THOMAS RIONS-MAEHREN

Getting up to speed

I know I’m destined to be a writer because I hate my job. The only thing I hate more than my job is writing. I want to quit my job. The only thing I want to quit more is writing. (Could this finally be the year???)

It started when I broke my ankle playing pickup basketball with a bunch of old people at the Midtown YWCA and needed a new outlet for my feelings. Actually, it probably started way before that when I was like seven and used to run around by myself by the river pretending to explain the intricacies of the modern world to an imaginary George Washington while simultaneously looking for Pokémon. I saw a bee curled up and dying by my feet while I ate lunch one day on the campus of my university. A poem came to me, but I tried to fight it off. I fought it and fought it and fought it because I was a manly, manly science nerd destined for Berkely or MIT or, more likely, a complete nervous breakdown. So there was this poem buzzing in my head, and I couldn’t shake it. I eventually wrote a sonnet about bees and Vikings and Spartans. It felt nice to see the words and ideas click into place.

Up until this point, I had been the perfect student with perfect grades, the most rigorous class schedule imaginable for both philosophy and chemistry, a prestigious fellowship, a place doing research in the lab of a very well-known chemist, and severe depression and anxiety. I made it through an entire semester where I rarely got out of bed, let alone went to classes. My life was falling apart, so I decided to cash in my chips by applying for the Peace Corps in Mozambique and graduating a year early with just a major in philosophy and a minor in chemistry. My final semester, I took a poetry course pass/fail, and to my surprise, the instructor seemed really impressed with my work.

A natural. That’s what I figured. I crashed and burned miserably in Mozambique and got a severe concussion (again playing basketball at the YWCA) right when I got home that prevented me from going back to school to finish my chemistry degree. A natural. I moved to Ecuador where I had lived previously and where I figured I would find immediate success with my writing, just because a professor in an intro to poetry course said something nice about one of my poems.

This was my new reality. This was my life, my future, and my livelihood. All I needed to do was write the work that would, no doubt, be in a museum one day. Progress came slow as I tried to find my voice and finish a novel that I was writing just for the sake of writing a novel with no real idea or direction. Three years into living in Cuenca, Ecuador where I survived riots in the streets outside of my apartment, the first part of the COVID pandemic, and the first couple years of marriage, I decided it was time to risk my new identity by sending in my poetry and prose to be published. My novel was stricken down with decisive fury, and not knowing what I was doing, I sent in pretty much all of the poems I had ever written to literary journals, more often than not receiving instant rejections within a day or two. Almost always, these rejections were form letters with no feedback, and I didn’t (and still don’t) have any writer friends, which left me to review and improve my work/style on my own.

While the world recovered from COVID and while I trained for marathons and triathlons on the beautiful river trails of Cuenca, I doubled down. I decided to write a novel in Spanish to improve my expertise in my second language and my skills as a writer with no expectations of fame or fortune. In terms of poetry, I humbled myself and braced for the long rode ahead. I started reading journals, reading essays with critiques, and writing every single day. That next year, I would see my novel published, along with a few of my poems appearing in literary journals in the US. Of course, the birth of my son around that time overshadowed everything else as we got ready for our move back to the US to finally finish that chemistry degree.

Moving Forward

As of right now, I have a lot of pots on the fire. My oldest project is a short collection of poetry written in Spanish that was inspired by my time living in Puyo, Ecuador where I worked at a monkey sanctuary. There are even illustrations done by a marvelous artist from Cuenca to accompany each poem. Usually, this sort of thing is self-published or even hand-made, so that was my plan. Now that I’m living in Minnesota again, though, I’m not sure what to do. I might either look for some contests to send it into or save up to self-publish it the next time I’m in Cuenca.

Next, I have a second novel in English that I feel is a big improvement on my first attempt. In order to publish this with a big publisher, I’ve been trying to get a literary agent to submit my work on my behalf. Since an agent would just take 10% of my 10% instead of being paid directly, they are incredibly selective about who they take on as clients. I’ve come very close with two agents so far but I ultimately got rejected because of details that I was second guessing myself about the entire time. I have a few more weeks to wait to hear back from the other agents I’ve sent my novel to before I review the list of agents to see if there are any that I missed. If I don’t have any luck with an agent, I’ll try to publish my novel on my own through a smaller publisher. Honestly, I’m ready to move on to my next novel that I already have a first chapter written for. I think it has a lot more potential than anything else that I’ve written so far. It borrows the idea of metempsychosis from Ulysses and applies it to the American dream where the soul of the dreamer gets passed onto a middle-aged construction worker who has long since settled into the difficulties of the real world.

I have a sequel to my novel in Spanish in the works as well. I have about 200 pages of the first draft written. The previous novel focused a lot more on philosophy and symbolism with the horror narrative as almost an undertone. This new novel, however, has the same depth of thought while being, in my opinion, a much more suspenseful and stimulating horror story. I’m not sure how to go about publishing this novel at this point. I could look for an agent in Spain or Latin America, but that my complicate things with my search for an agent for my English-language novels. I may also look for a bigger publisher, but since this is a sequel, that could create some esthetic and/or legal and/or continuity issues with the publisher of my first novel.

Finally, my poetry. After like six years of writing, I finally have 60 good poems that I’ve assembled into a collection of poetry. While the poems themselves are good, with many having been published in literary journals, I feel the way they fit together into an even stronger collection that examines the idea of finding meaning (and ultimately finding peace without it) in our modern society. I’ve been waiting to hear back from about a dozen contests and publishers to see if anybody wants to publish it.

I’m also working on a collection of poetry in Spanish. When I lived in Ecuador, it made sense for me to write in Spanish. Now that I’m once more a White guy from Minnesota living in Minnesota, it feels a bit odd writing in Spanish. However, my wife and her family (all Ecuadorian) have encouraged me. As a vegan poet, I try to steer clear of this type of cheesiness, but it seems like I think more in English and feel more in Spanish. That’s probably why I got married to a woman who speaks Spanish as her first language. Either way, my poetry has two distinct styles depending on the language, so I’m just writing whatever comes to me, regardless of the language.

2024 and beyond

When I first started submitting my work for publication, I was sending in mediocre poetry to some of the top journals in the world. Imagine somebody spending a few minutes hitting a punching bag at the gym, receiving a compliment in passing, and then trying to sign up to fight in the heavyweight championship. It ain’t happening. Now, I feel like I’m finally putting in the work and moving my way up the chain to where some of those bigger journals might start considering my work.

This year, I hope to continue to publish my poems in both languages in journals (I already have a couple of poems forthcoming in a journal and in an anthology). I also am planning on finishing the novel in Spanish and getting a publishing deal for my novel in English. If nobody picks up my collection of poetry in English, I’ll have some tough decisions to make about that — scrap it for parts, self-publish, publish the poems on my blog, etc.

Most importantly, my goal for the coming year is to start to take my writing seriously. Let me clarify. I take writing very seriously. I try to read, study, and write in the same way an Olympic athlete eats, sleeps, and trains. What I mean is that a lot of my writing and poems have the tone that I’m mocking myself for wanting to write and almost apologizing for making people read my work. I’m trying to write with the feeling that what I’m doing isn’t ridiculous and that the world can actually benefit from reading my thoughts and from experiencing my art. My problem has always been that I’m all bite and no bark. Now, I want to embody what I truly feel is my calling and radiate that whenever I put pen to paper.

Happy New Year, and if anything big happens, I’ll let you know!

Tom