One difficulty I have with writing and publishing is figuring out when I'm done, when after multiple drafts I've reached the "final" draft.
I typically work on something until I feel it's as good as I can make it (at least at the moment) and then start submitting. If it gets accepted, I must have been right that it was ready (I've had a couple of pieces get accepted on the very first try, which is an amazing feeling). If it gets rejected (which happens almost all the time), I want to reconsider whether it's "finished."
If I get nothing but form rejections, I have to consider carefully that the piece may not be as good as I thought. But if I get positive rejections, with comments about how my piece made the shortlist or was seriously considered or whatever, then I know that the piece is good, but I have to consider two possibilities: 1) the piece is ready and I haven't found the right journal, or 2) the piece is very close to being ready and I still need to revise more.
Looking back over something one more time is usually a good idea, but it's still really tough to figure out when it's done. I've had pieces I was sure were as good as I could get them only to revisit them a year later and see a bunch of changes I can make. Or I have other pieces that have been rejected over and over, but I look back over them only to still believe that they are good and ready to submit.
Eventually, if a piece is never accepted, I stop sending it out. Except, I have trouble retiring something if part of me still believes in it. Sometimes I'll go years without looking at it but then decide to go back to it one more time (my most recent publication was a situation like this where it had been rejected dozens of times over a period of close to a decade and then after yet one more revision, it got accepted).
So I'm curious if anyone else has thoughts on how do you know when you're done? When do you decide something is ready to send out? Or when do you decide to give up on something if it keeps getting rejected?
Showing posts with label literary journals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literary journals. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
The Fine Line Between Acceptance and Rejection
Years ago, I read the view of an editor from a major journal who estimated that the vast majority of submissions are terrible. My experience leads me to a different conclusion.
Most journals are inundated with submissions and can only publish a fraction of what they receive, maybe 1/100. Many journals publish primarily work by established writers solicited by the editors, so the fraction of work coming in via the slush pile is even smaller, maybe 1/500. So does that mean the other 499 are terrible? Or even bad? Many of those are probably pretty good, but the editors did not rank them to be the best out of the stack of 500 they were considering.
When I began submitting, all my work earned form rejections. Then, as my writing got better, I slowly started getting some acceptances. Now I'm at a point where I still get more rejections than acceptances, but about as often as not I get personal rejections that say things like "this made our short list" or "our editors spent significant time discussing this essay, but . . ." or there's the old classic: "please consider us in the future." I take those personalized rejections as a very good sign that I'm on the right track with my writing. It means what I'm doing is good, very good even, but just not the 1/100 or 1/500 they want to publish in the next issue.
I recently served as a guest editor for Driftwood Press, a journal in its second year. They published a story of mine earlier this year and asked me to help with editorial duties this summer, going through the slush pile and picking a few submissions for consideration.
I was assigned fifty short stories, which broke down roughly like this:
1 was great. I voted yes, it should be highly considered for publication.
5 - 10 were in the maybe pile, good but not quite right for the journal's aesthetics or maybe matching another editor's tastes more than mine, so definitely worth having someone else offer a second opinion.
1 or 2 stories were withdrawn by their authors.
2 or 3 didn't meet submission guidelines.
20 - 30 featured some good writing but had some problem or other: they needed additional editing or relied on clichéd plot turns that experienced writers recognize and beginning writers don't. Basically, these stories were promising and with more work and experience, these writers will produce very good material, but these stories just aren't there yet.
Only 5 - 10 were bad, like full-of-typos-bad.
So here's my takeaway from this experience on the other side of the slush pile: there is a lot of good work out there. Being the one standout in the pile is hard. It means being absolutely polished with more interesting characters and plot elements and more resonant metaphors and sophisticated language use than all the surrounding pieces. You have to hit every note just right to be that one standout.
And even then, you never know. It could be the one story I selected will wind up rejected by the next editor who reads it. This journal gets hundreds of submissions but only publishes four to eight stories per issue (and again, some journals have worse odds than that). So it could happen that the next issue is published, and none of the fifty stories assigned to me are included. If that's the case, I hope the many good writers I read understand the rejection doesn't mean their stories were bad. A lot of them were good, but the odds are long. To them, I say, keep submitting. Keep writing. And please consider us again in the future!
