The most challenging question revolved around whether or not to suggest resources for specific types of writing, such as children’s lit, horror, and fantasy—three astonishingly popular genres for writers. (If you don’t believe me, just check out the writers in the Writers Digest community.)

Although I discuss those with my creative writing students, in the interest of keeping Polish and Publish short (under 60 pages of large type), I decided to leave them out.

The way I wrote the book followed my own journey to become a professional writer—the questions I asked myself, the challenges I faced, and the strategies and resources I discovered. One of the best pieces of knowledge I found was places where beginning writers can get their work published.

I want other writers to have the tools they need to overcome their writing frustrations—whether those stem from writer’s block, receiving rejection after rejection from publishers, or simply not knowing the direction(s) to take because the options—as well as the risks—are legion.

So, when the book’s published, I hope you’ll get a copy and let me know how it helps you in your writing journey.

Till then, I’ll be posting tips here and on Twitter @lynettebenton.

More people than I would ever have imagined have asked me how I wrote the book—how I got the idea for it, did the research, decided what to include (and alternatively, what to leave out), and how I actually wrote it.

The first answer is short. Many times, when people hear I’m a writer, they say they’ve always wanted to write, but didn’t know how to get started. A local librarian told me that she hears similar a similar plaint (as in “cry of sorrow or grief”). Patrons tell her they want to know the best resources for writers.

It was this librarian, Catherine, who told me to “teach this stuff” when I rattled off books and websites in response to her questions about writing and publishing poetry and screenplays.

I’d been consulting a lot of books and websites for my own writing and for the creative writing courses I teach. That was the research. So, I already had a stock of the “best of . . . .” I’d listed a lot of them in the articles I write for Examiner.com.

In my next post, I’ll discuss how I decided what to include and what to leave out of the booklet.

Skirt! had published an earlier essay of mine, “From Part Time to Parting Time.” The theme for that issue had been “narrow escapes.” My essay had been about leaving a job just before things got a lot worse at the organization.

My essay that Skirt! rejected was about being bullied, along with my (mostly women) colleagues, by a male boss.  I’m not including the essay here, since after writing it, I wondered if I could be sued for libel over it. I don’t think I could, but I’m checking with attorneys. I don’t know why Skirt! rejected the essay—unless it was because they had the same concerns about libel as I did.

Read more about creative writing at my blog.

Far and away, most submitted writing is rejected because the writing is poor. I don’t think that’s why mine was unacceptable. I do know how to write.

So, as promised, here are the reasons I think the piece was (justifiably) rejected. The More editors might have more or different reasons, but I’ll probably never know them.

• More magazine is all about reinvention. My “Hot Flashes and the Fashionable Woman” isn’t—at least not overtly. It does talk about the ways a former fashionista can remain chic, even after she has to subjugate all her wardrobe choices to menopausal heat. But it’s not a story of how I went from being, doing, or feeling this to how I changed to being, doing, or feeling that.

• The piece is not an essay. It’s not in the first person. It’s not about me. It’s an article—or probably more correctly, a “service piece.” The course description for Mediabistro.com’s “How to Write Service Pieces” describes them as those that “offer practical information, resources, and advice on life and living.”

• More has published lots of articles about managing hot flashes. Mine was just another one. Why would they need it?

I’ll post some other work of mine that was rejected. I confess that in some cases, I don’t have any idea why the editors didn’t want them. If you do, I’d really appreciate it if you’d leave a comment letting me know.

So, it is with a certain amount of embarrassment that I’m fulfilling that promise here.

Before I submitted an essay to More magazine online that they accepted and posted (“After Burnout, a New Career Helping Writers“), I submitted “Hot Flashes and the Fashionable Woman,” below. More rejected it.

If you’d like to take a crack at the probable reasons it was rejected, go ahead. I’ll tell you my guesses in my next post.

Hot Flashes and the Fashionable Woman

You’re seated in a meeting when a mystifying mustache of moisture settles above your upper lip. Everyone is staring at the sudden splotches you feel blooming on your throat. A strange warmth skulks downwards, dampening your cleavage. Your heart begins to pound even though your boss hasn’t yet asked why you didn’t complete the reports she assigned you. You’re hot, which is odd, since you were the one who just groused that the room was too cold. Well, you’re having a hot flash, and it can’t be helped. What can be helped is how you handle it, particularly when it comes to what you wear. Menopause presents challenges to the middle-aged fashionista that require a whole new wardrobe accompanied by behavioral modifications designed to preserve her sang froid.

