Publishing and Grad School

It's been an up and down week for me. It started off great as I sold another short story this week (Yippie!). Two short stories in two weeks is nothing even close to anything I ever experienced before. Both were stories I wrote in a creative writing class I took as an undergrad. I will again provide more details about where and when my work can be found as the time grows closer (should be some time toward the end of March).

I also received a rejection e-mail (my knee-jerk reaction is to still call them "letters") for one of the stories I sold, and another one earlier this week for several poems I submitted. Then I woke up this morning to an e-mail informing me one of the publications where my work will be published will be presented (although my specific work will not be presented) at a conference in April.

Meanwhile, I had been playing telephone tag with a head of the English Ph.D. program where I had applied. This was not specifically to inform her of these two recent publications, but I figured as long as I have her one the line, I might try to mention this fact. I finally caught this lady on the phone today. We had a decent talk and I asked a few of my other questions I had about touring the campus and discussing the program with others there. I mentioned the two publishing successes I recently received (which were not included in my curriculum vitae because they occurred after it was submitted), and she was quite unimpressed. She kept saying she didn't want to read them, even though I made no indication I wanted her to read them, just to acknowledge I two new publications not present on CV. The only thing I thought she might be interested in seeing were the acceptance e-mails to prove I was telling the truth.

I've had a similar experience when I joined the Horror Writers Association in reverse. In this case, I was trying to show that I have experience with research and teaching in writing and was wondering if I could qualify under the scholarly membership.

My question is why is there such as growing gap between the production of research and creative fiction? If one can produce literary fiction, one would think that in itself would count (even tenuously) as research in the field. If I can research horror one would think that would (again, perhaps tenuously) count as some of production in the genre.

Anyway, this was not intended as a rant or a vent or even a criticism of either field, just trying get someone out there to think about things. Anyway, in the meantime, here's a jack-o-lantern I made this past Halloween.

I FINALLY Sold a Short Story!

Yay! It has been a long time since I sold anything, seven years to be exact. But now the drought has ended. I should also point out that I have not been submitting very many short stories or poems during much of that seven years (although I have submitted a few items). Much of that time has been spent submitting my current novel, The Sorcerer, rewriting it, sending it out some more, and working on two other rough drafts of novels.

Then I finally got a hair up my ass. I looked at my spreadsheet of all the things I've ever submitted for publication, my novel, short stories, and poems. I decided to try a tactic that I'd used before to get my work published, and sent everything I have out to one publication or another. Everything! When I stopped and looked at everything I had, I remembered a few pieced I had retired a few years ago. I realized that one piece had only been sent out once since I rewrote it. So I thought, what the hell, let's go ahead and send that one out, too.

I never really liked that rewrite. It was originally a story I wrote 20 years ago for my Creative Writing class for my undergraduate degree. The assignment was to include a song I really liked. After I graduated, I tried getting some of my works published, but I already knew what the problem would be with this one piece. It included a song that was copywritten material. No one would ever publish it due to the legalities. So I eventually got around to rewriting it and taking out the copywritten song and replaced it with a generic "Irish drinking song," as I describe it in the short story.

But I thought it would never work. The piece was so much better with the copywritten song. So I only sent it out once in that form, and it was quickly rejected. I left it alone and forgot about it. Life got in the way and when I had time to write I concentrated on writing other things. Then as noted above, I decided to send out everything I have, and sometimes to multiple publications, and finally, this past Wednesday, I received an e-mail accepting my short story for publication. When I receive more information I will reveal the publication and issue the piece will appear.

I've often heard that the artist is often unaware of what their best work is, but I'd never experienced it myself. I guess this is my first time with that story to add to my repertoire. For now, here's a picture of a Shamrock Shake, which should be returning soon, because my story included an Irish drinking song, and for a little more luck.

Please, Reject Me.

It seems like an odd thing to ask for rejection, but that's exactly what I'm about to do. Like anything else, the writing and publishing world is changing. One of the ways that it is changing is that many publications now allow simultaneous submissions. That means I can now submit my story to more than one publication at a time, and that is a good thing. I can cover more ground in much quicker time. However, the reason this rule changed for many (but still not nearly all) publications, is because very few writers were actually listening to this rule request in the first place. So many of the publications simply gave up trying, figuring most (although likely not all) writers were simply not listening to it (although I always did).

So now we are allowed to submit our work to as many publications as allow simultaneous submissions. But in the olden times we writers also received rejection letters. We were supposed to submit to one publication at a time, and after a few weeks or months we received a rejection letter in the mail (provided we remembered to include a self addressed stamped envelope). Very often, they were simply form rejection letters, but it was still some notification that your work was not wanted. But as time went on, fewer and fewer publications were sending out rejection letters, to a point where it seemed like almost no one was sending them out anymore. So allowing simultaneous submissions became virtually essential to anyone who wished to be published. How am I supposed to know my work was free to send to another publication if no one ever bothered to send me a rejection letter?

Now there are still a few publications left that request an exclusive look at your work. "No simultaneous submissions" it will read somewhere on their submission guidelines. Fair enough. But here is my point of writing this blog on this subject this week. If you request an exclusive look at my work, you had damn well better send me a rejection letter letting me you are not interested in it, so I know when it is time to peddle my wares elsewhere.

Recently, when I checked a website where I submitted my work, and this particular website requested no simultaneous submissions, the website stated they made all of their editorial decisions and already chose the work they wanted. And I never received anything one way or the other. Yes, publishers, there really are some writers who listen to your requests, and follow them to the letter. If you allow simultaneous submissions and don't send out rejection letters, I have no beef with you. But, if you request an exclusive look at someone's work, you should at least have the courtesy of sending out rejection letters to people who didn't make the cut. This doesn't strike me as an unreasonable request. Rant over.