Most journals are inundated with submissions and can only publish a fraction of what they receive, maybe 1/100. Many journals publish primarily work by established writers solicited by the editors, so the fraction of work coming in via the slush pile is even smaller, maybe 1/500. So does that mean the other 499 are terrible? Or even bad? Many of those are probably pretty good, but the editors did not rank them to be the best out of the stack of 500 they were considering.
When I began submitting, all my work earned form rejections. Then, as my writing got better, I slowly started getting some acceptances. Now I'm at a point where I still get more rejections than acceptances, but about as often as not I get personal rejections that say things like "this made our short list" or "our editors spent significant time discussing this essay, but . . ." or there's the old classic: "please consider us in the future." I take those personalized rejections as a very good sign that I'm on the right track with my writing. It means what I'm doing is good, very good even, but just not the 1/100 or 1/500 they want to publish in the next issue.
I recently served as a guest editor for Driftwood Press, a journal in its second year. They published a story of mine earlier this year and asked me to help with editorial duties this summer, going through the slush pile and picking a few submissions for consideration.
I was assigned fifty short stories, which broke down roughly like this:
1 was great. I voted yes, it should be highly considered for publication.
5 - 10 were in the maybe pile, good but not quite right for the journal's aesthetics or maybe matching another editor's tastes more than mine, so definitely worth having someone else offer a second opinion.
1 or 2 stories were withdrawn by their authors.
2 or 3 didn't meet submission guidelines.
20 - 30 featured some good writing but had some problem or other: they needed additional editing or relied on clichéd plot turns that experienced writers recognize and beginning writers don't. Basically, these stories were promising and with more work and experience, these writers will produce very good material, but these stories just aren't there yet.
Only 5 - 10 were bad, like full-of-typos-bad.
So here's my takeaway from this experience on the other side of the slush pile: there is a lot of good work out there. Being the one standout in the pile is hard. It means being absolutely polished with more interesting characters and plot elements and more resonant metaphors and sophisticated language use than all the surrounding pieces. You have to hit every note just right to be that one standout.
And even then, you never know. It could be the one story I selected will wind up rejected by the next editor who reads it. This journal gets hundreds of submissions but only publishes four to eight stories per issue (and again, some journals have worse odds than that). So it could happen that the next issue is published, and none of the fifty stories assigned to me are included. If that's the case, I hope the many good writers I read understand the rejection doesn't mean their stories were bad. A lot of them were good, but the odds are long. To them, I say, keep submitting. Keep writing. And please consider us again in the future!
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Learning Where You Fall on the Continuum
When I first began submitting my writing for publication, I had no concept of how good I was (or wasn't). I figured I might as well send that short story to The New Yorker because, hey, maybe I'm brilliant and will be discovered at age twenty-three. Then on to a bestselling novel!
I'm sure you can imagine what happened. I did not publish those early stories in The New Yorker or The Paris Review or anywhere else. I did work to learn what could make me better, however. I went to grad school and wrote three novels and a handful of short stories over the next few years.
Most of the stories never got very good (I'm pretty sure at this point I'm just not much of a short story writer). The first novel was a great learning experience, but by the time I finished it as my MA thesis, I knew it was simply that: a learning experience rather than something worth publishing. The second novel I thought was better than the first, and I've gone back and forth on it over the past seven years. Sometimes I think it's worth publishing, sometimes not. I spend months revising it again and then abandon it for years. That's the novel I revisited this summer and have decided to finally submit to small press contests.
I know that novel is not going to take the publishing world by storm. I know it's not going to attract an agent and a six-figure book deal at a major New York press. But I still think it's pretty good. I think other people would enjoy reading it. I can imagine a small press putting it out into the world. So I've submitted it to one contest and intend to try a few others over the next year or so.
My third novel is a departure from what I did before. My first two were written in grad school and were "literary" in the sense that they are not high-stakes, plot-driven stories. They are small, focused on characters, and hopefully sensitive to language and artfully written (especially with my latest revision). The other one is a fantasy story for kids. It's the book I had in the back of my mind ever since I was a kid reading that kind of book. My goal with it is to create something that I would have loved when I was ten.
