June 16th, 2011

What Happens When a Literary Submission Gets Published in a Journal/Magazine

I don’t know how many Rose-coloured readers, if any, are aspiring writers, but it seems like there are a lot of articles out there designed to helps us cope with rejection of our  literary work. A useful skill, no doubt, but I don’t see a lot of guides to help us deal with acceptance of said work, which, while a much more cheerful circumstance, can also be quite confusing. In an effort to stay on the Rose-coloured path, I have assembled my humble experiences with acceptance (never as many as one would like, though still not inconsiderable) into a Rose-coloured Guide to Coping with Acceptance in journals and magazines:

How long should you wait for an acceptance? There is no standard answer except: longer than you think. If the submissions guidelines list wait times, go with that plus a few weeks. If they don’t…hopefully less than a year. It is true of many (not all) lit journals that a yes takes longer than a no. For a no, many journals just need several negative reviews from first readers, and into the rejection envelope it goes, while positively reviewed pieces get passed up the food chain, read again, discussed in a meeting, possibly held over for a future meeting, and eventually accepted. And then someone has to get round to writing you a personalized note (these are lovely) accepting the piece. These things take time. It’s not always the case that no news is good news–some mags are just backlogged and slow–but good things definitely take time.

Will I get an acceptance in my self-addressed stamped envelope? Nope. I have received 100% of my story acceptances via email, even when I’ve sent a SASE. I think editors just want to get the process started at that point–they need to make sure the story hasn’t been submitted/accepted elsewhere, discuss edits, sign a contract, etc.–and email is faster.

What if I *did* submit it elsewhere? If you submitted somewhere that accepts simultaneous submissions, just drop them a note and say, “I have to withdraw my piece as it has been accepted elsewhere”–no harm, no foul. If you did submit simultaneously when the journal asked submitters not to, your email will have to be a bit more cryptic. And no, the editors of the scorned journal *probably* won’t see your piece elsewhere, realize you broke the rules, and blackball you forevermore from their journal…probably. I don’t have experience in this, though, as simultaneous submissions remain a chance I’m not willing to take.

Will I have to sign a contract? What if I don’t understand it? Maybe. Most of the bigger journals have them; smaller/newer ones mainly don’t. I find them very simple–generally it just promises a period of time in which the piece will be published and an amount of money they’ll give you. Journals and magazines should generally be asking for “First serial rights”–they’ll put it in a periodical before anyone else. If a print journal wants to put some materials on the web, they need to stipulate that and you can generally say no to that part without refusing the print part. Sometimes a journal will ask that you wait a bit of time (1 year, maybe?) before republishing, but the odds of ever being able to republish something are slim anyways. If you find yourself het up about a contract, sleep on it, then reread. If still worried, get a writer who has published a lot to look it over, or just query whoever sent it to you about what things mean. I have almost never had an issue with these contracts; they are usually nothing to worry about. Just send’em in on time.

When do the edits come? Will they be scary? Short answer–no, usually not scary. But the long answer is very long, as no two pieces of writing need the exact same things editingwise. Let’s go through some broad categories:
Revise and resubmit–This is technically not an acceptance, but I’m putting it here because it often looks like one and writers get confused. An experienced editor will word an R&RS really carefully to be clear–“Sorry that we cannot accept but…” or the like, but others don’t, and then a letter full of feedback starts to look like editing advice. What an R&RS is is an editor’s very positive reaction to a piece of writing with (what s/he perceives as) some serious flaws. S/he doesn’t know if the writer is capable of doing the work to fix these problems or would want to, so has just sent his/her thoughts. If you act on the suggestions, the ed would be interested in rereading the work and *possibly* accepting it.

If the feedback doesn’t seem useful to you, or nothing you’d be interested in acting on, sleep on it, and if you still feel that way, tell the editor thank you and that if you make use of their suggestions you’ll be sure to resend the work. Doesn’t matter if you never do–it’s their time and energy you appreciate. I would not argue or debate what is essentially just someone’s opinion; however, if you don’t understand something, by all means ask–might as well get all you can from the advice.

If you want to act on the feedback, send an immediate thank you and, unless the editor asks for the work for a given deadline, *take your time*. It is too exciting when you get helpful thoughtful engagement with your work for the first time, and very tempting to rewrite it overnight and send it off at dawn. Don’t do that–take your work through another draft, have others read it, sit on it for a while, then read it again and send it off. Why not give it your best shot?

