A wise friend once told me, “A writer is one who writes.” No one needs a special qualification, degree, or resumé to be a writer. Certainly, one does not need publication to be a writer. Not every needs to seek publication in a journal or should: writing can be its own reward, and there are many wonderful ways to share work with others (including Prose). Personally, though, I sought publication of short stories and poems in literary journals and have met with a small amount of success, and in this post, I will offer what advice I can for similarly-minded individuals—with a couple of significant disclaimers.

Disclaimer #1 – I have absolutely no idea how to make money at this. I’ve gotten four short stories and three poems published in various small journals, for which I have received a grand total of $20. (UPDATE: A few more now, I am happy to say - my website link in my profile has my publication list if you're curious.) Writing is not a career or even a side gig for me. If you want to know how to make a living with writing, read Finder’s post for this challenge – she’s done it (https://theprose.com/post/454789/inform-persuade-entertain). From what I understand, there are far more paid writers of advertising copy/website text/technical manuals than there are creative writers, and if you want to pay your bills with writing, that’s the path to follow. I’m also given to understand that the majority of creative writers out there don’t actually make a living with it: most have other jobs (notably teaching, which is most of the reason people seek creative writing MFAs). I’m a high school teacher who writes, rather than the other way around.

Disclaimer #2 – The "beginner" in the title of this post is me. I am seriously small potatoes. Odds are, dear reader, that you have never heard of a single journal where I’ve been published. In other words, I lack any real qualification to be writing this post, but perhaps the scraps of knowledge I’ve gleaned can get someone else started. (Thanks to Finder for nudging me to write this.) If anyone reading knows something that I don’t, please, please share in the comments. I will be grateful for the advice.

Alrighty – steps, as best as I know them.

1. Improve your writing. I started submitting pieces to journals when I thought I was ready; the reality was, I had more learning to do. How vivid are your settings, how clean is your dialogue, how condensed are your sentences? Sentences in published pieces are certainly not short, but they almost never contain extra words: each letter in a piece serves a purpose. This is a post of submission advice and not writing advice, so I’ll stop there, but growth in writing is a process that never really stops, and if you tell yourself “I’m there!” you’re probably cutting your journey short.

2. Wait to submit – you want to revise your piece again. Finishing a piece brings a rush of pride, but that is the wrong moment to dash off a submission to a journal. This should go without saying, but when you’re seeking to be viewed as a professional, “minor grammatical error” is an oxymoron. Never send out anything that could have so much as a single misplaced apostrophe. (Most common error on Prose, btw? it’s vs its.)

Good revision means more than proofreading. Revision requires time and perspective, and rushing your piece will only slow you down in the long run. Finding an editor—that is, someone whose skills you respect who is unafraid to slather red ink on your crap—is a godsend.

When I decided I was ready to submit to publications, I wrote a flash piece called “Inheritance” of which I was very proud: it was based on a story my father told me of my grandfather, but fictionalized in that the narrator-son felt confused about the tale’s meaning. It started at 750 words, and the ending was lackluster; an editor-friend helped me trim it to under 500 words, and a long-running dialogue with him helped move the ending closer to right, and I sent it off to some places. Several months and rejections later (a couple of them extremely helpful rejections – more on that later), I revisited, and I couldn’t believe I had overlooked its flaws. For one, the story was too sentimental. Here’s the original ending:

Tonight, a decade later, the brother I hadn’t seen for eight years dialed me with the one phone call the law gave him. I realized, when I clenched my teeth, what was passed to me, and what Grandpap fought in those flames.

I got my coat.

I kind of like that first line as a sentence, but as an ending to a story, it’s a forced a-ha moment: “And then the narrator discovered the meaning of brotherly love.” The Hallmark story has its place, but I was not submitting stories to Hallmark; I also did not want to write for Hallmark. My editor friend had tried to tell me of that risk – and he had indeed gotten me to improve the ending – but I was too close to the subject matter to see its sentimentalism until I had distance. The intervening months and writing growth revealed a second fatal flaw: it was still far too long. I edited “Inheritance” down to 300 words, less than half the original length.

3. Find where to submit your piece. There’s really two phases here: understanding where one discovers journals, and determining whether a particular journal might be receptive to your work.

Lists of journals: As far as the where, there’s a big ol’ ranked list here: http://www.erikakrousewriter.com/erika-krouses-ocd-ranking-of-483-literary-magazines-for-short-fictionThat list is geared toward short fiction, but many journals would also take poetry or creative non-fiction (CNF).

