On Writing

In the Winter Quarter of 2024, I became proficient at two things: breaking fevers in one day, and making things much, much harder than they had to be.

Winter in Santa Barbara has always been more concept than anything else. If it is ever a concrete thing, it’s wet. And winter quarter of 2024 was exceptionally, almost incredulously, wet. Tree branches flung themselves across the walkways between my dorm and dining hall. Classes were canceled due to flood warnings. Parents called about possible evacuations.

There is a specific, defiant attitude UCSB students hold against winter here. After being caught in an IV coffee shop with no umbrella, I dredged home with a friend in the torrential downpour in nothing but a scarf and trenchcoat. Later, on the way to our friend’s party, we joked about recreating it in the coming thunderstorm but “better dressed” this time (in swimsuits). When classes were canceled and parents called, my hallmates huddled in the lounge and laughed about their concern. Most of us are from the SF Bay Area, where winter has sharper teeth and layers serve a realistic purpose. I imagine we saw the thunderstorms and just thought of spring in Berkeley.

There is also, unfortunately, a specific, defiant attitude UCSB students hold against being sick. No matter how responsible you are in the beginning, how much you isolate, or how many shots of Dayquil you down to feel better, the ratio of late assignments to days spent resting becomes too alarming, and you get sloppy. You start to bargain with yourself that I’ll rest over the weekend and After this assignment, I’ll lay back down. You don’t, of course. There’s always another one, and fever reducers are pretty cheap, anyway. What I’m trying to say is that in the pit of winter quarter, we were all wet, we were all sick, and despite the sniffling, frayed pride, we were all miserable.

I’ve always had the habit of developing stress fevers, nursing them over the course of a week, breaking them on the weekend, and entering the next week with another growing behind my temple. I’ve developed a system for these things; the exact dosage of drugs and liters of water I need to drink tally in my head like a balance sheet. I feel like golden age sci-fi. When Fiona Apple wrote “Extraordinary Machine” she was talking about me, actually. Sometimes I feel like the only way I can achieve the efficiency I crave is to quantify it clinically; the state of my body hardly matters as long as it’s moving forward. I’m sick, but look how fast I can make myself better. Pull out the stopwatch. Lap.

I’m five classes deep into a schedule I promised would be better than last quarter’s (it’s not), outlining a fiction piece that was supposed to be a maximum of ten pages (again, no), and trying to find time to both keep up lying to myself and genuinely get things done. I have a habit of forgoing anything I may enjoy if I don’t believe I have enough time to accommodate, which really means I never do anything fun. I’m incredibly predictable, in either a study spot or my dorm, working, or trying very, very hard to do anything I could reasonably call “work.” At the end of the day, the hours are gone and I still have to write.

What’s circling the drain at the bottom of all this—the wet winter, the collective misery, the fevers, the endless, endless writing—is: I need to get outta here! I need to leave my shoebox dorm room that I’ve been pacing for three days because I’m sick again, but it might be infectious this time; I need to actually, seriously touch grass; I need to see the sun and be reminded of the small animal that I am. A pathetic ant crawling from a hole, humbled cosmically.

So that becomes the question I ask myself: how do I humble myself cosmically, and please, god, how do I still find time to write?

There are twelve coffee shops in or around UCSB. By the time this excursion of mine is over, I’ll have visited eight. One of the professors within W&L posits the virtues of what she calls “F*ck Off Fridays,” which are exactly how they sound. I decide to adopt the habit, try it out like a new coat for a while, and see if it fits right. I start leaving campus at seven in the morning, two in the afternoon, or whenever I can get around class. Fridays are the days I don’t have any classes, so I truly feel I embody this faith I’ve taken up; I’m a real disciple by week two. I take the free bus line and think of home; I see hummingbirds and bougainvillea outside the windows as we take an hour to get halfway to downtown. The rain dotting the windows trickles iridescent and harmless. It’s a grueling pace that should set my productivity anxiety on fire, but I love it. I love my bus travelers. I love the cappuccinos I always order and the bagels from Java Station I get on the side. I love getting lost and always being directed by someone’s kindness. I feel human again, a little bit. I’m a bug with warm feelings on the inside.

