Oh, hey! Didn't see you there.

When I was in high school, I was easily cranking out about a story a week. That's one fully-edited, multiple-thousands-of-words, plotted piece, every seven days. I loved them to no end, and I was convinced that they were going to make me the Next Big Thing in the writing world. (Weren't we all?) The logic of my little 16-year-old mind was that the world wasn't ready to see such expertise from such a young mind.

Well, last year, I pulled some of those stories out from the depths of my Google Drive. They were (are) bad. I mean, bad. I discovered very quickly that the things I was proud of years ago were not, and are not, the things I'm proud of now. On one hand, that means I've grown as a writer, and I've honed my craft. On the other hand, it was difficult to see the value in the time, effort, and soul I'd poured into these works. Did it even mean anything?

I decided it could mean something.

I spent my summer breaks during my first two years of undergrad shaping up these stories, editing them to a level that I felt like I could take pride in again. Then, I put them into an anthology and self-published it on Amazon, and my mom thought it was, like... the coolest thing ever.

My confidence was boosted like never before. People believed in me! If I could put in all this work to edit and publish a full anthology, I could publish these stories elsewhere. I wrote new ones, and I sent them out to different journals and magazines.

"After careful consideration, we've decided not to..."

"We often have to reject great work..."

"While we have chosen to reject you now, we hope you consider us in the future..."

My mom believed in me, and it seemed nobody else did. At least, not any magazines in the business of publishing short stories. I was chasing after the pride I'd felt publishing this anthology, and getting nothing. Still running. Running aimlessly, might I add, since many journals do not have the time or the people to send feedback.

I was tired.

I needed a coffee.

(Do you see that segue?)

I made writer friends in college who all told me the same thing. Writing in college is hard; you're trying to earn a degree and probably hold a job or two (or three) in the meantime. You want to write. so you write, you submit, you get rejected, you get no feedback, you try again. That's exactly why I wanted to create this litmag.

Am I bashing other journals for not providing feedback? Absolutely not.

However, I knew feedback to be a need of mine that tended to go unmet. Where there's one, there's more, and eventually I found my crowd. That's what this is all about, no? I want to give back to the community that has lifted me up, time and time again.

So, yes! Coffee Ring is small, and it is new, and it wants to help. I will be giving feedback on every piece submitted to me, even if it is not accepted.

Happy writing!