Conditional acceptance–this is pretty rare with creative work–it’s a term carried over from academia, where you can ask a writer to add more data or examples or whatever in specific ways and know that you will like the result. It’s very hard for an poetry/fiction/creative nonfic editor to suggest edits so specifically that s/he knows that the piece will be acceptable after those edits have been done. Basically, I’ve seen this only applied to cuts–“We’d love to take this piece, but we’d like to remove the 7 pages in the middle that are exclusively about cats. Ok?”

If you don’t feel comfortable with the edit requested, it is totally fine to offer an alternative change–“How about just 6 pages?” “How about the dog section goes instead?”–keeping in mind they might say no. Some in the industry would call this “push back,” or simply “engaging with the editorial process.” Whatever, it’s normal. You might offer a brief explanation for why you prefer your alternative change. Also, if you feel you can’t make the change suggested nor any other, say so politely and with a brief set of reasons. Unless of course your reasons are that your work is inviolate and no one is allowed to edit it; in that case, you shouldn’t be submitting to publications run by non-relatives.
Acceptance, with some edits. You might get an enthusiastic acceptance with a small suggestion to re-examine your ending to make sure it’s totally clear (this is something I’ve heard several times) or to strengthen some bit of character development, etc. etc. As with all of the above, my advice is the same: think about it, sleep on it, try doing what’s been suggested and, if it really doesn’t work for you, propose an alternative and say why. Remember: editors have been doing this a long time, and more often than not wouldn’t waste their time offering you bad advice.

Will the editors make any changes I don’t know about? One would hope not. The major edits mentioned above should come in an email (or notes on a hard-copy, if you have a time machine). Then there will be a copyedit later on–in track changes in a Word file (or equivalent), a list of changes and locations in an email, or perhaps markup on a PDF of the typeset file (or again, hard-copy markup in the mail, but that’s so rare as to almost be not worth mentioning). Most copyediting should have to do with spelling, grammar, punctuation, continuity errors (this person used to have green eyes and now they’re blue; didn’t the main character already get his marriage license on page 8?) Some copyeds will try to help with awkward or confusing phrasings. You should get a chance to review the copyedit, and likely accept most of it; anything you don’t agree with you can stet (editorial speak for reject).

*Sometimes* if the copyedit is very light–just spelling and punctuation–you won’t be given it for review. I’ve generally found this fine, though everyone has heard the story of the copyeditor incorrectly changing a comma in a pivotal spot and thus changing a meaning. Don’t make yourself crazy over this one–it’s almost unheard of. Also, some small-staff journals just don’t do a copyedit, and they’ll publish your piece warts and all. You can simply ask, when your work gets accepted, “Should I expect to see the copyedit? If so, when? I’ll be sure to make time to review it.” And then you’ll know where you stand.

I have never run across a case–for my own work or anyone else’s–where an editor made content changes and then just ran the piece without the author’s approval. That would be pretty unheard of, as well as ghastly. More common, although still pretty rare, is to be sent a document containing your edited work with no indication of where the edits have been made (ie., no track changes or markup). I hate that! If it’s in Word, you can just run a “compare documents” with your original work (I’m sure there are equivalents in other word-processors, but I don’t know what they are). Compare documents is a hot mess to view, especially if the changes are extensive, but you can get through it, see what’s been changed, and send a list to the editor of what you want further altered or stetted. You might mention what a hassle it is for these changes to be made invisibly–maybe it never occurred to them.
Now what? You might get to review a PDF of the typeset pages–good time to check for typos one last time, as well as weird word breaks or loss of formatting (italics disappears in typesetting pretty regularly). Follow the deadlines the eds give you for these, or your changes probably won’t be included. This step might not happen at some journals, and I wouldn’t worry too much about it–you can’t, anyway, because when you realize that you didn’t get to proof pages is usually when you get your printed copy in the mail. Assume that they’ve proofread really carefully themselves.
Do I get to read at the launch? Maybe! Consider it a compliment if you get invited to do so! And even if you don’t get asked to read, do attend the launch if you can, and bring your friends–it is so fun to celebrate your work with others who like it too. If you live far away from the home of the publication, send your best for the launch–and certainly volunteer if you’ll be on vacation nearby and would like to stop in. Not every journal has launches, or not for every issue–especially if it’s online and the contributers/editors very dispersed. But if you get a chance to go, I’m pretty sure you’ll have fun.
When will it be in stores? If you have received your contributor’s copies, probably soon–you could ask the editor or the distro person at the journal and find out not only when but where: not every literary journal is stocked in every bookstore (sigh). Folks are usually very helpful in finding you places to buy their wares. And you could always ask for your journal by name, and encourage others to do the same. Some shops will order something in if there is a groundswell of support for it.