But I’m still not writing. Or rather, I don’t write like I want. I find it doesn’t matter whether I sit in the library or a cafe for eight hours a day staring at a document; my workflow remains essentially the same. I often feel that this myth of “the perfect writing system” consistently pokes around writing spaces. The writing community of YouTube blooms with “I Tried ____’s Writing System for 30 Days” videos. Aesthetic slides of “How to Write More” Instagram posts and Tumblr writing tip masterlists pop up like weeds. We all want that perfect spigot of productivity. We all walk around reassuring each other that it doesn’t exist, that it’s just discipline, but there are degrees to discipline, aren’t there? There’s doing the work, and then there’s work that’s produced. It’s one thing to get up at nine to sit in a cafe to write, but it’s another to actually have a complete document by the time you leave. You may even go in with the realistic expectation that doing this won’t solve all your problems but at least make them more pliable. In some ways, it feels worse when they aren’t, like they’ve suddenly changed the answer to a riddle they promised was simple. You turned on the promised spigot and nothing came. There comes an urge to turn eight hours into twelve, to crunch the balls of your feet into the earth and run laps and laps, to turn the work into penance instead. To make yourself sick.

Throughout all the coffee shops, I tried very hard not to make myself sick. This is a conscious act most people find trivial, but writers can be so dramatic sometimes that I think the urge to suffer for our art comes with our desire to create it. The answer, if there is one, to “How do I write when there’s no time and I need to get out of here?” is really just: Get out of there. “There” could be physical (your university, your keyhole-sized dorm room), or it could be sticky the way most subconscious things are. Your old routine. Your friends. Your perception of what you’re creating. Seriously, your perception of what you’re creating.

Not every assignment is going to be your magnum opus. Likely, nothing you create in college will be your magnum opus. Much of it will be good, but not a lot will be great, and that’s okay. Go into writing believing your magnum opus is ten years on the horizon and still a speck in your eyelash. Unfortunately, the answer to “How do I write when I have no time?” is you must make time. Carve it out with a knife or your fingernails if you have to. Go to eight different coffee shops. But take transit twenty minutes slower than the most efficient route. Carving time to work also necessitates carving time to enjoy some of that time, as well. This is the part that hurts, but you have to do it. Remember, cosmically humbled!

My writing is still largely unfinished; only Act 1 of 3 is completed, and sometimes carving out time feels like shaving the thinnest sliver of skin from a fruit. But I claw it out with my fingernails and make time to pick blackberries around my house, too. The rain comes and I take the time to cover myself with a coat. I’m an ant that can only crawl so fast, after all.

Spectrum Reader Solomon Rios gives his advice for fiction writers submitting to Spectrum.

To writers looking to produce and submit short fiction to Spectrum or other literary journals, the best advice I can give is this: write about something you love, and love the way you write about it. Pride and care always project through the page to readers on the other side, closing that daunting distance. Of the fiction we read as editors for last year’s issue we kept those that clearly shone with care put into them. If you have the option when writing for contests or for literary journals, I highly recommend exploring topics that are personal and exciting to you — the less heard of, often the better. All this is not to say you need to try harder to tell an editor how much you care or write something highly experimental — in fact, the opposite is true. Showing, not telling, is key to any good story. Writing about something that interests you as opposed to something you think will interest others is a way to ensure that new ideas and concepts emerge, and literary journals are usually looking for novel expressions.

In terms of mechanics and content, I cannot stress enough the importance of remembering the “short” in short fiction. Some stories need to be fifteen pages long, and that’s perfectly alright (I am someone who has a hard time writing under that), so rest assured that if your narrative truly calls for that kind of length, readers will have no issue with it. That said, if I have learned anything as an editor and writer, it is that all stories can be simmered down given enough time and work, and as a result become more effective. During the editing process, we saw a great deal of short fiction that had amazing ideas, interesting segments, or compelling narrative styles, but did not justify their length. Unfortunately, based on the amount of submissions we receive versus how many we can actually publish, we cannot engage with you as the author directly to do developmental editing. This is why rewrites are usually—no, always—essential. Start by seeking out words or scenes in your piece with redundancies and eliminate as many as you can. From there, look at structure, pacing, and character arcs and cut out any passages or pages where neither story, world, nor characters are being actively developed. Perhaps the best way to think about your job as a short fiction author is being in the role of a tour guide: your job is to keep your tour group on track, all together, with confusion down to a minimum and engagement with the tour and the major stops at a maximum. Another analogy useful in untraining the constant, goal-oriented voice that yells at you to reach a high word count is to look at short fiction as a ‘lowest points to win’ game, like golf or darts. You will start the editing process with pages of words, and line by line you will train your eraser (or your backspace button) to hit bullseye after bullseye until you have run out of energy and time. Just start by getting into the practice of hitting the board, cutting your drafts down a little, and work from there. I guess what I'm trying to say is that you as a short fiction writer need to be a dart-throwing, captivating tour guide steering a disparate audience through something they will not soon forget. It will take a lot of practice, but the rewards will read for themselves.