Here’s a place I check regularly where some journals advertise their calls for submissions: https://www.newpages.com/classifieds/calls-for-submissions

Most journals will expect you to submit using Submittable (www.submittable.com) – signing up for an account is free, and if you click on the “Discover” tab, you can see submission calls listed by end date.

Speaking of Submittable, you’ll see that most publications on it require a small fee ($3-4); that’s normal. I won’t say I’ve never paid a larger fee, but generally speaking, I don’t think it makes sense to pay more than the nominal $3-4, and regardless, they add up. (Note that earlier I said I had “received” $20, and not that I had “made” $20, because the latter would be a lie; I am very much in the red thanks to fees.) If you’re looking to avoid submission fees, it will restrict your submission possibilities, but it can be done: a lot of journals offer free reading periods, and some never charge (particularly those that operate through email alone and thus don’t have to pay a submission management platform). I would also urge you never to fall prey to “publishers” who send enthusiastic acceptance notices offering to sell you a copy of their “anthology” for the low low price of $40+. Legit print publications usually offer contributor copies even if there’s no other payment.

Picking journals: Sending your work blindly will likely waste your time: you need to do some scouting. Every single journal will advise you to read their past issues; as a practical matter, you probably don’t have time to read that much. I always look for the “About Us” or “Mission” tab on a homepage for starters. For my own part, I never send work to publications seeking “experimental” or “cutting edge” pieces, as what I write does not qualify; other publications specifically seek work from women, or teenagers, or people of color, or LGBTQ+ individuals, of which I am none. Some journals are genre-specific.

I generally do read a piece or so from the journal before submitting, attempting to judge whether my general style and approach are in keeping or at odds with what they publish.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with submitting a piece to multiple journals at the same time, and most journals explicitly state that they “accept simultaneous submissions.” (A handful don’t, and you should respect that.)

Another word of warning: the overwhelming majority of literary journals state that they want “unpublished work,” and pieces posted on social media or elsewhere on the web almost always count as published. A piece you have posted to Prose is therefore ineligible for most journals.

4. Format your piece. Follow the directions the publication gives. Whatever information they want, or don’t want, or font or spacing or lack of italics or pasted in the body of an email or RTF format or cover page or anything, just do it. You’re asking the editors to do you a solid by reading your work: respect their wishes. Almost every journal wants something slightly different in the formatting, which means the process of submitting will take far longer than you expect it will, but give them what they want.

In the absence of specific formatting guidelines, double-space prose using size 12 Times New Roman; include a header on every page but the first with name, title, page. Here’s the one I used: (Love – “Inheritance” – 2). For better and more precise guidance, click on “Standard Format” here: http://www.erikakrousewriter.com/other-author-tools-and-resources Poetry is often requested to be single-spaced. Many journals permit submission of 3-5 poems at a time. Again, your submission format should be whatever the hell the journal specifies, but here’s a general example of a submission of multiple poems: https://www.shunn.net/format/poetry/

5. Write your cover letter. Cover letters for literary journals should not be long or fancy. As always, follow all directions. Be polite and direct: they usually need your name, the genre of your submission, the length, and a third-person bio. If the piece is a simultaneous submission, tell them and assure them you’ll notify them of acceptance elsewhere. On the rare occasion when I’ve submitted something previously posted on Prose because the journal did not rule such pieces out, I’ve identified the writing as having “previously appeared on my personal page at Prose, a site for aspiring authors to share their work with one another.”

If you know a specific editor or two who will be reading your work, address the letter to them rather than the general “Dear Editors.” When I submitted “Inheritance” to The Blue Mountain Review, it fell under their microfiction category by word count. I found the name of the microfiction editor, then googled him to ensure I could have his proper title or pronoun – it turned out that he taught at a university. Here’s the full text of my cover letter, which I pasted into the proper field in Submittable:

Dear Professor _____:

Thank you for taking the time to read my microfiction “Inheritance,” which is 300 words long. A childhood memory my father described inspired the story. It is a simultaneous submission; I will notify you immediately if the story is accepted elsewhere.

Here is my bio:

Ryan F. Love teaches high school English in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, where he earned a degree from Alfred University. He lives with his wife in a Victorian with pairs of daughters, beagles, and guinea pigs. His work has been published in Blue Lake Review, The Copperfield Review, Sleet Magazine, and Blueline.