Something’s gone wrong: my piece isn’t in the issue it was slated for; I didn’t get my contributor’s copies; I didn’t get paid; etc. Sigh. Give everybody the benefit of the doubt: life is confusing and many journals are swamped and understaffed. Just ask, very politely, when you should expect A to happen, and/or why B is happening instead. If you don’t get a response, or the response tells you something will happen that then doesn’t, just keep sending polite emails on a regular basis. If your publication keeps getting put off, you can decide when it’s appropriate to withdraw the piece and do so–only the writer can really know when a given publication has become more trouble than it is worth. Once it’s published, that’s not an option–but really, I’ve never *not* been sent my $$ or contributor’s copies, though it’s sometimes taken much longer than I’ve expected. Gentle friendly nagging is, I’ve found, the best (and only) option.

Wow, this piece is more than 2000 words long, and covers some stressful situations. If you’ve not published work before, I don’t mean to scare you–it really is usually as fun and lovely as you’ve been hoping. But the procedures are so varied, and as a novice it’s easy to feel you don’t get to say anything or ask any questions. A few times recently, folks have asked me some of the questions listed above, but I’m hardly an expert on anything–if other people have different experiences or opinions, please do share. Really, everyone who has read this far is to be congratulated!

May 19th, 2011

Upcomings

I use this post title a lot, but everything that is not now is upcoming, so the upcoming occurs a lot. Sorry, that’s an awful sentence; I’ve been ill. Hopefully to be better soon. Here’s what’s going on!

Ok, this one actually is from now, but also upcoming–I answered question 5 of The Devil’s Engine on Thirsty blog, and have a few more answers in the pipeline. This is a discussion of Biblioasis’s short-story authors about stories and their writing, so if interested, please read and stay tuned.

I’m reading at the Niagara Literary Arts Festival on June 12 (scroll down to that date to see the listing), in the fine company of Carolyn Black and Jacob McArthur Mooney. If you should be in St. Catherines that afternoon, please check us out.

My story, “Dream Inc.”, is forthcoming in The Fiddlehead‘s summer fiction issue. Rest assured, I’ll let you know when it’s available!

May 3rd, 2011

Good stuff

While I continue to try to sort myself out on writing new work, some of the older stuff is getting published. The new issue of Prairie Fire arrived today, containing my short story, “Dream Big.” And at long last, coming soon to an online ordering system near you, The Milan Review has my story “Dykadelic.”

You also might be wondering which picture finally got chosen for the book jacket of *The Big Dream.* It’s this one:

It got the second-most votes, but it has the advantages of a) being very clear that it’s on a bus and b) showing my characteristic Rebecca-chin-tilt.

The image with the most votes, by a good margin, actually, was this one:

That will one will definitely come in handy for various other publications and publicity materials where my head won’t look teeny-tiny in the midst of all that red.

The photographer Dave Kemp, who took all these shots, actually prepped a third one for print/web use, this one:

Because it’s just a classy, straight-ahead portrait.

So I feel I’m pretty well-equipped to face the world, photographically, anyway.

April 14th, 2011

Hart House Review

I can’t help myself from saying this: I heart Hart House. If you’ve never been there, it’s the deeply old-school student centre on UofT campus. There’s a gym with a pool, a cafeteria that serves a wide variety of chicken-based meals (and some without chicken), a radio station, a tiny library, a gorgeous courtyard that is apparently the most expensive place in Toronto to have a wedding reception, and loads of “common rooms” (how 19th-century girls school!) where you can hold events.

I spent the vast majority of my free time in grad school here: using the gym, swimming, eating, wireless-internetting, reading, even studying. When the weather got nice, I liked to move the reading and studying onto the lawn across the drive from the building, but still well within sight of it. But actually, even in hottest summer (of course I still came to campus in summer) the fact that the building is stone and shawdowy made it still relatively cool. It’s my favourite place on campus, and probably one of my most favourite in the city.