It is always worth your time to understand where and what you are submitting, once it is ready. Spectrum, for instance, is a journal that prizes individuality and insight as well as compassion, respect, inclusivity, and honesty. There is no right way to create compelling short fiction, but the reality is that if you plan to submit short fiction you should do your research as to where it might best find a home. Spectrum is edited primarily by undergraduate Writing & Literature (and adjacent humanities) majors largely at UC Santa Barbara’s College of Creative Studies, and you can bet that no matter the prompt or year you submit, your work will be read by a dedicated group of students interested in powerful prose that speaks to the heart and comes from a wide range of places. Beyond that we scour for invention, creation, and depiction of something that feels earned and deeply contemplated. Our journal is not a place to be afraid to think outside your box, especially in the realm of short fiction where anything is possible, from whole universes to the tiniest of moments. If there is a wrong way to go about submitting to this journal, other than hate speech, tiredly played out tropes, or lazy composition, it's probably just forgetting to take your name off the piece. Otherwise, I (and I think most of my peers would agree) implore you to be in love with (cognizance of the word count notwithstanding) whatever idea you desire to write about. No idea is too mundane or too grand, yet format and thought are everything in short fiction. Hit us with some bullseyes on the personal tour of your imagination, for, as in both darts and the tourism industry, it is always important to do your homework on who you are engaging with.

As a final note, I believe the greatest help to your creative process is to read as much short fiction as you can, even across genres not your own. Whether in high school, college, or another point in life, find published and unpublished authors and read their work. Give them feedback, or take notes, as analyzing stories outside your own head is better than any feedback you can be given. It makes you think like both writer and editor. Though it seems counterintuitive, I guarantee it will develop and develop and enrich your writer’s voice. To use the wildly overplayed analogy, if writing is an exercise, then reading is the accompanying diet. There, now that we are three analogies deep, it’s probably time to wrap this up before it gets out of hand. Bottom line: read things you enjoy, that excite and inspire you. If it is true that you are what you eat, then read all the writing you can, I guarantee it will give you more perspective into what editors are looking for in a great short story than anything I have said here.

Remember, in the end, if you are just submitting to a literary journal then you are doing the work. Keep at it, keep reading, editing, writing, and stray not into discouragement! Go into the process with an open mind and take praise and criticism seriously. Never lose the love.

Spectrum reader Phoebe Pineda examines the effects of the site Wattpad on contemporary publishing.

Perhaps the most relevant innovation of the digital age to aspiring writers is the rise of online writing platforms. The most famous of these, Wattpad, claims ninety million users, and in the decade-plus since its December 2006 launch, it has spawned two feature-length film franchise adaptations (After and The Kissing Booth). Sites like Wattpad have made publishing more accessible than ever, with a new generation of emerging writers (myself and my peers included) coming of age in these online arenas.

Working on Spectrum while having an ongoing conversation about Wattpad with a high school friend who was discovering and experiencing the site for the first time gave me new insight into two very different sides of the publishing industry. On the one hand, you have Spectrum, a long-running literary magazine produced on an undergraduate campus in the same building (or, this year, the same hypothetical corner of cyberspace) where most of our staffers spend hours plugging away at their own creative projects. As such, they are acquainting themselves with the traditional publishing process from both sides of the editor’s desk. On the other hand, there’s Wattpad, which cuts out the middleman altogether, allowing writers full control over when and what they publish, regardless of whether it’s been edited or looked over by another person.