Thank you very much. I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

Ryan F. Love

6. Bring on the rejections – and read them. If you’re seeking publication, you will receive rejections. You will receive so, so many rejections. It’s normal. Rejections mean you're trying. I read a blog post by a writer whose stuff has appeared in journals I only dream about, and she said her acceptance rate was about five percent. I make a ritual of it: before I open any email from a journal, I say the word “rejection.” A rejection could mean that your piece wasn’t really ready, but it could also mean that they published something else similar recently, or that it didn’t quite suit the journal’s style, or it just couldn’t quite fit in the issue. Exact words from a rejection email I received: “Though I won't be taking this piece, it is lovely.” I deeply appreciated the encouragement.

There’s no need to keep feverishly refresh your email or Submittable page to see if you’ve heard anything yet. The Submission Grinder (https://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/) gives quality estimates of response times (more accurate than the journals give themselves, in my experience). If you see a light blue “In Progress” flag in Submittable, it means precisely diddly squat: you still might not hear anything for six months. You might also get a rejection (or acceptance!) without the flag ever having moved from “Received” to the pointless “In Progress.”

Keep track of your submissions and rejections: Submittable will do this for you on a basic level, but you should note when you get some kind of tiered rejection that’s more encouraging. If you’re told to send more work, you should try to do so and mention the previous interaction in your cover letter. (If you’re not sure whether you got a standard rejection or a higher tier, check out the journal’s samples on the Rejection Wiki - https://www.rejectionwiki.com/).

A rejection with personal note from an editor is a high compliment. It can also be extremely helpful. An editor rejecting one story of mine wrote, “We love the humor and the sense of place, but flash fiction has to start quickly. This one just didn’t grab us.” I didn’t yet realize how much it meant to get a personal note, and that one felt discouraging when I read it; it was actually exactly what I needed to hear. I was taking too long to get my flash fiction started. The criticism rang around in my head a few months before I processed it, and then that advice prompted me to take an axe to the beginning of “Inheritance.” The finished result was a vast improvement: it still got rejected twice, but that 300-word version is the one that got published. Finished version here, if you want to read it: https://issuu.com/collectivemedia/docs/bluemountainreviewjune2021/286

7. Keep writing. This is the part where I say things about improvement, practice makes progress, etc., but writing is inherently valuable in and of itself, whether a journal accepts it or not. Don’t let the quest for publication, or the inevitable rejections, stop you.

I first submitted to a journal way back in 2014. The essay was the best thing I had written up to that point. I made a lot of mistakes with the piece itself and with my submission process, but the dumbest mistake of all is easy to identify now: when that essay got four rejections, I stopped writing essays, stories or poems for five years.

Don’t do that.

When I’m working away at a draft of something that I’ve already revised three times, I quite frequently pull up a Prose challenge and post. There’s joy in writing; there’s joy in sharing writing; there’s joy in a writing community. If you choose to pursue publication in a literary journal, I wish you all the best, but publication is not purpose. You have reasons why you write; remember them, always, and keep at it.

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, 30% of people who become homeless exit homelessness after two weeks. (Manhattan-Institute, 2022). Almost 30% of homelessness is chronic (lasting more than 12 months). (Security.org, January 2023)

*********************

The question raised in the Prose challenge by one of my favorite writers, Huckleberry_Hoo, was can some US citizens lawfully live in the streets, “destroying property value and endangering it’s cities? Light research tells me that 90% of our homeless choose to be, meaning 90% have another option yet stay on the streets because it is more comfortable for them there. My question; is the comfort of the indigent more important than the comfort of the taxpayer? Does our gov’t have an obligation to make it less comfortable for them?”

Some research (sources below) leads me to take issue with the 90% statistic. And although I know that there are those who prefer to live outdoors, it is highly improbable that it is because it is more comfortable for them on city streets (unless by more comfortable one means because the street is safer than dangerous shelters, or abusive homes).

No one’s comfort is any more important than another’s. And clearing out all the homeless camps (as in Missouri), in an effort to “restrict visible homelessness” (and therefore increase property values, I guess), makes sense as long as there is an equal effort to get those removed the help they need: shelter, job training, behavioral or addiction programs. Making homelessness a jailable offense when there are no local homeless shelters, no psychiatric hospitals and no regular public transportation (rural homelessness) will not have the desired effect. Not connecting those in need with available services is counterproductive.