Like my second novel, I've gone back and forth with the third. After the first draft, I abandoned it for years, figuring I don't know enough about the market or whatever to break into the world of children's books. I continued to focus on literary journals (and shifted my focus to nonfiction), which felt safer and more familiar to me. During that time, I managed to get published. And that third novel has mostly sat on my computer, remaining a rough draft.
But last year, I revisited it in the summer. I revised about half before getting busy with my day job as a university instructor. But I want to finish that revision (and additional revisions after that). I want to try to get this book into the world.
Here's what I know about myself as a writer and where I fall on the continuum of writers: I am decent enough to get some work published in some respectable (if not absolute top tier) journals. I am not about to win the Pulitzer or have something in The New Yorker. But I'm a better writer today than I was fifteen years ago when just starting out. I'm a better writer today than eight years ago when completing my MFA. And while I have high hopes for my second novel and the small press route, I have higher hopes that my third novel (once it's revised and polished) could break into the mainstream world of publishing.
It's sometimes tough to be honest with yourself about how good you really are. We writers tend to have both inflated egos and low self esteem. We think we're brilliant and terrible at alternate moments. But honest assessment is important.
I'm sure you can imagine what happened. I did not publish those early stories in The New Yorker or The Paris Review or anywhere else. I did work to learn what could make me better, however. I went to grad school and wrote three novels and a handful of short stories over the next few years.
Most of the stories never got very good (I'm pretty sure at this point I'm just not much of a short story writer). The first novel was a great learning experience, but by the time I finished it as my MA thesis, I knew it was simply that: a learning experience rather than something worth publishing. The second novel I thought was better than the first, and I've gone back and forth on it over the past seven years. Sometimes I think it's worth publishing, sometimes not. I spend months revising it again and then abandon it for years. That's the novel I revisited this summer and have decided to finally submit to small press contests.
I know that novel is not going to take the publishing world by storm. I know it's not going to attract an agent and a six-figure book deal at a major New York press. But I still think it's pretty good. I think other people would enjoy reading it. I can imagine a small press putting it out into the world. So I've submitted it to one contest and intend to try a few others over the next year or so.
My third novel is a departure from what I did before. My first two were written in grad school and were "literary" in the sense that they are not high-stakes, plot-driven stories. They are small, focused on characters, and hopefully sensitive to language and artfully written (especially with my latest revision). The other one is a fantasy story for kids. It's the book I had in the back of my mind ever since I was a kid reading that kind of book. My goal with it is to create something that I would have loved when I was ten.
Like my second novel, I've gone back and forth with the third. After the first draft, I abandoned it for years, figuring I don't know enough about the market or whatever to break into the world of children's books. I continued to focus on literary journals (and shifted my focus to nonfiction), which felt safer and more familiar to me. During that time, I managed to get published. And that third novel has mostly sat on my computer, remaining a rough draft.
But last year, I revisited it in the summer. I revised about half before getting busy with my day job as a university instructor. But I want to finish that revision (and additional revisions after that). I want to try to get this book into the world.
Here's what I know about myself as a writer and where I fall on the continuum of writers: I am decent enough to get some work published in some respectable (if not absolute top tier) journals. I am not about to win the Pulitzer or have something in The New Yorker. But I'm a better writer today than I was fifteen years ago when just starting out. I'm a better writer today than eight years ago when completing my MFA. And while I have high hopes for my second novel and the small press route, I have higher hopes that my third novel (once it's revised and polished) could break into the mainstream world of publishing.
It's sometimes tough to be honest with yourself about how good you really are. We writers tend to have both inflated egos and low self esteem. We think we're brilliant and terrible at alternate moments. But honest assessment is important.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Submissions
I keep track of my submissions in a handy Excel file. I have the story, the journal I've submitted it to, when I submitted it, any other notes, and the date it's rejected or accepted. I think something along these lines is a must for anybody who is seriously trying to get published. It's easy enough to keep track of submissions this way, and I can quickly glance at it to see how many pieces I have currently making the rounds.
Right now, I have two stories that I'm sending out to journals. One I've been submitting for a few years. The other I've been submitting for less time. Both of these pieces have received personal responses from readers at various journals, ranging from the somewhat generic "the writing is good, but this isn't right for us right now" to more detailed critiques with explanations for why the journal doesn't want the piece. Both of these stories have undergone substantial revisions over a period of years, and both are, I feel, in pretty solid shape. Yet both also are still being submitted because they have not been accepted anywhere.
