First I read this and then I read this, and then as we know there is the Tin House thing and Brevity is considering a reading fee to help fund honorariums and, perhaps, dissuade inappropriate submissions, which is certainly their right and I do understand where they are coming from, and finally, I read this. I’m frustrated. I can’t speak for the big fancy magazines, but for the smaller magazines such as PANK, we live and die by the slushpile. With no slushpile we would have no magazine and frankly, it would take way more time and effort to solicit writers for twelve monthly issues and a 240 page annual than it does to read submissions. Save for a handful of writers, literally, a handful, we have published the magazine exclusively via work from the slushpile or as we simply call it, the submission queue. Let me go on record as stating that even on the most frustrating days, I love reading submissions. It is what I get to do to relax and step out of my “real” life. I actually feel fucking lucky to be able to co-edit a magazine. Even when I’m reading something terrible I think, “well this is just awesomely bad,” and I feel a little thrill. I literally feel a thrill. When I stop feeling that thrill, I will take a break.

The slushpile fatigue being lamented here and there and everywhere tires me. It bores me. Please, let’s just shut up about it already. If you don’t want to deal with the slushpile, don’t have open reading periods. It really is that simple. Listening to your dissatisfaction with having to deal with the bad writers and new writers and mediocre writers who dare to submit to your magazine that is willfully accepting unsolicited submissions is about as interesting as listening to someone talk about their diet. I don’t care what you had for breakfast.

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1. If you like zombies, and really, who doesn’t, check out Zombie Summer at xTx’s blog, where you will find zombie tales from many familiar writers.

2. Dark Sky Magazine is holding a chapbook contest. Each entry is only $5 which seems quite reasonable.

3. Necessary Fiction has launched a Writer in Residence program. This month, it is William Walsh who is posting these amazing fictions. Last month, was my month, and you can find writing from Giant contributors like Ryan Call, Amy McDaniel and Ken Baumann among others.

4. Janet Fitch offers Ten Rules for Writers.

5. Brevity Magazine asks if they should charge for submissions.

6. Our Island of Epidemics by Matthew Salesses is available for pre-order with gorgeous cover art by Luca DiPierro to be unveiled very soon.

7. Forthcoming from me, here, once I finish unpacking: two posts on sex, one on learning to love submissions, and a love letter to depressing literary fiction.

There are very prolific writers in this world. I’ve learned this because these writers seem to have a bottomless queue of writing they can submit–I’m talking arsenals of hundreds of stories or poems. I don’t mind that many writers will submit every seven days like clockwork. I’m generally excited to see what they’re going to send next and a week is usually enough time for my reading palate to be properly cleansed.

What I do mind is how oftentimes, a new submission from a writer is very similar in tone, subject matter, aesthetic, or form to a previous submission(s). I am fascinated by why a writer would send a story/other creative work that’s exactly like the story rejected a week earlier. To me, a rejection implies that something about a given submission isn’t working so probably, we’re looking for different, rather than more of the same.

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As I remember it, it was once common to write cover letters for magazine submissions that started out like this:

Please consider my 3,444 word story “The Reinvigoration of Ronaldo” for publication in Fine Literary Journal Produced Either Independently or By the Grace of University Support. In “The Reinvigoration of Ronaldo,” the title character is running late for the most important meeting of his career, until he learns that life has more to offer for those willing to forsake punctuality.

It’s the second sentence I’m most curious about here, the summary of the story being submitted, modeled here after dozens of similar cover letters I’ve received at various magazines (but with all of the details being made up). When I first started submitting to literary magazines, this is exactly what books like the yearly Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market suggested you do (although I have to say that I thankfully never followed their suggestion). I haven’t bought a copy of that book in years, but recently had a chance to look through someone else’s, where I saw that they’ve moved to a cover letter that leaves out the summary, a move I certainly appreciate and that I think is generally agreed on. As an editor, I know the summary almost never endears me to read the story in question, partly because any summary of a short story tends to be incredibly (and negatively) reductive.

My question here isn’t whether or not submitters should leave off the summary–I think they most definitely should–but whether or not the summarizing itself is harmful to the writers who practice it.

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These are some thoughts in response to Sean Lovelace’s post the other day, which asked “You do send your Very Best work Every time when submitting to a literary magazine, right?”It started out in the comment thread, but then I decided that his question deserved more of a commitment than that. Here goes.

I think this idea of “best” vs “not-best” is based on a fundamental, and mistaken notion that *every*thing one writes ought to be published. One-offs, exercises, middling poems and pieces of “flash”–well I already wrote it, the logic goes, so why not place it *some*where?