I was there on Monday for a lunch meeting, and now on Friday I’m doing a reading there to launch the Hart House review. This annual literary review is another wonderful thing about Hart House–student run, printed by Coach House Books, very communal yet very professional-looking, it’s a lovely anthology of work by students, community members, and the occasional alum. I was in it as a student, and I’m proud to be asked back as an alum. In the current issue you can read work by Helen Guri, Prathna Lor, tonnes of other awesome stuff, and my story, “Sarah” (which is an early look at a story from *The Big Dream,* where it appears under another name) as well as an interview with me and the charming Kira Dorward.

Copies of the review are free, but I believe you pretty much have to come to Hart House to get one. Even if you can’t make the launch, there will be copies at the front desk and elsewhere for a couple weeks hence, if you happen to be passing through. And if you won’t be, and really wish you could get one, hit me up–I’ll grab one for you.

March 19th, 2011

My first kill fee

Nope, I haven’t become an assassin (I have a cough that can be heard through cement walls, so I’m not sneaking up on anyone these days). In the world of writing, a kill fee is the money you are paid when a magazine or journal accepts your writing for publication and then, for whatever reason, can’t or won’t follow through. This happens more with journalistic pieces that are topical and have a “horizon of interest” beyond which you can’t really sell them. If a periodical locks down your time, energy and research on a story of the day/week/month, then declines to publish it, you probably won’t have time to sell it elsewhere before the news gets stale. So they are obligated (usually contractually; always morally) to pay you for your time and trouble. This prevents caprice in editorial decisions of this nature, and also protects writers against acts of God (I’m imagining the folks who maybe were writing long thoughtful pieces about trade or educational policies the day of the earthquake in Japan, say).

The kill fee does not often come up in the literary world, so untopical are most poems, short stories, even reviews–typically if something goes wrong or the journal runs out of space, you can just scoot things to a later issue and everyone can enjoy it July instead of March. That has certainly happened to my work in the pass and while a little frustrating (I get so *excited* about seeing stuff in print), it’s not a big deal.

When a publication declines to publish something they’ve already accepted, it’s usually a sign of a bigger problem–say, the decision never to publish anything ever again. Thus, by the time word gets to the writers, the editors may not be in a position to take the writers’ emotions or finances into consideration (cough). On the other hand, sometimes the editors are completely on the ball and conscientious, just dealing with circumstances beyond their control, and they send you a thoughtful letter explaining things, and also a kill-fee cheque.

That latter situation is what happened to me this week, and you know what? I still feel sad. I’ve been published without being paid lots of times, and it’s still pretty fun–you get your contributor’s copy or go to the website and then there’s your very own words, formatted and in a novel font, smack up against other people’s words, and you read all the other stuff and then your own “in context,” and then you go around very casually mentioning that other people could read it too, if, like, they want. Which is exactly what I do with paid publications, except without the headache of having to go to the bank.

Getting paid without getting published was no fun at all–I just went to the bank and then it was over. Boo! I’m sure it’s no one fault, absolutely, but I’m still sad. If you offered me money or glory, I’d take glory any day.

Do you have any kill-fee thoughts or experiences to share? Maybe you can cheer me up!

December 30th, 2010

2010, I hardly knew ye

Tomorrow I plan to spend lying on a couch (possibly, in the course of the day, several couches) reading, napping, possibly eating candy–happy new year’s to me! So I have to wrap up 2010 tonight, blogwise, anyway.

Blogwise, 2010 was an excellent year, with my lovely new site from Create Me This and many lovely friendly readers to comment on, discuss, refute, and reassess my rantings. Thanks to all who did any of the above, or simply read the blog. I write Rose-coloured because my thoughts get lonely in the quiet inside my brain. Thank you for being friends with my thoughts and, in many cases, with me.

Obviously, I am exhausted and have a stupid cold; otherwise the above might have made a little more sense. Thus, I am going to refrain from making a top books–or a top anything–list for 2010. I read 73 books this year, which is a lot for me, so I’m content to brag about it and let it go at that. Counting is a lot easier than rating. Back before I got sick, though, I did make a couple contributions to Maisonneuve’s Best Books of 2010, which is a great list overall, and one I urge you to check out.

At some point in January, I will make some resolutions. That’s a process I usually love, but maybe I’ve overdone it on the introspection with Reverb, or maybe it’s just the cold stomping on my morale, but I am not feeling to resolution-love this year. I hope to make a comeback on that front shortly.