The appeal of Wattpad is simple: in an industry that can prove not only intimidating but inaccessible to beginning writers, online writing platforms provide an alternative—condensing a normally lengthy and extensive process involving numerous working parts into a few clicks and a pretty interface. Rather than spend months on end querying literary agents or dealing with a slew of rejections from publishers, writers can bring their work directly to the reader, hot off the press. Like all forms of social media, the site thrives off instant gratification, and the dopamine rush that a vote or comment notification can bring is no different than getting likes on an Instagram post—amplifying the sense of validation and accomplishment that comes from having written and published a story. For young or inexperienced writers, it’s a great way to build confidence and community, enabling them to meet readers and fellow writers and get their stories out there without the added pressure of having to impress overworked editors at publishing houses.

Missing from the typical Wattpad user’s experience, however, is an in-depth understanding of the revision process and the art of giving (and receiving) constructive criticism. The workshop is one of the most important tools in a writer’s arsenal, but it’s understandable why online writers may find it daunting: where Wattpad comment sections are generally places for readers to revel in their enjoyment of a story, peer feedback in a structured workshop can be much more nerve-wracking, evoking anxiety in even the most experienced of writers. In workshops, the reader’s job is not to enjoy but to improve, to identify a piece’s weaknesses and help the writer find ways to strengthen it—a task that is often more difficult than it sounds and generally occurs at multiple stages and levels of the story’s development.

Peer-editing on Wattpad is a strange process, owing partially to the fact that authors tend to revise drafts that have already been published and read and partially to the collective inexperience of its users. Wattpad users will often either solicit or offer “reviews” of works published on the site covering everything from developmental issues with plot and character to correcting typos, pointing out awkward syntax, or even improving cover aesthetics. This informal, scattershot editorial process, in order for the feedback to be effective, relies on both writer and reader knowing how the critiquing process works and what to look for. On a site whose user base skews young, with no official standardization or guidelines for peer-editing, it is likely that the majority of potential reviewers are unfamiliar with the revision process and how to maximize its value.

Alarming, too, is the Wattpad user base’s preoccupation with numbers. While observing a conversation between members of the community, I was struck by how much of the discussion was devoted to statistics—from reads and comments to daily word counts and even typing speeds (which in my perfectionist experience have no bearing on word count output, let alone quality of work). These conversations are understandable, albeit a bit neurotic: without the backing of a publisher, the online writer is left to market their work themselves, which entails knowing which genres attract more readers, as well as how author’s notes and other forms of fourth-wall breaking can drum up traffic by encouraging more comments. Wattpad prides itself on taking a data-based approach to publishing, relying on “audience insight,” i.e. popularity and engagement, to determine who is worthy of making it to print. This means writers fixate on gaming the algorithm, obsessing over how to attract readers and get their story noticed in a sea of millions.

Wattpad’s data-driven culture permeates every aspect of the site, but perhaps most unfortunate are its effects on the site’s already-suboptimal editorial process. Peer reviews become enmeshed in a system geared toward reaching the widest possible audience, muddling the original purpose—helping writers strengthen their stories—by conflating marketability with quality of work. Reviewers dedicate as much feedback to the publicity aspects of a story—title, cover, and blurb—as they do to the story itself. Writers begin to view their works not as stories, but products to be sold.

I came to college, and eventually to Spectrum, as an online writer. I’d always shied away from learning about the world of mainstream publishing because the thought of rejection terrified me, and in my little corner of the Internet, that rejection didn’t exist—if you liked your work enough to publish it, there was no one to stop you. Gaining firsthand knowledge of how that process works from the inside (in my case, through reading for Spectrum) makes it feel a lot more approachable, and it allows you to empathize with potential readers of your own piece: you learn that rejection is not always a bad thing, and that it’s worth trying and failing and trying again, just to get a foot in the door. That said, while it’s good to get your words out there, you want to make sure whoever’s considering your piece is reading the best possible version of it—your piece should be as polished and revised as you can get it. In the slush pile, there are no covers, no blurbs, no stats or analytics or comments from enthused readers. At Spectrum, we judge our submissions solely on the merit of their content—on whether the author can not only hook us into their world, but convince us to stay.

Spectrum, unlike Wattpad, has a modest readership. It is a hidden gem within a hidden gem, tucked away among the many treasures UC Santa Barbara has to offer. The publication process, while relatively short, still comprises multiple stages of screening, discussions, spirited disagreements, and mind-changing before the table of contents can be finalized and the magazine itself put to print. Our writers this year have been asked to exercise even more patience than usual as we navigate the pitfalls of publishing during a pandemic. I doubt any of these writers expect to become an overnight sensation, and it is likely they will never meet many of their readers. Yet in this age of instant gratification, self-marketing, and algorithmic anxiety, we don’t need our submissions to grab millions of people. All we ask of our writers is that they tell a good story.

