Sasha

I liked this piece by Zana Previti. It’s an engaging short story and the motifs of technology and photographs are especially well-handled.

Anti-Aesthetics

So I’ve been reading a lot of online lit mags and thinking about different styles and forms of fiction. I’ve always seen myself as the kind of writer who could go from a serious, traditional story to an experimental story and back. I don’t want to create a niche for myself. Niches too often become ruts.

So what is my aesthetic? Is it bad not to have one? I could play it down the middle and say, like many literary magazines and presses do, that my only criterion is excellence. But that comes off a little wishy-washy. (No offense to The Ledge.)

I guess my aesthetic is exploration. Different points of view. Different styles. It strikes me as odd that someone would spend all their time writing Al-Lit (whatever that is) or Zombie stories or historical fiction. Maybe part of the reason I jump from style to style is a fear of being defined. Oh, well, off to write my story about a Zombie and Abraham Lincoln having a conversation on Twitter. #4Score7Brains

Sending It Out

There is no shortage of publishing advice on the Internet. Most of it’s pretty good, but I thought I’d share a couple things that have held me back or helped me out.

1. Don’t self-reject. Editors can come up with a million reasons to reject your work, so let them do their job. Once a story has been rejected, don’t give up on it. Sure, take a look and rewrite if necessary, but so many times I hear from writers who shelved a story after just 5 or 10 rejections. A good rule of thumb is that a good writer with a good story sending to mid to high tier literary magazines should expect, on average, 20 rejections before an acceptance. And that’s an average, so 40 or 50 rejections before an acceptance are possible.

2. Target your submissions…sometimes. You should be in the habit of reading literary journals and understanding why certain stories were picked. If you find a story you don’t like that has been published, don’t just say “that sucked.” Try to see what the editor saw. But don’t exclude journals you can’t get a hold of or whose aesthetic you don’t immediately “get.” Also, don’t pigeonhole certain journals. Editorial tastes change, especially with university sponsored journals who might see editors come and go on a yearly basis.

3. Send out a lot. Send out all your publishable stories, even those that are not your favorites (some of what I consider my best stories have not been taken yet.). Simultaneously submit to journals. I like to have around 30 submissions out there at a time, usually 6 to 7 stories and shorter pieces to a few journals each.

Good luck.

Bad Thinker, Bad Writer

I tend not to criticize other writers. Sure, I have my own preferences–I even have writers whose work I can’t stand. But mostly I keep it to myself. No need to be a jerk. But when the writer is a jerk, well…

Which brings me to Vox Day. Now Vox (real name Theodore Beale) is probably a pretty typical writer of genre work. So why would I write a post about this guy–a nobody in the fiction world?

Well, Vox writes a column for World Net Daily–when they aren’t publishing on the conspiracy of Barack Obama’s birth. He’s also been accused of racially charged rhetoric, once comparing the influx of undocumented immigrants in the United States to a Nazi invasion of Europe.

And then there’s his fiction.

It’s bad. The writing is old fashioned and wordy. All the characters speak as if they have brandy snifters in hand. You imagine their voices nasally and adorned with a sort of indeterminate “snooty” accent. The plots are soporific, meandering and trite.

But the racism. It is practiced:

“The contrast between the facilities and the inhabitants is stark. It is literally black and white [...] The Nigerians, on the other hand, are very dark-skinned and full of life. When they are happy, they sing and smile, and some of them play a sort of rhythmic music with their hands on the walls to which the others dance. Of course, some of them, particularly the less intelligent, are demoralized by their incarceration. In such cases, their behavior at times borders on the bestial. They glare and they snarl, they beg and they plead, at times they offer their bodies for pleasure, other times they spit at anyone who walks past their cells.”

In Vox-World, when the black folks aren’t animals, they are happy minstrels, banging on the walls. Sure, this is a character speaking, not the author himself. And it is fiction. But this passage draws a vivid scene of racism that is only sketched in post after post decrying multiculturalism, liberalism and the degradation of all things white.

Shame on Stupefying Stories for publishing this mess. The greater shame belongs to Vox and his band of pseudo-intellectual Aryans. The publication of The Bell Curve in the 1990s has ushered in a new era of racism. Sure, rednecks in wife-beaters are like the Wal-Mart of prejudice, with their everyday low humor and busted egos. But far worse is the new breed of bigots–those who cloak their anti-black bias in well-constructed, if intentionally anachronistic, sentences. They claim their views derive from logic–and they believe this. They will show you the statistics–the number of black men in prison. But they have no context save the racial theory of human behavior.

And so this bad thinking pervades the writing. Infuses even what is supposed to be a ghost story with the fetid stink of racial superiority. It’s an obsession for them. They can’t help thinking about it. They hunker for the race war. Fiction, indeed.

Upcoming Publications

I’ve been blessed with good luck in the fiction submission business this year. Here are some upcoming places where you can find my stories:

Glimmer Train. My story “Buch and the Snakestretchers” won second place in Glimmer Train‘s Fiction Open and will be published sometime in 2013. I’m very happy to see my story get taken by GT, as the editors there have always been encouraging. I’m also proud of the story, which was based on one of my father’s patients and relies heavily on the genius of Roy Buchanan.

Camera Obscura. This is a fine journal of literature and photography. My story “Lash by Lash” will appear in the winter 2011 issue, out soon.

Gulf Stream. My humorous, slightly experimental story “What Mary Said” will be online at Gulf Stream in the not too distant future. This is a good online journal that has published quite a few literary heavyweights in the past.

Along with these acceptances, I received a ton of rejections too monotonous and discouraging to mention. If you are a writer, keep sending stuff out–you never know what people will like. There are enough editors out there who will do the rejecting for you–never reject your own work.

 

 

$5 for a Rejection?

Before its editors decided to start charging $5 to submit online, Storyquarterly was tracked by Duotrope as one of the hardest journals to crack, with less than one percent of submissions accepted. Those thousands of rejections previously arrived free. Now, writers must pay for the privilege.

I’m not against journals charging for online submissions. They do get carpet-bombed by writers who would never buy an issue. And it is convenient for writers. At a price point of around $3 it was pretty much revenue neutral for writers given the cost of ink, paper and postage.

But $5 seems high and one wonders why Storyquarterly is going above the industry standard price point. Do they want to cut down on submissions? Do they hope to raise more funds?

Will I submit to SQ again? I doubt it.$3 seems fair, saves time and makes me feel like I’m being more environmentally conscious..Five makes me feel ripped off.

Accepted by Grasslimb

I just received an acceptance from Grasslimb for two poems: “Like Some Grievances” and “Strange Angels.” These will be my first published poems.

In addition to being a fine publication, Grasslimb pays its writers. And that is always appreciated.