because there was only ever one of those, and I ain’t it.) And amongst the less obvious advice: Don’t let the insecurity stop you from writing. Yet somehow keep yourself from the opposite extreme of hubris. As with many things, balance is key.

Which, reading it, may be obvious as well. But, perhaps, difficult to actually do.

Until next time (our Halloween issue!),

Jeff Georgeson
Managing Editor
Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine