So, after receiving the finger but not really being set back, I’m proud and God damn happy to announce that there’s new work up on the site. Nadine J. Clark’s super short story “Bee Stings Like Sunlight” is pretty cool. Kind of experimental, kind of confusing, but totally worth checking out.
Starting a publication is like giving your normal life the finger. It’s not really a bad thing, but you have to deal with a lot more abnormal situations. For example: three of the six works I’ve accepted to sell on the website have backed out. After, of course, considerable time was invested in formatting and editing. Starting a publication is also asking to receive the finger at any given time.
They’re not really setbacks. At least, it no more a setback than getting the finger on the interstate. We’re all still in our cars, humming along, just flipping everyone off hoping we get there alive.
Go give someone the finger today. Even if they’re doing a good job.
There is this thing people say when they see something done and believe they understand how it works—but they really, really, really don’t understand it at all. They say, “Oh, I see.”
I’m having my own “Oh, I see” moment today. This wraps up my first week of submissions and responses. I sent out all my rejections and acceptances today. This morning. In an hour. Personalized and humanized, excited and encouraged. After all, I have an envelope and email inbox full of rejection letters/slips/quips/no-thankses. I wanted to make sure no one gave up writing for good just because they didn’t get accepted—I had to reject a 13 year old girl.
Just a few minutes later, two unusual emails. The first was a resubmission by a rejected author of the same story with absolutely no edits. The second was brief and to the point, “HAHAHAHAHA…whatever! HAHAHAHAH!” (note: exact ratio of Hs to As represented, and no, this one wasn’t from the 13 year old)
After years of working with editors on top of getting all those anonymous rejection slips, I can say I get it. At least I can say, “Oh, I see.”
The anonymity and the brevity of the rejection slip or the form letter puts all the weight on the writer to find out what he/she did wrong with a story. It’s a survival thing, eventually you’ll get it right, you’ll get published. Personalizing the rejection letter, while it sounds cute and all, really just adds this inappropriate level of communication between the writer and the editor. In a nutshell, it’s not helpful. Good writers can accept feedback, criticism, and rejection. Bad writers just write bad stories and send quasi-cryptic emails.
Does he laugh so much because his [terrible] story was accepted elsewhere? Or does he wait outside my house for the opportunity to Tonya Harding my leg? And what exactly does the laughter mean? According to the scale above, it means mockery. Oh, I see.
When I took a fiction writing class in college, I was sort of appalled at how horrible the English majors were at writing short fiction. I mean, we were supposed to be students of the language, yet no one really learned how a decent story was put together?
There was the old lady who focused entirely on Faith (you know, God, salvation, that stuff) in her stories. She always sort of looked down on the “cool kids” for using profanity or sexual themes in their stories. Her stories read more like Hallmark cards.
Then there was the juggalo/goth hybrid who wrote stories mostly about characters with green hair that he was obviously fantasizing about.
And then plain t-shirt guy who added no detail to his stories at all. No in-depth anything. Like he just couldn’t break through the surface level and get any real thoughts going.
And one of the editors for the school paper, mostly wrote pretentious stories where nothing—NOTHING—happened (we read five pages of two characters standing in a parking lot, no dialog, just smoking as he described the way they felt, the characters were distinguished by the titles ‘the guy’ and ‘the man’).
And the rest I don’t really remember. To be fair, my stories were mediocre as well.
I had this huge fear that these writers would find me again when I opened submissions. But, I have to say, I am pleasantly surprised to find quality work waiting for me in the inbox. I don’t doubt I have some crap stories coming my way, but I’m excited to work with good writers.
A good writer is hard to be. I don’t think it’s a nature vs. nurture debate, either. It’s more happenstance. Some people just are, and some people aren’t. And some who are don’t ever get a break. C’est la vie.
I live so close to Virginia I could throw a rock at it. It’s so close I could throw a rock right at Ted Genoways’ face.
The Virginia Quarterly Review went on hiatus after managing editor Kevin Morrissey committed suicide by shooting himself in the head, citing VQR editor’s, Ted Genoways’, bullying and harassment. The Fall 2010 issue was scheduled to come out and was dedicated to Morrissey, and then Genoways took over the project, which made a lot of the magazine’s staff upset. This was after Genoways sent out an email saying he didn’t think he was responsible for Morrissey’s death. The hiatus isn’t over yet, but it will be soon. They keep hinting at it on the website.
I just don’t think I care. I used to get a little ticklish whenever I saw a new VQR on the shelf—the covers are always so elegant and serious—but now that wonder is gone. Genoways is sort of a megalomaniac. VQR is sort of elitist (UVA was, of course, going to be the new home for Faulkner before he fell off a horse and drank himself to death). And I can only feign interest in foreign politics for so long before it starts feeling like the kind of information I’ll access when I’m drunk and want to impress people. All of it amplified by Morrissey’s death.
If you’re excited about VQR’s return, I hope it’s everything you want. But I’ve lost interest.
It’s the bookshelf lineup. Carver sits next to Chekhov. When he wrote about writing, Carver mentioned Chekhov for his stylistic use of simple language. Now they’re buddies on my shelf.
The problem is that I am drawn more to Carver than Chekhov. And this reminds me, somehow, of The Office episode where Kevin is made fun of for sounding like the cookie monster, and Kelly, defending her impression of Kevin, states “All parody is derivative.”
So, let’s derive. In a nutshell, Chekhov invented the modern plotless short story. Carver modernized the form and focused on simplistic language, on brevity. In and out. And this is my model.
Wrong.
I need to go back to Chekhov. Writing isn’t about parody. Maybe you’ve already discovered this, but when you mimic modern writers, you get sort of a sloppy, self-absorbed mess. It’s like a long diary entry. And I’m guilty of this, too. The problem is all the subjectivity. What Chekhov really did was focus on objective storytelling. Fact-telling. Honesty. Parody might come close, but it’s lacking.
As I wait for submissions to Buy It Write to come rolling in, I realize something very important. Many of the writers I want to work with are already on the internet sharing their stories with the world through blogs, websites, or even publishing and selling their work alone. And that means a whole generation of writers who have little experience with the submission process.
Writers gain credibility by being rejected, corrected, and then accepted to publications outside of their safety world. Whether to a kids’ magazine, a literary journal, or an editorial in your local paper, you won’t be immediately happy with your results. Probably a ‘thanks-but-no-thanks’ kind of response. And that’s okay.
There are a few rules: don’t pay someone to read your work, don’t pay for editing services (good writers take feedback and do this themselves), make it professional (putting copyright notices and little trinkets in your submissions is embarrassing for everyone), and follow any available guidelines (Old West font in size 6.5 is just going to piss people off, even if your story is about a tiny sheriff).
My hope is for young writers to branch out and try to get their work published in new and established places. Let’s be 100% honest: you know your new micro-story about the woman who eats her shoes is going to get published on your own blog, so why not find out if it’s publishable elsewhere?
Joseph Love’s new short story is available for purchase on www.buyitwrite.com
It doesn’t even cost a dollar. Only $0.99!
—KillTown
New for the website: INTERVIEWS! This is an interview with author, Joseph Love, discussing his zombie novel, Killtown, USA, and the website, Buy It Write.
Excerpts, interviews, and the book are available at www.buyitwrite.com
It’s pretty much common sense, but now there’s a sample of Killtown, USA available on the website. It’s in PDF, so it’s accessible to anyone.
If you’re a writer and you’re unsure about submitting to Buy It Write, at least shoot us an email telling us how sketchy we seem or to make sure we’re human. We want to sell a lot of work by a lot of writers, we’re just waiting to read your words.