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Your piece in Lit Mag X was all Oil Glow/Lick-Stick Skillz. I fell in love. So I asked you to submit to a Mag I edit, Lit Y. You did, kind soul. But that piece is only good, not Oil Glow/Lick-Stick Skillz. Now what do I do? Why?

NO COLONY is open for submissions.  Details can be found at the source. (Hint: see above)

A GUEST TRANSMISSION from the great GIANCARLO DITRAPANO of NEW YORK TYRANT:

Hello, great minds of HTML. Blake has been kind enough to let me put up this post. Thanks, Blake.

Now here’s the post:

The New York Tyrant made a new website and re-opened submissions. We wanted to try something new. The deal is this: We only accept regular mail submissions now, but if you insist on sending electronically, please test the waters with the THREE BEST SENTENCES from your story. If we like it, you will be asked to email the rest of it to us for consideration. If not, back to the drawing board. So the writing/submitting world kind of has a gamble. In all honesty, I wanted to taper off the amount of electronic submissions, but not lose a potentially great story written by a writer that is perhaps too lazy to make it to the post office. Say you have a complete story in hand. Is it fair to reject the story after reading just a couple of sentences? Is it perhaps MORE fair to reject it if ALL you have is three sentences? Could this perhaps benefit the writer, by making them find the best three sentences of their work? Will this make them concentrate more on the sentences they compose, just in case they are planning on submitting to NYTYRANT’s weird new submissions policy? Should I feel bad about the environment because I am accepting only regular mail submissions? Does this perhaps SAVE the trees by rejecting writers electronically and keeping them from printing one out to send in the mail? Am I concentrating too much on “sentences” rather than narrative? Is this stepping away from “short fiction” and stepping towards something…else? Is it possible that many bad sentences can, in concert, make a beautiful story? What, after all, is the big deal with great sentences?

Some examples of what we have received so far. Would you tell the writer to “send more” or ask them to resist? (I have left the authors names off.) (Yes, some aren’t even three sentences. Writers never follow the rules. Bravi, writers!)

Writer A sent this:

It is impossible for you to understand anything else about my disposition unless you can understand just how emotional a thing as simple as drapery can make me; how on days when the sky is filthy with grey clouds I find myself sitting in that very room, anxiously struggling to solve the dilemma of whether I should wait for the light or seek my shelter.  I could cry for hours on a day like that, I swear.

Writer B sent this:

Ironically, sunny warm Florida in North America to a cold rainy mountain city in Latin America.  There are worse things than rain. Thinking you’ll be alone forever is one of them.

Writer C sent this:

The name of my agency came to me when I saw the movie I Am Legend with a hottie named Stella who kept saying I reminded her of Will Smith, although he’s a whole lot balder, has much bigger ears and a darker complexion.  So I had it painted on my office windows facing Cabrini Playground here on Barracks Street in the Lower French Quarter — I Am Adventure.  Catchy, right?

Thank you for your thoughts! Sorry for such a long post. Hope it isn’t too boring.

P.S. Two parts: Who is the guy from Rome Review blowing to get an interview with Junot Diaz and pieces from Heti and Means without even having one damn issue out yet?? And B, who do I call to offer the same service, only longer and better and with more slobber?

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Titular has begun a new project called ‘Collaboratives.’ From their website:

Our Collaboratives project publishes work from multiple writers in a conceptually cohesive manner. Each project will be published, and updated, as pieces are accepted. Writers may or may not wish to employ the exquisite corpse tactic by referencing the ’start/end-points’ of preceeding/subsequent stories. Each piece should be between 100 – 400 words. In the subject heading of the submission, just write ‘collaboratives.’

Current Projects (and call for submissions):

I. IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME [Titles of pieces]: Swann’s Way, Within a Budding Grove, The Guermantes Way, Sodom and Gomorrah, The Captive, The Fugitive, and Time Regained.

II. NINE STORIES [Titles of pieces]: A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, Just Before the War with the Eskimos, The Laughing Man, Down at the Dinghy, For Esme – with Love and Squalor, Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes, De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period, and Teddy.

III. SEINFELD [Titles of pieces]: Jerry, George, Elaine, Kramer, and Hello Newman.

IV. THE PASSION OF MEL GIBSON [Titles of pieces]: Mad Max, Lethal Weapon, Tequila Sunrise, Hamlet, Bird on a Wire, Braveheart, What Women Want, Chicken Run, Signs, The Passion of the Christ, and Apocalypto.

Let’s all submit something. I am excited, as this is exciting.