Ordinarily, I like to have each piece at about ten places. When I get a few rejections, I resubmit to a few more places so I have a steady flow of submissions and responses coming and going. But lately, I've been really bad about sending out new submissions. The rejections keep coming in every so often, and without new copies going out, my overall submission numbers keep going down. I got a rejection the other day, and when I logged it in the file, I noticed that I'm down to only a few places still considering my work.
It occurred to me, obviously, that I should send out a new batch of envelopes, but I didn't. Sometimes when I've received several rejections in a row, I think it's probably a good idea to review my work again and see if I might want to revise further. I think that's a good idea right now, since it's been several months with the current drafts, and still nobody has accepted these stories. But there's another reason I'm delaying submitting right now, and that has to do with the uncertainty of my future.
I don't know where I'll be living a few months from now. I might be in the same place I am now, or I might be living on the other side of the country. Of course, the post office can forward mail, and there are e-mails as well, but I still think it's easier to submit work with an accurate address. Plus, there are a lot of places that shut down or slow down during the summer months since they are affiliated with schools. So until I know where I'm going to be, I've decided not to submit anything new.
This is a practical decision, but it also has the benefit of allowing me time to go back over my pieces once more and do that additional revision. Clearly, the current drafts are not quite doing it, despite the positive feedback I've already received. So maybe more dramatic changes are in order. For instance, one story has a protagonist who is an English teacher. I've been thinking that perhaps this detail might work against the story's success since many writers are also English teachers, and it's likely that a lot of stories are written by wannabe writers featuring English teacher characters. So maybe making the character another type of teacher would help. He could be a physics teacher, perhaps, or a math teacher. And maybe something as small as that change could lift the story out of the slush where it's spent so much time in the past few years.
Waiting a few months to send out a new big batch of submissions also means that when I start submitting again next fall, I will (I hope) have a new piece or two to send out along with the old pieces. Unfortunately, I've really been slacking the past few months. I had great plans for this semester. I'm teaching four classes, which is a lot, but this is the first time since I've been adjuncting when I didn't have a second job on top of my teaching, so I figured I'd have plenty of extra writing time. I did make some decent use of that time early in the semester. I wrote regularly and made some decent progress on a short story rewrite. Then I left the story behind to work on a writing sample from my novel for a fellowship application. But then by the time I was ready to get back to the story, I was in the midst of the job application process, having been contacted about interviews.
I can't honestly say that preparing for interviews and going through the interview process took all of my extra time, but the anxiety surrounding those interviews sucked a lot of my energy and left with little ability to concentrate the past several weeks. So, basically, I've barely done any writing since February. But my hope is that in a few weeks, I'll know whether I've got a job lined up for the fall, and I can either plan a move or settle back into the life I've been living the past couple of years. And at that point, when the nerves have settled down, I'll return to that story that I haven't touched in weeks. And maybe by September, it will be ready to send out.
Right now, I have two stories that I'm sending out to journals. One I've been submitting for a few years. The other I've been submitting for less time. Both of these pieces have received personal responses from readers at various journals, ranging from the somewhat generic "the writing is good, but this isn't right for us right now" to more detailed critiques with explanations for why the journal doesn't want the piece. Both of these stories have undergone substantial revisions over a period of years, and both are, I feel, in pretty solid shape. Yet both also are still being submitted because they have not been accepted anywhere.
Ordinarily, I like to have each piece at about ten places. When I get a few rejections, I resubmit to a few more places so I have a steady flow of submissions and responses coming and going. But lately, I've been really bad about sending out new submissions. The rejections keep coming in every so often, and without new copies going out, my overall submission numbers keep going down. I got a rejection the other day, and when I logged it in the file, I noticed that I'm down to only a few places still considering my work.
It occurred to me, obviously, that I should send out a new batch of envelopes, but I didn't. Sometimes when I've received several rejections in a row, I think it's probably a good idea to review my work again and see if I might want to revise further. I think that's a good idea right now, since it's been several months with the current drafts, and still nobody has accepted these stories. But there's another reason I'm delaying submitting right now, and that has to do with the uncertainty of my future.