Some general statistics (as per security.org, January 2023):

582,462 individuals are experiencing homelessness in America, an increase of about 2,000 people since the last complete census conducted in 2020.

About 30 percent of people without homes are experiencing chronic patterns of homelessness. This means they’ve been without homes for more than 12 months or have experienced extended periods of extended homelessness over the past three years.

Most states saw their homeless populations rise since 2019, including four where the tally more than doubled (Delaware, Vermont, Louisiana, Maine).

Sixty percent of individuals experiencing homelessness are male, though unsheltered homelessness rose by five percent among women and girls. More than a quarter [25%] of those experiencing homelessness were with their families and children.

Much progress has been made in reducing homelessness among military veterans. Homelessness in this population declined by 11 percent over the past two years and has been halved since 2010.

I imagine that that 25% of families experiencing homelessness are not happier on the streets. Nor the 30% that manage to get out of the street as quickly as they are able.

**************

One of the most disturbing moments I had in college was discovering that many of the residents of a local homeless shelter had jobs (sometimes more than one) but did not earn enough to afford housing. Rents were too high. As I read the classified ads for apartment rentals as I neared graduation, I rethought career choices in terms of what would allow me to not live at home forever or end up homeless despite working full time.

That was more than 30 years ago.

Even earlier than that, I remember visiting my dad in what I now know was a hotel that had been converted to temporary housing for the working poor. My dad worked for the NYC Department of Transportation for his entire adult life, first as a train conductor, then for property protection. The only time he missed work was when he was in the hospital (heart attack; tumor removal). He retired on disability two months before he died. After the stint with the hotel, he rented in an affordable housing complex in a neighborhood that over the last two decades has become increasingly gentrified and, thus, too expensive for the current residents.

Today, as then, low wages and a soaring cost of living, mean that one job loss or medical issue could be the difference of having a place to live or not. The average wage required to rent a two-bedroom apartment exceeds the average minimum wage by anywhere from $5 to $14. (National Library of Medicine, 2018)

“An analysis by Chris Glynn and Emily Fox, two statisticians, predicts that a 10% increase in rents in a high-cost city like New York would result in an 8% increase in the number of homeless residents.” (The Economist, 2019) Thus, wherever homelessness seems to be out of control, high housing costs are also probably present.

"The origins of the current homelessness crisis go back decades — to policies that stopped the U.S. from building enough housing... Seven million extremely low-income renters cannot get affordable homes, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. And inflation is compounding the problem: Rent has increased at its fastest rate since 1986, putting houses and apartments out of reach for more Americans. Many cities and states in the Midwest and South, for example, have higher rates of mental illness, poverty or addiction than other parts of the U.S., but they have similar or lower rates of homelessness. What explains regional variation is housing market conditions,” said Gregg Colburn, a housing expert at the University of Washington. Homelessness, then, is a supply-and-demand problem. Without enough housing, not everyone has a place to live. And the homes that do exist cost more as people compete for limited supply. So, more people are priced out, and more end up homeless." (NYT, 2022)

Case in point: California has 23 available affordable homes for every 100 extremely low-income renters. One in four homeless in the US lives in California.

Interestingly, the pandemic caused a migration to remote locations in New England states as people were no longer tied to offices in big cities. This has led to an increase in demand without a corresponding increase in supply…so, higher rents…more homelessness. (WSJ, Rise in Homelessness, 2023)

"The concentration of homelessness in specific places isn’t caused by the prevalence of poverty, unemployment, or other socioeconomic conditions. Cities with very high rates of poverty and unemployment, such as Cleveland or Baltimore, have some of the lowest per capita rates of homelessness in the country. This trend holds for drug use as well. For example, while West Virginia has an extremely high drug overdose mortality rate compared to other states, it also maintained one of the lowest homelessness rates in the country." (Bipartisanpolicy.org, 2023)

In the 1980s, one of the primary forces that affected homelessness was gentrification of the inner cities and deep budget cuts to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and social services in response to the recession.

"In some cities, property values increased dramatically in the areas near downtown, and Skid Row areas disappeared as the SROs [Single Room Occupancy] and rooming houses that were home to thousands of transients were razed or converted into apartments and condominiums. Since the 1980s, rents in metro areas across the country have been increasing while wages have stagnated ."(Katz, 2006) (National Library of Medicine, 2018)

So, the poor and transient once had housing, but it was eliminated without also providing new housing options while also eliminating other programs of assistance. Sounds familiar…

In addition to housing issues, policies from the 1960s regarding the mentally had a detrimental and long-lasting impact on the homelessness situation in the US.

"Deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill has roots in the civil rights and civil liberties movements of the 1960s, which envisioned more fulfilling lives for those who had been languishing in understaffed psychiatric hospitals through new medications and robust community-based services. The number of patients living in state hospitals dropped from 535,000 in 1960 to 137,000 in 1980. California saw a dramatic reduction in state hospital beds from 37,000 in 1955 to 2,500 in 1983 (Flynn, 1985). Funding for the needed housing and community-based services proved inadequate, and, as cheap housing disappeared, vast numbers of previously institutionalized individuals with severe and persistent mental illness or those who might have gone to institutions in earlier eras drifted onto the streets and into temporary shelters. "(National Library of Medicine, 2018)

The intentions were good, the results, not so much.

****************

I live in an upper middle class, small town in the northeast. We have one homeless woman. She walks the streets year-round. For a little while, some ten years ago, she lived in the home of a friend of mine. One day she just left. She couldn’t breathe. After that, at night she found shelter in the basement of the church my friend attended, but the church shut down and now I have no idea where she sleeps. Occasionally, one of the hotels on the highway let’s her shower. There are no shelters in my town although, after much searching, I did find one overnight emergency shelter for abuse victims and one homeless shelter in the county where my town is located. Both were run by private, non-profit organizations. The police are very active in my town. I don’t know if they’ve ever tried to get her to go elsewhere. I see her almost daily, wandering with her bag and a crutch, suffering from arthritis, knee issues due to a recent fall, a poorly healed broken arm (same fall), severely bloated legs and arms (probably caused by long term lack of protein or a variety of diseases or damage to organs).

I wouldn’t say she wants to be outside; she just can’t be inside. I don’t know her history. I don’t know if she ever worked. I deduce that she has psychological issues. She doesn’t appear to have a drinking or drug problem. She doesn’t beg. The local deli gives her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches daily. Undoubtedly, she is one of the people Huck alluded to who is more comfortable on the street. I am sure she is not the only one, but she is definitely not part of the majority. She is, however, one of the invisible people we prefer not to see and who have been failed, possibly, by their families, their communities and the society in which we live.

Sources:

National Library of Medicine, July 2018, The History of Homelessness in the United States

The Economist, October, 2019, Homelessness is Declining in America

HUD 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report

NYT, July 2022, Homeless in America

Thehill.com, October 2022, The Typical homeless person in America might surprise you

Manhattan-institute.org, September 2022, Homeless, but Able and Willing to Work: How Federal Policy Neglects Employment-Based Solutions and What to Do About It

Security.org , January 2023, Homelessness in America 2023: Statistics, Analysis and Trends

Central Union Mission, 2023, About Homelessness

NationalHomeless.org, 2023, Homelessness in America

Forbes, January 2023, “Rough Sleepers” – The Growing Problem of Homelessness In America

Wall Street Journal, January 2023, Missouri Camping Ban Squeezes Rural Homeless

Wall Street Journal, January 2023, California’s Recipe for More Homeless

Bipartisan policy.org, February 2023, Housing Supply and the Drivers of Homelessness

Wall Street Journal, February 2023, Rise in Homelessness Hits New England States

I stepped out of the fog into a beautiful garden. I quickly shed all my clothes. I ran to the man reaching up into the branches of the tree, also naked, but apparently unashamed. "Don't listen to the snake, Adam! Do not taste that apple," I cried, as I snatched it from his hand. So incredulous was he to see another woman, he completely forgot about the apple. "Let me tell you a story," I said, taking his hand and that of Eve, as I led them away from the tree. The snake slithered away, defeated.

“So what’s your favorite part?” I asked him one night after the chores were done and the folks had drifted off to sleep. We were in a room to ourselves, and once we heard the snoring from our parents in the next room, we knew it was O.K. to talk about anything.

“My favorite part of what?” he asked me.

“Of a woman,” I answered impatiently—as if he didn’t know what I was asking. After all, women made up the default thought process that rambled through any young man’s mind at rest. Men could start any conversation with any vague unreferenced question, and unless anything else were specified, by default it meant it was about women.

“My favorite part?” he repeated thoughtfully. He paused a long time before answering. “Her smile,” he said. “There is nothing more beautiful, more inviting, more endearing, more provocative, more exciting, than a woman’s smile meant for you.”