As a hot flash sufferer for more years that I care to remember, I want to offer some tips on how to remain fashionable, in spite of a strong desire to strip off (to cool off) in a meeting with a suspicious IRS auditor, or on arriving at a restaurant for your first date with the only older man you’ve met who’s not interested in women the same age as his daughter.

It’s important to know what a hot flash is so you know if you’re having one, or are just flushed from lying to your boss about those reports. Simply put, they are just another of the discomforts (think menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth) the universe sends to plague women, or at least slow us down. These scourges attack “women of a certain age,” that is, anywhere in the vicinity of 50 years old. According to power-surge.com, 75% of American menopausal and peri-menopausal women experience hot flashes. For some, the palpitating warmth spreads over their bodies one time, then thankfully, never again. Most women have to endure them for approximately six months. The truly unfortunate are dogged by them for a decade or more; I suspect some still have them during mahjong games at the senior center, or, heaven forfend, while receiving extreme unction on their death beds. So, they can span from a one-time event to the rest of your life, notwithstanding what unsympathetic doctors might tell you. (If your doctor is male, he might mumble something unintelligible that will sound to you like, “Suck it up. I’ve got patients with real problems to treat.” Don’t take it personally; his wife has hot flashes and he has no idea what to say to her, either.)

The upper chest and neck are the hot flash’s prime targets, but no part of your person is safe. They are particularly pernicious on cool, damp and hot, humid days.

Based on my extensive experience, as well as discussions with other hot flash victims, here’s my advice for remaining stylish, even when sweating bullets. Here’s what to wear/avoid.

Ditch your tights and pantyhose, though my husband’s cousin, Angela, who’s suffered from intense hot flashes for 15 years, still wears them.

Ditto turtlenecks. I only wear them when I’m outdoors in a blizzard with my jacket open to allow the snow to blow directly onto my broiling chest. Angela (see above) feels funnel-neck tops are okay. They’re not.

Forget about long, clingy sleeves, unless you want to be discovered yanking scissors out of your desk drawer and slitting your clothes as you ask a job applicant if she’s good at multitasking.

Buy twin sets. Cardigans with sleeveless tanks make attractive ensembles for the hot flash-prone, especially if the cardigan has short or three/quarter length sleeves.

If you must wear a jacket, make it a long tunic without closures. Buttons and zippers will only slow you down if you need to flap that jacket open quickly. You’ll not only feel cool, but the way the backs of some tunics sway when you walk will make you look sexy.

Don only low cut, sleeveless nightclothes. There’s something called “night sweats,” a term for hot flashes that attack you when it’s dark outside and you happen to be horizontal. Those are the ones that feel as if someone has placed a pillow loaded with lead over your face.

Wear tank tops—even in winter. You’ll thank me for this advice next December. It’s okay if some are lined or have boatnecks or princess necks; wear those on the sub-zero days. For all other seasons (and those weird mid-January days when the temperature in New England unaccountably rises to forty-five degrees, but feels like eighty-five degrees), if you’re having a hot flash, wear thin scoop neck tanks. In fact, don’t even put them away in the fall. Remember, hot flashes seek out your upper body like a stealth missile.

Skirts, dresses, and shorts keep you coolest in the summer. If you must wear pants, only wide legged ones will do. You want to attract a draft wherever you can.

Feature cotton and linen in your summer wardrobe, although, in all fairness, some clothes made of the lighter synthetics are okay, as long as they are loose fitting—say, six sizes too large for you.

Now, a fashionable woman must conceal her hot flashes with aplomb, so here’s some advice for managing those pesky public situations should a marauding hot flash find you when you’re in a meeting with colleagues, your child’s teacher, or that IRS investigator.

Select a seat as far away from other humans as possible. You don’t want their normal body heat triggering your extreme body heat. (Although, here’s an interesting medical claim: Even in the midst of the worst hot flash, your body temperature will be whatever’s normal for you, somewhere around 98.6 degrees, or even several degrees lower!)

Delicately dab your mouth (to soak up the perspiration that’s beading on your upper lip), as you would after eating. Put your head in your hands, as though you’ve just heard something upsetting, to surreptitiously mop the sweat on your hairline.

And always, always arm yourself with a large iced drink. When a hot flash threatens, grip your glass with both hands as if someone’s trying to snatch it away from you. This really works.

Finally, don’t be ashamed to open your windows, or run your fan or even your air conditioner on “high” in the middle of winter. Those who share a bed with a middle-aged woman get used to it. My husband has.