*This post was written with assistance and insight from Ryan Talvola. Thanks, Ryan!

Spectrum reader Hannah Z. Morley shares advice on starting writing projects.

Blank pages are scary. Deadlines are scarier.

For many, starting a writing project is harder than finishing one. Whenever I lack ideas, I procrastinate. Hardcore. But in my efforts to be a writer I’ve found a few cheat codes to trick myself into doing what I both love and fear: producing first drafts.

First drafts are theoretically supposed to be bad, but my mind won’t accept anything less than perfect. I imagine some embodying of my mind as it sips tea, peers over its glasses, and says, “Well darling, If it’s not perfect then why do it? Who’s going to read this drivel?”

For me, expectations are muzzles, and blank pages disfigure dreams. Too many possibilities leave me frozen. Dorothy only had one road to follow, the rest of us are stuck with twenty.

So, in my desperation to stick with my Writing major and side-step my indecisiveness, I found a way to race against fear.

The Timer Method requires a phone or laptop, whatever you use to write, and a pair of headphones. And while filling your ears with music, I find that classical works the best for me, set a timer for ten minutes.

In that time, I tell myself that I’m going to write as much as I can, and motivate myself with the end reward: a few words and a tiny break. As I go, I don't think about the words I’m typing, I just click-clack until the buzzer goes off, rest my fingers, and then rinse and repeat.

In my experience, it only takes thirty minutes, or three goes, to find some flow. It‘s a game, a challenge. Hiding the timer on another tab, I’m adrift in a land between minutes. There I work, and feel a writer’s high. How much time is left? How many ideas can I come up with before then? And more importantly, what can I come up with in the next round?

The best way to get out of a rut isn’t to wait for rescue, but to dig yourself out.

When I race against time, I kick expectations out the door. There’s no time for them, they’ll only distract me. The purpose of the timer is not to produce the best work possible but to produce work.

The best way to get out of a rut isn’t to wait for rescue, but to dig yourself out. The Timer Method provides me a safe and detached way to tunnel upwards. I fling words once obscured by fears of failure onto my Google Doc.

The real work in writing comes from rewriting, and The Timer Method chases out the words that inspire future drafts.

Spectrum reader Frances Woo shares her laments and strategies about writer's block.

Writing seems simple enough. It's just words on a page. Almost as easy as talking, right? For me, writing is one of the most overwhelming, stressful, and exasperating processes I've ever experienced. I always have so much I want to say, yet struggle to find the perfect phrases to express my ideas. There's too much self-inflicted pressure to actually let my mind go and write freely. No matter how many ideas float around in my head, I constantly struggle with putting pen to paper. I tell myself I'm never in the "right mood" or have "better things to do" or am "too tired" to put in the work. I come up with countless excuses like these to put off having to sit down and physically write, so I procrastinate. And I procrastinate. I procrastinate for days, weeks, even months until the deadline's so close that I have no choice but to sit down and force myself to write.

The other day I had to write a short story for one of my classes and I got excited; this was a chance to actually use my creativity in a course. The deadline was about two weeks away and I started thinking of ideas immediately. I had so many directions I could go in and jotted down notes about all of them. Eventually, this initial excitement gave way to anxiety and dread over writing the actual story. It took me an entire week to pick which story outline I would go with and another to even get started. When the deadline finally came, I sat at a desk for three hours and wrote the entire thing at once. I felt so relieved after that I didn't even bother giving it a second look. After a day or two, I looked back at my story and read it through for the first time. Now that I had given myself some distance, I was able to edit out what worked and what didn't and create something I actually enjoyed.

This stressful process of cramming and procrastination ultimately helped me get over my writer's block. I've tried other methods like stream-of-consciousness writing, online inspiration, and writing prompts, but I always end up deleting them and winding up right back where I started. The only time I produce any actual work is to make everything the night before it's due. And eventually, through cycles of editing, I always end up with a finished product that I'm proud of. Though I'm extremely prone to procrastination, I've found that if I trick my brain into abiding by self-made deadlines, I'm able to jump start my creative process. And though everyone's personal processes are unique, this fool-proof method of productivity can help anyone work through their artistic and creative blocks.