In Otter Words - 1. Chapter 1

Look.

I never intended to become the poster otter for gay literary failure.

In fact, if you'd asked me last year where I saw myself by now, I'd have said, "Bestselling author, at least three books deep into a contract I signed at an indie coffee shop after a spontaneous NPR interview went viral."

Instead, here I am.

A thirty-one-year-old otter named Bo, half-dressed, hunched over a keyboard at 2 am, with Goldfish dust forming what can only be described as a tragic orange beard across my chest fur and a Word doc titled CREATURE FEATURE DRAFT v34 FINAL FINAL ACTUAL FINAL NO SERIOUSLY THIS TIME I MEAN IT GERALD.docx.

Gerald is my laptop.

Yes, I named my laptop.

No, I will not be taking questions about my mental health at this time.

The doc is still blank and Gerald is judging me. I can feel it in the way his fan whirs.

So I decide to check GayOtthors.org instead.

Not because I expect to find divine inspiration.

I'm procrastinating.

Like it's an Olympic sport and I'm going for gold.

Also.

I posted a poll in the forums, because watching gay writers argue is better than Netflix.

Poll: Is an otter technically a creature?

A. Yes

B. No

C. Only if he shapeshifts, glows, or breathes fire.

Fourteen votes.

Eleven of them chose option B.

Traitors.

Why did I create such a poll, you ask? Because the theme for the GO anthology this year is Creature Feature.

Simple enough, right?

Narrator voice: It was, in fact, not simple enough.

You see, the problem isn't the theme.

The problem is me.

Exhibit A: my current browser tabs.

Tab 1: Mythical creatures by continent.

Tab 2: Are shapeshifters legally required to disclose their nature on dating apps?

Tab 3: Can ghosts claim “being dead” as a deduction?

Tab 4: Indeed.com jobs near me.

Tab 5: Is it normal to be attracted to the Beast from Beauty and the Beast?

Tab 6: Local therapists accepting patients emergency availability preferred.

That last one opened itself. Gerald has become sentient and is staging an intervention.

In protest of this mutiny, I start typing, just to prove I'm still capable of forward momentum.

Once upon a time, in the dampest part of the internet, there lived a gay otter named Bo who could not write to save his goddamn life, his credit score, or his remaining dignity.

… That feels a bit on the nose.

But it's a start.

And as any writer will tell you, starting is half the battle. The other half is fighting off the existential dread with wine and increasingly creative procrastination methods. Like when I organized my sock drawer by emotional weight.

Or when I wrote my memoir's acknowledgments page before writing a single chapter, because apparently I'm the kind of otter who thanks people for supporting a book that doesn't exist.

Or that time I drafted a cease-and-desist letter to my high school English teacher about her poetry feedback.

Listen Linda. It's been 15 years, but I'm still not over it.

The letter remains unsent, but my petty lives forever.

I stare at the blinking cursor, which has begun mocking me in Morse code.

"Okay," I whisper to myself, which is concerning because I live alone and talking to myself suggests I'm either a genius or rapidly approaching a breakdown. "Creature Feature. I can work with this."

I try to focus.

And by focus, I mean having full conversations with my houseplants because they're the only ones who don't judge my life choices.

Actually, that's a lie.

The succulent by the window has definitely been giving me looks.

Judgmental little prick.

I named him Fernando, and I stand by it.

Fernando knows what he did.

… You know what?

Screw what the poll says. Otters are creatures. I am a creature.

Half-otter, half-carb, half-crippling anxiety to be exact.

Yes, that's three halves. I never said I was good at math. That's why I'm a writer.

God. I'm going full meta again.

That's how it always starts.

First, it's a wink at the fourth wall, then before you know it, I'm writing a novella where the monster is capitalism, my therapist is an actual hydra, and the real treasure was the therapy copays I made along the way.

No.

No more allegory.

The prompt said Creature Feature, not "trauma disguised as a sea serpent with abandonment issues.”

I try again.

New doc. Blank slate. Fresh start.

Bo stopped being fully Otter somewhere around draft fifteen, when he started growling at his laptop and considering whether it would be ethical to sacrifice it to whatever writing gods might be listening.

It's something.

I keep going.

He subsisted on a diet of caffeine, chaos, and the kind of anxiety that makes you check your email seventeen times in ten minutes, even when you’re not expecting anything important and the last message was a coupon for socks. Writing happened mostly at night because daylight felt too exposing, like someone might peer through the window and catch him in his boxer shorts, typing frantically about gay sea monsters while eating tuna fish straight from the can.

His apartment had developed its own internal ecosystem. The Kitchen Table Region was cluttered with coffee mugs in various stages of abandonment. The Couch Territory served as a breeding ground for laundry, which seemed to reproduce asexually. The Bathroom Mirror Kingdom was strictly avoided since it reflected not only his face but also every questionable life choice stacked behind it.