“But not all women have one all the time,” I argued. “Sometimes you have to wait a really long time to get one.”

“Exactly, which is why it’s so special. It’s presenting a soft side to someone, submission, an open window on the soul that begs you to climb in.”

He then went on to explain, putting it much more delicately, of course, that when it came to the oneness between man and woman, all most men ever thought about were the other lips of a woman, but it was the pair that smiled that said it all to a man. I guess he was right, but being the type of guy I was, I always wanted a smile from those other lips. That was me—using the wrong head to think about the wrong lips. And for sure wanting to climb in whether I was invited or not.

I erase myself in the blank white pages of the screen, beckoning me. I started writing during quarantine. The void was calling. I popped a bottle of champagne from the before-times, when people celebrated, and started my journey. I sat on my bed and wrote apology letters and bad poetry, prose poems and manifestos to the undying. I think, ultimately, writing made me less boring.

When I'm bored I start typing. Something coming from nothing. The phoenix rising from the ashes, a becoming. I'm not good, in fact I'm rather bland and not for everyone. I'm the white pudding that comes in those little cups with lids impossible to take off. When you open me up I explode in a sugar rush, angry and clogged with unnecessary ingredients that leave a chemical taste in your mouth. Or maybe that's my writing.

I struggle with being boring. I've heard that if you're frequently bored, you're a boring person. But then what is writing? It is the void that beckons, and I go willingly. I follow a thought down a path, Hansel and Gretel, bread crumbs that will surely lead me to glory and fame, recognition and happiness. I wonder if people read what I write and decide I am not worthwhile - a boring mess of emotional distress. But I digress. How can anyone be boring who has a passion, a hobby that makes you free at last?

Color of anger

Yet the shade of love as well

Red, the first arrived

Grapefruit and sunsets,

Spessartite and citrine too

Second act, orange

Look at the bright sun

Or dandelion blossoms

Yellow everywhere

Natural palette

In the trees, plants, the flora

This is to you, green

Cool, calm and frosted

The color of the vast sea

Beautiful, fifth blue

The lovely night sky

Reflected in the ocean

Next comes indigo

Like amethyst shards

Or the sweet grapes on a vine

Purple, last in line

Hello, Writers and Dear Readers.

In today's vid on the channel, we dive into two beautiful minds.

Authors are tagged in the comments. Here's the link!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHt_uKfec3w

And.

As always.

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose. team

you stuck a sticker to your boots --

a little golden star, innocent

and shiny, delicate against

hard leather.

it'll be gone the next time i see you.

but i'm glad i noticed it

on that cloudy day, all of us

silently reading, your star sticker

shimmering up at me;

the sun peeking out

from behind a curtain.

Shivering in the Boston air, I realized that Aaron Sorkin’s shitty Oscar would fade into oblivion. I pictured the gap that would inexplicably appear on his trophy shelf and I smiled. It’s the smile that I remember. It had been a long time since I had smiled.

This is a strange way to begin, I know. The Social Network cannot even exist for you, but I could not begin with the suicide. You must have patience.

I held that thought of Sorkin’s shelf as long as I could so I would stop visualizing what would have to be: shattered glass, a bloodstained hoodie. Murder repulses me; I want you to know that. I am, in my own eyes, a repulsive creature. I would have chosen another life. If events had taken literally any other course, I would have remained an underpaid, well-liked, and more-or-less happy teacher of physics.

The violence of it threatened my resolve that first time. I was capable: when I still thought I had infinite time, I used much of it to become an accomplished marksman. But in the minutes before the shot, it was still possible to return the rifle to my duffle, close the door of my machine and leave. I’ll admit I considered it.

If I returned to 2025, wrote a paper for a peer-reviewed journal and presented my time machine, I would have been hailed as the greatest mind of the 21st century. But in seeking fame and fortune, I would have been no different than him.

No, if I returned, it would have been to her, and it would have been to one of three times.

She was three years old in 2010. She wanted gas for her red plastic car. It was one of the Playskool ones a kid sits inside, with the big eyes where the headlights should be. Her flashing Keds ran it all around our driveway. She wore a Superman cape she had gotten for her birthday, and every two minutes she’d Flintstone the car to me, and she’d say, “Fill it up, daddy!” I would have gone back to that day, over and over, just to look on from the bushes.