Our basement—the basement of our house atop a steep hill—had flooded. How? Water can’t flow upwards, can it? Everyone’s theory, which seems to make sense, is that when seven inches of rain fell in the past two days, the water, having no place else to go, settled into our yard, which became saturated. So the runoff drained into our waiting basement.

We are leaving for DC in a few days, and I have a list of stuff to do, including preparing our taxes for our tax preparer. (That sounds stupid, but the only alternative to doing that is to take him a garbage bag full of papers and wish him well.)

So I donned clothes I’d never, in my most dreadful dreams, expected to wear all at the same time: silk long johns, under blue-striped cotton long johns, under flannel-lined khakis. Two pairs of socks, colors unmatched, and I’m not taking off my slippers, lined with fake fur, to check. Sweaters over sweatshirts, followed by a big fleece shirt. A fleece hat. A cup of hot water to grasp whenever my hands got too cold to type.

The landlord came three times. The plumber, twice. My husband borrowed a pump from his sister who lives two towns over, until she needed it back: her basement is flooded again, because it keeps on raining. Our new downstairs neighbor’s freaked out; she had tons of unpacked boxes of treasures on her side of the basement—those irreplaceable mementos of important events in a family’s life, mostly weddings, I think she said. The stuff of sentiment that we hope she’ll be able to rescue, but it doesn’t look promising.

I’ve spent the day at my computer, except for making cornbread, which was my excuse for using the oven to warm the kitchen.

I’ve gotten a lot of items on my list done and crossed off. I just couldn’t work on any creative projects. The day has felt slanted, utterly off-kilter somehow. And I’m too disoriented and distracted wondering whether or not we’ll have heat tomorrow.

I always thought I’d—hands down—prefer having heat to electricity. But I don’t. Maybe I’d feel differently if the temperature outside was 15 degrees, instead of 35. I see now that thirty-five degrees is bearable, even with the winds seeping in through the seams of our double-glazed windows.

I’ve done none of that. One thing and another intervened, but I’m back now with a more or less continuation of my earlier allusions to writing about work. So, staying on that theme, here’s a link to one of my favorite published essays, “From Part Time to Parting Time.” It appeared in Skirt!, which at the time was both a print and online publication. It tells you how my 11-year sojourn in higher education came to an end 18 months ago.

Now to find out how I can respond to all of you who were kind enough to leave a comment here. I’d thought I was talking into a vacuum, until I looked today. I’m very gratified. Thanks!

I’ve written and published essays, articles, and an interview about aspects of my life in higher ed, where I was part of that army of administrators who, oddly, tend to be ignored by fiction and nonfiction writers. Those writers overwhelmingly have focused on faculty and students, while the busy herds of administrators have been left largely uninvestigated and unexposed.

Here’s a link to the first of my more benign writings about higher ed administration, published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the major newspaper for the gargantuan higher education industry.

The first five essays for the Chronicle were written under one of my pseudonyms, Lauren Moore. My colleagues at the college discovered the identity behind my pseudonym, but the often-prickly president’s council members surprised me by praising the essays.

From the first essay (“Reasons for Leaving”), you can see the others by searching the Chronicle site for Lauren Moore and for Marie Pelangy (my second pseudonym, which was not discovered).

I have a vague sense that the essays became more and more pessimistic over the two years that I wrote them.

It’s been tons of fun. Writing my Examiner.com articles leads me to folks I wouldn’t have access to otherwise. But it can’t compete with the satisfaction I get from teaching and writing about Tools & Tactics for Creative Writers.

So, I’m taking a brief break from the Examiner for a little reflection—a necessary and enjoyable indulgence for us writers.

I’ve been thinking about this blog—mostly about what to reveal. This space is different from my Examiner space, which is entirely about its readers, not about me. With only one or two exceptions, I always write in the third person there.

This blog is different, too, from my creative writing blog.  As Simmons is both my alma mater and my former employer, discretion is the better part of valor for me there.

Here, I’ll share what I’ve been wanting to for a while: honest writing. And it won’t all have the happy endings that the mainstream magazines require no matter how dire the story.

I’ll post my published work, my not-yet-published work, and my (thankfully few) rejected works, and offer some ideas about why I think those pieces were rejected.

Finally, I’ll write about my favorite writers and the thinkers I try to learn from. My debt to them is as gigantic as their art and their minds are. I’ll never succeed in emulating them, but I’m glad they’ve taken up residence in my mind.