Other 2010 stuff? Well, Best Canadian Stories 2010 is out from Oberon now (but not on their website), including a reprint of my story “Sweet” from Canadian Notes and Queries summer issue.

And, um, it really was a great year–I had a good time, it’s only tonight that I feel lousy. Here’s to good times and good health in 2011–see you on the other side!!

October 29th, 2010

Forthcomings

Sometimes things seem so far away they are beyond “Next” and so I don’t put them on the “Now and Next” list. But now has a way of becoming next and time is flying! So in a blink, the CD version of Earlit Shorts 4 is now available from Rattling Books. It includes the work of many fine writers, plus my two stories, “Christmas with My Mother” and “The Weatherboy.”

In the interests of preventing this from happening again, I’ll let you know that my short story “Sweet” (originally in Canadian Notes and Queries will soon be reprinted in Best Canadian Stories 10 from Oberon Press.

And finally my story “Dream Big,” the one that sparked the whole book, will be published this winter on Prairie Fire

That brings us firmly into the future, I think–anything I’ve forgotten, I guess we’ll know it when it happens!

August 10th, 2010

Litsy Stuff

A few things:

Via Scott, a list of literary pickup lines created in anticipation of a new dating website based around book preferences. The website plan is dubious, I think, but the lines are pretty funny, especially the one about Dan Brown.

I actually liked the music of Library Voices before I knew their perhaps overcute name. But they are truly both bookish (they have a song called “Kundera on the Dancefloor”) and unpretentious (another called “Drinking Games,” which I think is my favourite).

The new issue of the New Quarterly came last night, the On the Road issue, and it came with a PRESENT!! A bonus little magazine that’s *not* about writing, which I am much looking forward to reading. And there’s also a story by me, which I am quite pleased about too. But mainly the present!

I’m reading with Jill Battson and Mat Laporte tomorrow night at Pivot at the Press Club. I’ll be reading something from Road Trips as a kind of unofficial delayed launch, and I’ll have a few copies to sell, too. And I’ll be so excited that Pivot has reopened for the season!

July 12th, 2010

Home Hightlights

Vacation is over and I am back in beloved, smoggy Toronto. I will be, in rose-coloured fashion, concetrating on the belovedness and not the smog, nor will I dwell on the lack of ocean breezes and fresh lobster. Instead, I will focus my attention on:

–big pile o’mail! Highlights include box of free samples of soaps and shampoos, several New Yorkers, the issue of Canadian Notes and Queries that contains my short story “Sweet” (no relation to Dani Couture’s fantastic poetry collection by the same name), baseball tickets, a thing from the government saying I don’t owe them any more taxes, a separate thing from the government saying nor will they be giving me any money, a cheque from the government, and even an actual personal letter!
–raspberry bush o’erflowing with raspberries
–worst fears not realized: apartment not on fire, work projects not disastrous, G20 not ongoing, only one plant dead.
–a couple delightful reading invitations, including one for my beloved Pivot at the Press Club on August 11 (8pm). I haven’t read from Road Trips anywhere yet, so I guess this will be a launch of sorts! Hope you can come!
–hilarious friends, who have spent their time without me going to mustache contests and discussing the merits of accidental death and dismemberment insurance.
–TTC–no, really, I’ve missed it!

June 25th, 2010

Laterz

I’m sitting here, waiting for my laundry to be done drying so I can trudge downstairs and retrieve it before someone removes it from the drier and tosses it about the dust-filled laundry room (ok, this has never happened, but it might). My fantasy right now is about a washer and a dryer just for me, in the privacy of my own home. If I had that, I could finally achieve laundry nirvana, which is (of course) to have every single article of clothing I own clean at the same time. And in order to do that, one has to work out a way to do laundry naked. This is my dream.

Clearly, I need a vacation. So–I’ll take one. And probably blog about it, but maybe not as frequently as my usual blogging rate, due to the freedom of the open road and the lack of wireless connections on said road.

If you get bored in my absense, or even if you are under the impression you are sufficiently entertained, you should really go check out The Scream in High Park litfest over the next couple weeks. It is a sizeable downside of this whole vacation project that I won’t get to be there. So you should go on my behalf, ok?

And if you are missing me/my prose terribly, you can check out my essay, No More Mr. Bad Guy in the new issue of Maisonneuve.

Whatever your plans are for late June and early July, I hope you see some fireworks on the first, eat something charred over a flame, and generally a stellar summery time.