She was twelve years old in 2019. She wanted a phone. I tried, halfheartedly, to convince her to get something cheaper, but she had her heart set on an iPhone, and I couldn’t tell her no: she was such a good kid, in every way. I signed the contract and handed her the phone, and her eyes lit up because she could talk to her friends like all the others kids did. I would have gone back to that day to snatch the iPhone from her hand, throw it to the ground and smash it with a rock until the chips and plastic were powder.

She was fourteen years old in 2021. She wanted to die. She followed the website’s instructions perfectly: she stood on the chair to loop the cord over the beam in her bedroom, tied precisely the right knot for the noose, kicked the chair aside and dangled until her pulse spent her last breath. I would have gone back to that day to come home one hour earlier and cut her down.

But that would not have solved anything. Not really.

Social media usage among teenagers spiked drastically about 2010. Between 2010 and 2014, rates of hospital admission for self-harm among 10 to 14-year-old girls doubled. Rates of depression and anxiety among girls shot up: a line graph depicting these rates bent upward so drastically that the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt described it as an “elbow.” In 2017, when British researchers asked 1,500 teen girls about social media, they consistently identified Instagram as the most damaging. Facebook employee Frances Haugen leaked internal documents in 2021 that show Zuckerberg’s company knew how much damage their apps caused. Facebook’s research found, and I quote, “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression… This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

Teens compare themselves to others. Teens rely on clicks and comments to bring them self-worth. Teens try to build themselves up by destroying others, like when Miranda Smith looked at my darling Jessie’s picture on Instagram and wrote an ugly slut like you would only get likes with a noose around your neck.

I carry the memorial card from her funeral, always, as a reminder. Jessie Marks, 2007-2021, and above that her beautiful, smiling, child’s face. You must understand how much I still love her. You must understand, too, that I have looked at that picture every day for many years, and I have never once been able to see her face without remembering those words. An ugly slut like you would only get likes with a noose around your neck.

Rage and pain remind me, as they must remind you, that to cut the rope would not be enough. They remind me that to murder Miranda Smith, as sweet as it would feel, would accomplish nothing. Neither action would save the others. You must understand these things. You must know it is all for Jessie, but it is not only for Jessie.

She was unborn in 2003, the time to which I travelled. Neither she nor I nor her mother ever set foot in Boston, or Cambridge, as I suppose the place is more properly called. But he did.

He was nineteen years old in 2003. He wanted fame, money, and popularity. He sat at a computer in his Harvard dormitory—Kirkland House—and devised a website on which male students would vote on which female peers were the hottest, and less than a year later, he would found Facebook. He would later buy Instagram, creating untold millions for his company and massive psychological damage for our children. But first, he would ask his friend for an algorithm to help his coding. His friend would write it on the Kirkland House window, and then Mark Zuckerberg would stand at the window to read it.

I had selected the SRS-A2 Covert, which offered vastly more range than necessary, but also great accuracy with a compact size. A standard length sniper rifle would be too difficult to conceal.

I did not know which window, not for certain. My methods at that time were not so methodical, and I had rushed my research. I am embarrassed to admit that I founded my plan on a movie: only when I knelt on the opposing roof, grinning like a fool about Aaron Sorkin’s missing Oscar, did I consider that he might have invented the writing on the window for dramatic purposes. I panicked. My binoculars shook as I scanned the wall of Kirkland House, whipping from point to point, searching for a marker scrawling on glass. There was nothing, nothing at all. I knew The Social Network was fiction, inventing some characters wholesale. How could I have been so stupid as to think Hollywood would pinpoint the location of a famous man on an infamous night?

I saw the marker.

I needed to be calm, unshaking, and I breathed as evenly as I could as I gripped the rifle. I watched the final writing through the scope. The penman stepped aside. The boy in the hoodie stepped forward. I saw the arrogant grin on his face, exhaled slowly as I had practiced on the range, and buried a .338 caliber bullet in his chest. Shouts and screams wafted through the night air as a young man bled to death on his dorm room floor.

His death might horrify you. You might remonstrate, He was 19, he had done nothing to deserve death. But he would have.

In my time machine, I read the prayer on the back of Jessie’s memorial card. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. I flipped the card to the front and studied her face, tried to love her without remembering the words, but they remained lodged in my brain. Only the dates had changed: Jessie Marks, 2007-2022.

December, January, February. Zuckerberg’s blood had bought my daughter three more months.

