Mark Ellis couldn’t get his writing noticed—until he submitted it under his daughter’s name.

My plan was to behave like a more, shall we say, established writer. When I heard about a new reading series that a Portland creative writing professor was starting on the first Thursday of every month, I went to his website to get the scuttlebutt.

I’d done a lot of writing, but no reading in public. The industry mantra is that you have to get out there and sell it, market it, platform like there’s no tomorrow. It’s rare that a writer can pull a Charles Frasier, a Cold Mountain, then just sit back and let the money roll in. Truth be told, I worried that when I got in front of an audience I would have a major flop-sweat moment, like Albert Brooks in Broadcast News.

I’d been published a few times, so I figured I could send in some decent work, get chosen to read, and hone my writerly persona and speaking skills at the same time. I needed to tighten my sphincter and get in front of a crowd—work through my stage fright, or suffer the isolationist fate of Emily Dickenson.

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Before I submitted my work, I went to check out the scene. The venue was a less-than-impressive downtown pub. I usually go to places like that only when I want to listen to Eddie Money covers and get buzzed. The night I went—the fourth installment in the series—the joint was deserted, even as the clocked ticked down to the eight o’clock start. I ordered a beer from a portly bartender who looked like he’d heard enough already. He didn’t strike me as being too fond of writers.

But people did start to dribble in, and by ten minutes till kickoff the place was three-quarters full, and the pizza ovens were finally getting a little trade. I recognized the ringmaster by his mustache and the tell-tale hopefuls crowded around him. I introduced myself, and Professor Radley Skylar (a nom de plume) thanked me for coming. Even before hearing the first reader, I had decided to follow through, to send something. It was going to be balls out for me on that stage—meltdown or triumph.

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As the readings progressed, I did my part by listening attentively and appreciatively. I ordered more beer and a panini in hopes the old bartender would hear something he liked. Afterwards, I made a point of approaching the writers and making apt, if obtuse, comments about their presentations. Some of them had been pretty good.

Then the rejection email came. I’d sent in an experimental chapter excerpt—apparently my trunk stories and works-in-progress weren’t going to fly. Daunted, I sent in a stand-alone short story that had been published on a mid-tier literary website. A week or so passed. Again, no go.

So that’s the way it was going to be with Skylar. My sense that the reading series would be as easy as automatic writing was mistaken. Apparently there was some competition. For all I knew, the poor man was inundated with submissions.

I sent a third submission, a short story excerpt from my Spokane Prize semi-finalist manuscript. The response: “Mr. Ellis, I am sure that you’re going to send something that just lifts off the page and grabs me. Looking forward to your submissions.”

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The writing life can make you paranoid sometimes—every writer knows that. And looking back, I can pinpoint my paranoia to that very moment, that third rejection. The conviction that Skylar was biased against men wormed its way into my head like those stories foretelling the end of publishing as we know it. Though there had been a man reading the night I had gone, with a few other male writers showing up here and there in the line-ups, the series was owned by a great preponderance of women.

Sometimes that’s all it takes to enter the realm which Al Franken—as Stuart Smalley—so eloquently describes as “stinkin’ thinkin.’” I convinced myself that my way onstage was to pretend to be a woman.

On some level I probably hoped to reveal Skylar as a womanizing MFA. I sent in a moody, introspective, and semi-autobiographical short memoir about an old landlady I’d once worked for. I signed it Katherine Ellis, my daughter’s name. Shameless.

But I’ll be damned if Skylar didn’t accept it.

“Ms. Ellis: I enjoyed reading your work. You displayed a particular knack for setting in this story, and we’d like you to come and read for the series.

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This denouement is going to be quick. I contacted Professor Skylar, came clean in the most earnest and apologetic way I could, and pompously stated that “under the circumstances, it would be best if I withdrew my submission.”

He didn’t try to talk me out of it. He probably would have let me read the damn thing, but we’ll never know. I would have to wait for another day find out whether I had what it took to read my work in front of an audience.

We’ll also never know if Skylar would have accepted the piece if it was sent by a man, but the fiasco wasn’t a total loss. In my attempt to expose the gatekeeper, I’d stumbled over an epiphany.

Sammy Davis Junior sang it best: “I Gotta Be Me.”

—Mark Ellis

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