I Have Been Carefully Considered And Even Still…
11/24/09 9:30pm ~ Blah blah blah & QuotidianOutstanding Submissions: 19
Rejections: 1, form, AGNI.
The good people at AGNI were kind enough to say: “Your work received careful consideration here.” I love when rejection letters say that and then you go to Duotrope and see 50 other rejections from that magazine on the same day. We are all carefully considered, friends. The Editors were also kind enough to offer a discount subscription. Is that tacky? Is it okay to say, we’re not going to publish you but we certainly encourage you to buy our magazine even though you’re still in that difficult, emotional place where you try to grapple with being not good enough? Or is it brilliant to pounce on that vulnerable moment? Quick Fiction also offers subscriptions in their rejection letter. I find it a curious practice but I do not judge.
I saw New Moon. I wrote about it for Barrelhouse. There’s a new feature at HTML Giant, if you have writing or publishing questions, ask and some folks will offer some answers.
At the gym yesterday, my trainer introduced me to planks and bridges. As I drove home I felt like she had introduced me to pain and suffering.
I am not going anywhere for the Thanksgiving holiday. I have somewhere to go but I have so much to get done and it’s nice to have nowhere I must be (except the gym) for a whole week.
One of my students e-mailed me today and asked if he would be missing anything important this coming Monday because he won’t be in class. After ten days of break. I took a deep calming breath before responding. Rhetorically speaking, that kind of statement indicates a lack of understanding of context or audience. I turned my response into a teaching moment. A teacher’s job is never done.
I am working on several new stories right now–one about a sprawling Haitian clan and one about an orienteer and one about baby teeth and one about a guy who goes on game shows for a living and one about an Italian girl who recently broke up with her pawnbroker boyfriend and on and on it goes. I keep starting these stories and then moving on so I will have something to come back to. Yes. I ended a sentence in a preposition. Deal with it.
http://www.grammarphobia.com/grammar.html
“It’s no longer considered a crime to . . . end a sentence with a preposition.” Hooray.
Quick Fiction once sent me a request to donate to their journal. The letter had these boxes where I could check how much I wanted to give. If I remember correctly, there was a box for $1,000. Who the hell is donating that much? And if people ARE donating that much, how come Quick Fiction still doesn’t offer to pay the writers anything, not even a flat fee of five or ten bucks? Ridiculous.
I find this claim curious:
as we most certainly do not. And if we ever have, it was years ago, because I don’t remember it. And just by way of clarification, our donation solicitations are not associated with our editorial responses. Any unwanted solicitations can be easily avoided by removing yourself from our opt-in email list, though they are so few and far between, I’m surprised there’s even a complaint.
And to suggest that Quick Fiction, a tiny independent publication, is sitting miserly on a trove of donated cash? Now that’s ridiculous.
Adam Pieroni
(publisher of Quick Fiction)
Hi Adam. If I’ve misremembered the rejection letter, I apologize. There was no malice in my statement. I’m a Quick Fiction subscriber and I love the magazine and I never said anything about sitting on a load of cash. I’m an editor at a tiny magazine too. I know the deal
No worries, Roxane; just clarifying. And the stuff about the cash was in response to one of the comments.
My comment wasn’t to suggest that QF is “sitting miserly on a trove of donated cash,” but to say that if people are donating up to $1,000, why aren’t the contributing writers being paid at least SOMETHING for their work? (There are, what, about 25 stories in the current issue? A flat fee of $5 per story would work out to a penny a word and overall cost $125 …) Personally, I’m more apt to spend a few bucks if the request is for a subscription rather than a donation. At least with a subscription I’m getting something more out of the deal besides a nice warm fuzzy feeling inside … but maybe that just makes me selfish.
After seeing John Freeman of Granta and now Adam Pieroni of Quick Fiction respond to blog comments, I am inspired about the reach of these blogs and reminded to take a deep breath before hitting submit comment/publish (and to think what my mom would think).
I I have gotten a number of QF rejections and don’t recall anything about any subscriptions or donations. Of course, as happens when I get rejections from places I’m dying to get into, I sort of black out while reading the rejection so there’s that.
the editor of zyzzyva commented on lauren becker’s blog recently, too!
and, david, i think i black out with my rejections, too. my wife can even spot the one’s that come in the mail, she texts me at work to tell me i got a rejection, then i can blackout at work
ha ha, ryan, that is hilarious about your wife texting you
i need to start subbing to places via mail again
since it’s been a year since i started writing again..i haven’t mailed out one story. that is craziness.
yeah, the blacking out thing is funny all around. hope you’re good bud. d
oh shit i gotta go see HJ’s response on LB’s blog. wow, what a response from a blog post.
wow, LB is really mixing things up with some heavies. very cool.
I’m all about magazines encouraging folks to subscribe, but that whole bit of sending the subscription pitch at the same time as the rejection sort of seems like a bad call, strategically speaking. The folks at Shenandoah send their subscription pitch separately from their rejection, which I thought was really classy and also very wise re: fundraising strategy. Their rejection slip is also very elegantly-worded and in general left me with a very positive impression.