Like all creatures, Bo had his habits. He collected rejection letters the way some people collected stamps, except stamps didn’t make you question your entire existence at three in the morning while eating anchovy ice cream directly from the container. His bookmarks were filled with writing advice articles he never read, as if simply saving them might allow knowledge to seep into his brain through some kind of literary osmosis.

He participated in online writing groups where he offered cheerful encouragement to fellow writers, even as he silently tortured himself by following 847 successful otthors on social media. Each of them seemed to post weekly about book deals, movie rights, or quiet weekends spent at writing cabins in Vermont, while he sat in a nest of self-doubt and Goldfish crumbs.

It's a character study, I decide. Of a very specific, very gay, very soft-furred creature named Bo who just wanted to write something that made otters laugh, or feel seen, or both, or at least something that wouldn't make them actively embarrassed on his behalf.

When you think about it, we're all just creatures, really.

Some of us just have better publicists.

I hit save.

Then I scroll back to the top and change the title to The Care and Feeding of Literary Critters (A Field Guide).

Then I hit submit before I can change my mind.

Gerald's fan gives a satisfied whir.

Even the succulent looks mildly impressed.

Fernando knows talent when he sees it.

One day later.

My phone buzzes just before midnight, which is either very late or very early depending on your relationship with linear time and caffeine dependency.

It's an email from GayOtthors.org.

Subject: RE: Anthology Submission - Proofreading Complete

My stomach drops into my hind paws.

This is it.

This is where they tell me that my experimental meta-fiction masterpiece is actually just a therapy session with delusions of grandeur, and would I please consider submitting something with actual plot structure and maybe a vampire or two.

I open the email.

From: Devon.Clearwater.Proofreading@gayotthors.org

To: BoTheOtter47@gmail.com

Subject: RE: Anthology Submission - Proofreading Complete

Bo,

I've completed the initial review of your submission for the 2025 Creature Feature anthology.

We need to discuss some... concerns.

Available for a call tomorrow at 2 PM EST?

Otterly,

Devon Clearwater

Devon fucking Clearwater.

Of course it's Devon fucking Clearwater.

Let me paint you a picture of Devon Clearwater, in case you've never had the distinct displeasure of encountering him in the wild corners of gay otter literary society.

Devon Clearwater is what happens when you take a river otter, give him an MFA from a school whose name he drops in every conversation, and a trust fund large enough to fund a small nation's arts program.

He writes "literary fiction" that gets reviewed in magazines I can't afford to subscribe to.

He has a "writing retreat" in the Adirondacks that he casually mentions whenever anyone talks about their cramped studio apartment writing space.

Devon Clearwater has never had writer's block because Devon Clearwater has never had an unconfident thought in his perfectly groomed life.

Devon Clearwater once told me that my story was "charmingly amateur" and that I might consider "taking some classes" to "develop my voice."

Devon Clearwater is, in short, everything I am not and desperately wish I could stop comparing myself to.

And now, Devon Clearwater has read my weird meta story about being a disaster of a writer.

This is not going well.

I consider my options:

1. Fake my own death and start a new life as a barista in Portland.

2. Change my name and move to a different literary community (maybe gay bears need writers?).

3. Actually take the call and face whatever literary execution Devon has planned.

4. Delete my entire online presence and become a hermit who communicates only through interpretive dance.

I choose option 3 because I'm apparently a masochist with a deadline.

The next day, 1:59 PM.

My phone rings.

I let it ring twice because answering immediately seems desperate.

Then I realize letting it ring might seem like I'm playing games.

I answer on the third ring.

"Bo speaking."

"Bo. Devon Clearwater here."

His voice has that particular quality that suggests he's sitting in a leather chair in a room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a fireplace.

"Devon. Hi. About the story..."

"Yes, about the story."

There's a pause that seems designed to make me sweat.

It works.

"I have to say, Bo, I'm... perplexed."

Perplexed.

Not confused.

Not uncertain.

Perplexed.

Like I'm a particularly challenging crossword clue that's beneath his usual solving skills.

"Perplexed how?"

"Well, I'm not entirely sure this qualifies as a creature feature, for starters."

My defensive hackles rise immediately. "It's about a creature. The main character is literally a creature."

"Is he, though?"

"He's an otter."

"But Bo," and I can hear the smile in his voice, the smile of someone who's about to deliver what they think is a devastating intellectual blow, "aren't you an otter?"

Silence.

The kind of silence that stretches and makes you question every life choice that led you to this moment.

"... Yes?"

"So you've written a story about yourself. As yourself. The narrator is you, the protagonist is you, the writer struggling with writing is... you. It's autobiography masquerading as fiction."

"It's meta-fiction," I say, because I took exactly one literature class in college and I'm clinging to that like a life raft.