I don't know where I'll be living a few months from now. I might be in the same place I am now, or I might be living on the other side of the country. Of course, the post office can forward mail, and there are e-mails as well, but I still think it's easier to submit work with an accurate address. Plus, there are a lot of places that shut down or slow down during the summer months since they are affiliated with schools. So until I know where I'm going to be, I've decided not to submit anything new.
This is a practical decision, but it also has the benefit of allowing me time to go back over my pieces once more and do that additional revision. Clearly, the current drafts are not quite doing it, despite the positive feedback I've already received. So maybe more dramatic changes are in order. For instance, one story has a protagonist who is an English teacher. I've been thinking that perhaps this detail might work against the story's success since many writers are also English teachers, and it's likely that a lot of stories are written by wannabe writers featuring English teacher characters. So maybe making the character another type of teacher would help. He could be a physics teacher, perhaps, or a math teacher. And maybe something as small as that change could lift the story out of the slush where it's spent so much time in the past few years.
Waiting a few months to send out a new big batch of submissions also means that when I start submitting again next fall, I will (I hope) have a new piece or two to send out along with the old pieces. Unfortunately, I've really been slacking the past few months. I had great plans for this semester. I'm teaching four classes, which is a lot, but this is the first time since I've been adjuncting when I didn't have a second job on top of my teaching, so I figured I'd have plenty of extra writing time. I did make some decent use of that time early in the semester. I wrote regularly and made some decent progress on a short story rewrite. Then I left the story behind to work on a writing sample from my novel for a fellowship application. But then by the time I was ready to get back to the story, I was in the midst of the job application process, having been contacted about interviews.
I can't honestly say that preparing for interviews and going through the interview process took all of my extra time, but the anxiety surrounding those interviews sucked a lot of my energy and left with little ability to concentrate the past several weeks. So, basically, I've barely done any writing since February. But my hope is that in a few weeks, I'll know whether I've got a job lined up for the fall, and I can either plan a move or settle back into the life I've been living the past couple of years. And at that point, when the nerves have settled down, I'll return to that story that I haven't touched in weeks. And maybe by September, it will be ready to send out.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
My Name in Print
This week I finally got a copy of one of the journals where my work is appearing. It's funny how things work out. I've been working seriously on fiction for about a decade and have also dabbled in nonfiction and poetry, producing one piece each of those forms. Both of those pieces are now seeing publication while my fiction continues to be rejected. The nonfiction piece was written a few years ago, revised over a period of a couple years, and submitted to journals; one held onto it for a year before accepting it, and now several months later, I finally expect my copy in the mail any day. The poem was written one day a few years ago when I felt oddly inspired to put my thoughts into that form. I pretty much didn't touch it for about three years. Then last summer, I pulled it out, revised it, and sent it off. It was accepted to the first place I sent it, and now it's the first of my writing to actually see print. What an odd, odd process. I must say I am quite proud of this poem. I think it's damn fine, and I don't want to play down the accomplishment, but it's just so odd to achieve a bit of success on what is essentially my first effort when I've yet to truly taste that success on the work I've devoted thousands of hours to.
Anyway, this post isn't about the differences between fiction and poetry. (However, I do have one quick side note on that issue related to a previous post; I had earlier guessed that perhaps fewer people submit poetry, and since poetry takes up less physical space in a journal, more can be included; therefore, perhaps a higher percentage of poetry is accepted. Recently I read a statistic from one prominent journal: annually it receives about 800 poetry submissions and 3,200 prose submissions. Certainly that is only one example, but it again raises the question about acceptance rates among the different forms.) What I want to write about here is the quality of work that is out there being published in these tiny journals.
I must admit that after my poem was accepted so quickly (literally, the first place I submitted it wanted it), I started to wonder if perhaps that was a comment on the journal itself. If they wanted to publish ME, then maybe they weren't really very good. Maybe they had no taste and didn't recognize how crappy my work was. Maybe rather than working in my favor to demonstrate that I can write, being published at this journal would be a total waste of time because they're not legitimate. They're a joke, and putting this publication on my CV will show that I'm a joke, too.