Back in the future, I tried to understand how that could be. I had not missed: a certain Harvard sophomore had been murdered in his dorm room in October 2003. He had not created Facemash that night, nor Facebook after. Those domains and Instagram’s all remained unregistered. Without Facebook to blaze the trail, Instagram remained a figment in a future that wasn’t.

But in February 2004, a man named Jack Flanagan had launched FaceSpace, which grew to a billion dollar valuation. In 2011, FaceSpace purchased its upstart rival, E-gram. In February 2022, my daughter killed herself.

The second time was smoother. Flanagan spent spring break 2003 in Mexico, where an accident befell him while windsurfing. The Pacific hid both his unrecovered body and the two .338 caliber bullet holes in his wetsuit. His death bought a month-and-a-half: Jessie did not hang herself until mid-March.

I recognized the problem after eliminating Jim Baines, Marsha Robards, Deepak Singh and thus FaceHub, eTree, and ConnectMe. That trio, collectively, moved Jessie’s date of death only three weeks. The internet had been primed for social media. Zuckerberg had moved first, but he had not been the only. Many, many others would follow. Eventually, I even had to kill the Winklevoss twins. I tried killing Jonathan Abrams, too, back in 2001, but his murder did not move the needle at all. No one gave a shit about Friendster. It was Facebook that began the boom, or if not Facebook, each pale ghost that filled its void.

You will be tempted to stop. You will kill young men and women by the dozen, enough that you become good at it. Efficient. You will admire and loathe yourself in equal measure, and with blood on your hands and shoes, you will sit in your machine hurtling through the years, crying and wondering why. Then, you will take a picture of a 14-year-old girl from your pocket. You will feel her love and you will smile, fleetingly, before you remember. An ugly slut like you would only get likes with a noose around your neck.

As a creature who lives in its intervals, I have lost the ability to reckon time. I believe that in what you would call the last month, I have murdered 23 people. Jessie lives until age 17. Each new death wins only hours.

It’s funny, almost, to remember when I believed a single bullet could be the remedy. I thought Zuckerberg would fall and before his blood could stain the carpet, Jessie’s date of death would leap to 2080, 2090 on the card. I will never live to see that change. In the mirror every morning I see deeper wrinkles, more gray hair, less hair. Time travel breaks down the human body. I feel pain in my joints and chest, and I know that my remaining years will not complete my task. I will fail.

Listen. I began work on the time machine in December 2021, a month after Jessie’s original death. Building it took me four years. With careful notes such as I am providing, that time can be reduced, but you absolutely must begin around-the-clock work by February 2023. Begin any later and you surrender all hope; I’ve calculated. Jessie might seem fine if I can press on long enough. Without social media to poison her mind she will be happy, I know it, and you will think she will be OK. You will cherish her, love her, think it impossible that the apple of your eye could kill herself. If I murder enough people in my final years, maybe she will not, but it was Jessie’s suicide that prompted me to build the machine. Because I have forestalled her death, this message will have to be your prompt. You, man that I was, must understand: you must leave her to save her. Jessie carries that seed of destruction. If you do not do this work, if you do not return to 2003 to shoot a man named Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard University, Jessie will die at age 14 and the horror will return.

You will fear the consequences. Social media might seem new in your world, but it will not remain a harmless curiosity and it must be stopped. I know my actions have caused… alterations. With Facebook and its successors gone, some friends whom I will not name did not marry, did not have children. Other things have happened or failed to happen. I admit there are costs, but you must weigh them against the coming horror. You do not know what social media will do, to all of us, but especially to children. Jessie.

I leave you this recording, notes on the time machine’s construction, and the memorial card from Jessie’s funeral. I do not need it anymore, and if it cannot spur you to action, nothing will. Check it, daily. If I work very hard and live longer than I think, the year of death might change again.

I am also giving you a list of names, locations, dates and times. I have provided a photograph with each name; there are 1,417. If you use my research, if you do the work well and kill these first fourteen hundred quickly, you can build on what I have done. Every hour, every minute is worth more killing to spare a child’s pain.

Save them. Save her.

Is what my stepmother told me after I admitted that the only reason I still lived with my father and her was because of my siblings. I suffered so much because I wanted to be a part of their lives and yet they questioned my love for them.

I could also name the time my father called me a hypocrite or when my evil witch of a stepmother said I was a bad friend, but they haven't hurt as much as the first.

They are happily out of my life and I don't want them back.