"It's solipsistic," Devon counters, which is definitely a word I should know but absolutely do not.

I scramble. "But it fits the theme! The creature is the writer!"

"Bo." His voice has taken on that tone that people use when they're about to explain something to someone they consider fundamentally slower than themselves. "The anthology guidelines specify that entries should be stories, poems, or plays. Not... personal essays with delusions of fictional grandeur."

Personal essays with delusions of fictional grandeur.

That stings.

Mostly because it might be accurate.

"But," I continue, "it's written in the style of fiction. It has narrative structure. Character development. A beginning, middle, and end."

"Does it, though?" Devon asks. "Because from where I'm sitting, it reads like a diary entry from someone having a very public nervous breakdown."

"Look, Devon—"

"And don't get me started on the technical issues, like the complete lack of traditional plot structure."

"It's experimental!"

"It's unfinished."

That hits right in the soft spot where I keep all my insecurities about whether I'm actually a writer or just someone who owns Microsoft Word and has opinions about punctuation.

"So you're rejecting it?"

More silence.

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't?"

"The thing is, Bo... it's actually quite good."

I blinked. "It's what now?"

"The voice is distinctive. The humor is genuinely funny. The self-awareness is... well, it's either brilliant or pathological, I can't quite decide. But it works."

I dropped onto the couch. "But you just said—"

"I said it doesn't fit traditional narrative structure. I said it blurs the line between fiction and autobiography. I said it's experimental to the point of being potentially unmarketable." He paused. "I didn't say it was bad."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying I need you to help me understand how to categorize this thing so I can recommend it for publication."

Wait.

What?

"You... want to recommend it?"

"Bo, I've been doing this for eight years. I've read approximately four thousand submissions that were technically perfect and absolutely soulless. Yours is... alive. Messy and neurotic and probably too self-referential for its own good, but alive."

This is not the conversation I expected to be having.

"But the poll voters said otters aren't creatures unless we shapeshift or breathe fire."

Devon actually laughed. "The poll voters also spent three hours last week debating whether mermaids would be good at competitive swimming or if the tail would be a disadvantage. I wouldn't take their taxonomical expertise too seriously."

"So you think it works? As a creature story?"

"I think," Devon said carefully, "that it's a story about a creature with nothing to lose and a deadline to meet. And about what we become when we're desperate to create something meaningful.”

He pauses.

"Plus, the bit about Fernando the judgmental succulent made me laugh out loud, and I don't do that often."

"Fernando is real," I say defensively. "He judges me constantly."

"I don't doubt it. Plants are excellent judges of character."

The line goes quiet again as I try to process the fact that Devon Clearwater, my literary nemesis, just called my weird meta-story "alive" and admitted to laughing at my houseplant jokes.

"So what happens now?" I ask.

"Now I write a recommendation that says 'The Care and Feeding of Literary Critters' is exactly the kind of boundary-pushing, genre-blending fiction that makes anthologies memorable instead of forgettable. I'll probably mention that it's a meditation on the creative process disguised as a creature feature, or a creature feature disguised as a meditation on the creative process. The committee will eat that kind of literary doublespeak up."

"And if they don't?"

"Then they don't, and you submit it somewhere else."

After we hang up, I sit on my couch for a long time, staring at Fernando, who has somehow managed to look smugly vindicated.

"Don't give me that look," I tell him. "You still judge my life choices."

But Fernando's spines seem less accusatory now, and Gerald's fan whirs approvingly as I open my laptop and start typing a new story.

This one's about a succulent who runs an underground therapy practice for struggling writers.

He dedicates his life to pointing others in the right direction.

Pretty fly for a cacti.

Three days later.

My phone buzzes with a notification from GayOtthors.

Your submission "The Care and Feeding of Literary Critters (A Field Guide)" has been ACCEPTED for the 2025 Creature Feature Anthology.

I stare at the screen.

Then I do something I haven't done since I was seven and found out my mom packed chocolate chip cookies in my lunch: I literally jump up and down.

Fernando witnesses this display of unbridled joy with what I can only assume is second-hand embarrassment, but I don't care.

I'm going to be published.

In an anthology.

With other actual writers.

My weird meta story about being a disaster made it.

I immediately call my mom, who cries actual tears of pride and asks if this means I'll finally be able to afford health insurance.

"Not yet, Ma," I tell her. "But it's a start."

And it is.

It's a start.

I'm still a disaster.

I still talk to my plants.

Gerald still judges me with his mechanical whirring.

But now, I'm a disaster with a publication credit.

And that, according to Fernando's increasingly approving glances, makes all the difference.

I start typing a new story.

This one's about a proofreader who thinks he's better than everyone else until he reads something that changes his mind about what makes writing worth reading.

I'm going to send it to Devon personally.

Some creatures, it turns out, deserve their own stories too.