The first thing I ever published

How an imaginary basset hound gave me the courage to keep writing

I decided to call him Sancho.

I’ve been rejected a lot. Like, a lot a lot.

I wrote and submitted six full-length novel manuscripts before landing a book deal for Favourite Daughter. (More on that journey here.) And I’d been submitting short stories to literary magazines for years and years before one was accepted—a quirky piece of flash fiction called “Dave Standard Time (DST),” which I’ll be sharing and discussing later in today’s post.

But this is actually super normal. Rejection is a writer’s constant companion, and while that may sound bleak, every “no” is proof that you’re putting yourself out there, doing the scary thing, chasing the dream. And when a “yes” finally arrives, the victory is that much sweeter for the effort.

My first “yes” came from Geist, a tremendous lit mag based out of Vancouver, BC, after I submitted a piece of flash fiction for their Short Long-Distance Writing Contest in 2020. The prompt was to write a story, 500 words or less, that took place over two or more Canadian time zones.

What I came up with was a strange little piece about a sickly basset hound and his beleaguered human. Here’s the story, plus what it taught me about the importance of a unique concept.

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Jacinda dons a cool expression, a veil between her and her husband, and time uncoils. She is twenty-three again, scuttling into a Saskatchewan courthouse in pink eyeshadow and a wedding dress one might guess was made of mascarpone cheese. The memory leaves a sour taste.

“I need you to do something,” she says, in the present, where sunshine pelts a brownish backyard, and a lawn sprinkler spurts doggedly.

Dave does not look up from his tomato plant. “Shoot.” After flooding the planter, he swaps the watering can for a pair of shears from the dusty patio table and tramps across the yard to snip away at a raspberry bush, which has bowed to the sun.

“I’ve got work tonight. Sancho needs his pill at six. He has to take them twelve hours apart, remember? It has to be at six.”

“Jacinda, girl. You know me,” Dave says, and half the raspberry bush amasses at his feet.

Yes, she thinks. Yes, I do. “This is about our dog.”

“But I don’t believe in any of that.”

When Dave renounced work, he also renounced time. He obliterated his watch with a hammer. He covered the microwave clock with hockey tape. He began eschewing social invitations, insisting that in his time zone, Dave Standard Time (DST), nobody made plans.

Jacinda, who follows Mountain Daylight Time (MDT), breathes some calm into her voice. “I’d ask Martin”—the next-door neighbour, a sinewy, widowed carpenter, sometimes offers his sawdusted shoulder for Jacinda to cry on—“but he’s out tonight. My sister can’t come. There’s nobody else.” She beams a soldering look at the back of Dave’s head. He still has not met her eye. Instead, he finds a trowel and scoops soil from the flowerbed for no apparent reason.

Jacinda pulls a battery-powered alarm clock from her purse and slams it on the patio table. “I set this for six. You don’t have to look at it. You don’t even have to think about it. All you have to do is hear the alarm, go inside, and give Sancho his medicine.”

“But then I’ll know what time it is, which defeats the whole point.”

“The whole point.” Jacinda’s back prickles with sweat.

“It’s a matter of principle. Principle, Jace. Everybody’s got somewhere to be. Everybody’s rushing.” Dave waves his trowel through the air, hurling clods of pale, overbaked earth as he speaks. “Everybody’s keeping time, but nobody’s got any. Explain that one to me.” 

A basset hound lumbers through the open backdoor, ears and belly fat swinging, and tucks himself beneath the table. His eyes are cloudy, his knees distended. A fist tightens around Jacinda’s heart.

“Alright,” she says. “What’s it gonna take? Cookies? Pie?”

Dave’s eyes flash upward.

“Pie it is,” Jacinda says.

“Saskatoon berry?”

Jacinda can’t believe it’s come to this. “Saskatoon berry,” she says, and turns on her heel.

“Don’t forget the timer,” he calls after her. “You always leave it in too long.”

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The power of a premise

I’m still quite proud of this little story! Reading through it years later, I don’t love the dialogue, and I think I could’ve tweaked the ending line a bit more to sound even punchier. But I really like the first paragraph, and I think there’s some nice phrasing in there.

It’s certainly not perfect, and it’s probably not the story I would write today, but it was the best I could do at the time. And I learned two important things from it: firstly, to hang in there and keep writing; and secondly, the value of a unique concept.

I can pretty much guarantee that there were dozens of better-written submissions than mine—stories with stronger word choices and more powerful imagery. But my hunch is that “Dave Standard Time” probably stood out for its hook.

Instead of having my characters interact across a great physical distance, I had them interact across a wide emotional gap and made the “time zone” imaginary. It was a bit of a gamble, but I knew that Geist appreciated that sort of thing in submissions, so I went with it. And it paid off!

I am far, far from a master of short stories (or story-telling in general), but one thing I’ve learned is that strong ideas outweigh pretty words. This is something I tried to remember while writing Favourite Daughter, and which I’m still having to remind myself as I work on a new project now.

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End notes

Currently reading: I finally read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin and have many thoughts—topic for a future newsletter. I also just finished the audio edition of Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, delightfully narrated by Meryl Streep. And now I’m diving into The Double Life of Benson Yu by Kevin Chong.

On my desk this week: Still plugging away on my new manuscript. In Favourite Daughter news, my Canadian publisher sent me a few advance copies of the book in the mail last week. This was my first time holding a physical copy in my hands, and yes, it was absolutely magical.

Another exciting update: Favourite Daughter is now available to pre-order in Canada, the US, and the UK, with final cover designs coming soon! If you’re curious about the book, I hope you’ll consider ordering it from your local indie bookstore, supporting both me and an independent retailer in the same go.

What are your experiences with rejection? I’d love to hear about it in the comments. And thanks as always for being here.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider forwarding it to a friend. I’ll be sending these letters a few times per month in the lead-up to my book’s publication. Find me at morgandick.com or on Instagram @morgandick_author for more.