So I got the issue in the mail this week. The first thing I did, of course, was turn to my poem and look at my own work in print. But shortly thereafter, I read through all the contributor's notes to see who else this little journal was publishing. Was it as I feared, that it was full of junk? I was stunned to read the bios of my fellow contributors. Most of them had published fairly widely, many in top tier literary journals. There were writers whose work had been in print for decades, authors of full length books, tenured professors, the 2010 Texas Poet Laureate. Clearly this is not a tiny little insignificant journal that will publish any crap that is mailed to them in a manila envelope. And, yet, it is fairly small. I suspect it has few subscribers and is only sold at the school bookstore at the university that publishes it. But even so, accomplished writers are publishing in this journal.
Then again, perhaps writers who have achieved success at more prestigious journals send off their lesser work to smaller places. Maybe this is the place to throw away stuff that otherwise isn't good enough to be published. As I've read through the issue, I haven't found this to be the case. I'm very impressed with the quality of writing. Although small, this is a fine, fine journal. And I'm proud to have my work appear beside such fantastic writing.
The conclusion I come to then is this: even the very small journals you've never heard of are publishing truly great work. Established writers are not too proud to send their pieces to a wide variety of places, which means that when beginning writers are submitting their work, the competition is incredibly fierce. We don't simply need to be better than the other beginning writers. We need to be as good or better than the writers who have been publishing for decades. This experience reinforces my view that it is amazingly difficult to break in. But it also cements my understanding that getting published at all, having any small journal accept one's work, is quite meaningful. There are many, many great writers out in the world, and to be able to have one's words appear in the same place as those other writers is really a comment on one's abilities.
Anyway, this post isn't about the differences between fiction and poetry. (However, I do have one quick side note on that issue related to a previous post; I had earlier guessed that perhaps fewer people submit poetry, and since poetry takes up less physical space in a journal, more can be included; therefore, perhaps a higher percentage of poetry is accepted. Recently I read a statistic from one prominent journal: annually it receives about 800 poetry submissions and 3,200 prose submissions. Certainly that is only one example, but it again raises the question about acceptance rates among the different forms.) What I want to write about here is the quality of work that is out there being published in these tiny journals.
I must admit that after my poem was accepted so quickly (literally, the first place I submitted it wanted it), I started to wonder if perhaps that was a comment on the journal itself. If they wanted to publish ME, then maybe they weren't really very good. Maybe they had no taste and didn't recognize how crappy my work was. Maybe rather than working in my favor to demonstrate that I can write, being published at this journal would be a total waste of time because they're not legitimate. They're a joke, and putting this publication on my CV will show that I'm a joke, too.
So I got the issue in the mail this week. The first thing I did, of course, was turn to my poem and look at my own work in print. But shortly thereafter, I read through all the contributor's notes to see who else this little journal was publishing. Was it as I feared, that it was full of junk? I was stunned to read the bios of my fellow contributors. Most of them had published fairly widely, many in top tier literary journals. There were writers whose work had been in print for decades, authors of full length books, tenured professors, the 2010 Texas Poet Laureate. Clearly this is not a tiny little insignificant journal that will publish any crap that is mailed to them in a manila envelope. And, yet, it is fairly small. I suspect it has few subscribers and is only sold at the school bookstore at the university that publishes it. But even so, accomplished writers are publishing in this journal.
Then again, perhaps writers who have achieved success at more prestigious journals send off their lesser work to smaller places. Maybe this is the place to throw away stuff that otherwise isn't good enough to be published. As I've read through the issue, I haven't found this to be the case. I'm very impressed with the quality of writing. Although small, this is a fine, fine journal. And I'm proud to have my work appear beside such fantastic writing.
The conclusion I come to then is this: even the very small journals you've never heard of are publishing truly great work. Established writers are not too proud to send their pieces to a wide variety of places, which means that when beginning writers are submitting their work, the competition is incredibly fierce. We don't simply need to be better than the other beginning writers. We need to be as good or better than the writers who have been publishing for decades. This experience reinforces my view that it is amazingly difficult to break in. But it also cements my understanding that getting published at all, having any small journal accept one's work, is quite meaningful. There are many, many great writers out in the world, and to be able to have one's words appear in the same place as those other writers is really a comment on one's abilities.
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