August 12th, 2009
Writing Exercise: Questions Game: RR’s response
(This answers an earlier post.)
Facing Kate, Sarah felt the same déjà vu she always feels. The two girls were the exact same height, and their shoulders are the same width across.
“What are you doing, Sarah?”
Sarah struggled for a long moment with that, before lying back down on the floor again, so that it would be obvious. She put her head a bit farther from the toilet this time, but she could still feel damp creeping through her hairnet and hair. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
Kate inhaled as if she were about to blow up a balloon. “And this is supposed to accomplish what, exactly?”
From the floor, Kate looked enormously tall. Sarah thought this was more appropriate, really; Kate’s personality was much taller than hers. “Why would I want to accomplish anything?”
“Yeah, why would you?” Kate plummeted abruptly down, her legs accordianing under her until she was crossed-legged beside Sarah’s wet head. “Why try to keep your job, or your dignity, or even your clothes clean? Why not just give up on anything that’s fucking adult, and go cry like a little kid?”
Sarah slurped snot up her nose and tried to breathe evenly. She stared at the domed light fixture on the ceiling—clean, but with dozens of dead-fly bodies in the nipple of it. When she turned to look at Kate, Kate’s small watery blue eyes were trained right on Sarah’s forehead, like gun sights.
“Is it my turn to talk now?” Sarah said weakly.
“Do you want it to be? Do you have anything to say?”
“Why don’t you just speak for me, say whatever you think I should say? What would say right now, Kate, if you’d just lost it in front of a customer and were lying here in a puddle of maybe pee, and the only reason you hadn’t been fired yet is that Darin is scared to come in the ladies room?”
Kate flinched and peered more deeply at Sarah’s face, before flattening down onto her stomach beside her, so their elbows touched. “Do you really think he’ll fire you?”
“Why wouldn’t he? How much of an asset to the team am I, really?” Sarah had meant to say it with all the grim bravado Kate would have brought to such a damning self-assessment, but the truth of her own uselessness hit her hard in the stomach midway through asset, and the rest of the words were watery with tears. “What use am I at all?”
Kate’s eyes narrowed even more, pale slits with the light of the fluorescent tube reflecting in them. “Can’t you just…just…get it together?”
Sarah tried for another deep breath but there was the weight of a sob resting on her lungs and she didn’t get much. “No.”
***
RR thinks: this is *way* easier when you’ve got some narrative to play with, not just the questions themselves to build the whole scene. And I hand-picked a part of the story I was working on where evading the question makes sense. And ended with a statement. But I still used the *spirit* of the exercise, I’d say, plus I think I’ll actually be able to keep most of this in the piece as it stands, which is useful.
Anybody else?
RR
Mambo Pivot
There’s a drop-in dance class I like to take sometimes, despite the fact that I am utterly utterly incapable of keeping up, and render every single move as a nervous little skippity-hop. The reason I like to go is that the instructor is a sparkling lunatic with a giant smile and voice, and sunrise-coloured ponytail in the middle of her head. She makes every move or combination she announces sound like the new best thing, and I always feel her encouragement of my skippitying is real and not condescension.
*Anyway*, one of the moves she announced in Monday night’s class was the “mambo pivot” (skip forward, hop, skip back, if you are me). I had always thought the Pivot at the Press Club reading series was pretty flawless, but this set me to wondering…could it be better with mambo? Could tonight be the night?
Even if it’s mambo-free, tonight’s readings should still be pretty fab. Be there for eight and hear Jacqueline Larson, Mark Sampson and Sarah Selecky read some stuff. Dancing optional.
You let me down slow
RR
August 11th, 2009
Writing Exercise: Tom Stoppard’s Questions Game
Sunday evening I rewatched the film version of Tom Stoppard‘s brilliant play Rosencrantz and Guidenstern Are Dead. Since the author directed the film, it is just as wondrous as the play.
If you’ve never read or viewed this one, it’s the left-out lives of Hamlet‘s two retainers, who die off-stage and without tears or explanation towards the end of that play. It’s also about the act of writing and the definition of character, the concept of performance, and a variety of physical principals and simple machines, which are explored by one of the characters in a series of subtle and hilarious protracted gags.
This is one of the funniest movies you’re likely to see, but to get all the jokes, it helps to see it multiple times (I think this was my forth, and I saw a lot that was new!) One scene I did remember distinctly and with joy from childhood viewing was the great Questions game, that the protagonists play on Hamlet’s indoor tennis court.
The game is what it sounds like, to keep a (semi-)logical fast-paced conversation going using only questions. The characters have rules against not only statements but repetition, non-sequiteurs, rhetoric, synonyms and hesitation. This keeps the conversation fast, intense, somewhat surreal, and very tight–people are trying to win, after all.
Stoppard’s style of dialogue in general like that; the Questions game comes up almost as a kind of parody of R&G’s usual quick, confused/confusing banter. This style also reminds me of Sanford Meisner‘s repetition exercise for actors–another way of creating fast, tight dialogue.
As a lover of fine dialogue of both real and artificial forms, needless to say, a) I love this stuff and b) it’s very hard to do well, or even at all. As I said, I watched this movie as a kid, with my bro, and the first time we encountered a tennis court, we did try to play it–so frustrating! Even when you leave out some of the secondary rules about hesitation, non-sequiteurs, etc.
So, obviously, this is a great writing exercise. Obviously, you won’t end up with anything quite *realistic* in the usual sense, and if realistic is what your project is, you’ll have to redraft to use the exercise. But in addition to pace and rhythm, the all-questions-no-answers style brings a great deal of tension to dialogue–nothing says recalcitrant witness like answering a question with a question.
Ok, the exercise is: write a scene with two (or more, if you really want to push yourself) characters, in which all dialogue is in the form of question. Use the other rules at your discretion, or not at all. I’ll post mine when I’ve written it. If you write one, I’d love to see it if you send me a link, post it as a comment, or send it some other way.
I’m glad I came up with this after my actual teaching term finished–I think it’s gonna be really hard.
I’m a wrecking ball in a summer dress
RR
August 10th, 2009
Toronto Books
I saw Kate’s list of 15 Toronto books, inspired by Amy Lavender Harris and of course was immediately eager to do it! Exactly my thing, I thought!
Except I only got to eight!! I mean, I did have obscure rules that I set for myself: no books that just have a few scenes here (like Clara Callan or Owen Meaney). And no multiple works by the same author, although Jim Munro, Margaret Atwood and Russell Smith (betcha don’t see that list too often) each have a bunch of books set here of which I am fond. Also, no non-fic, because I almost never read any.
So, then, just over half of what I was supposed to come up with–boo! Toronto, I’m sorry I’ve let you down! Do I get any points for the fact that the first three are set in Parkdale (and are [likely coincidentally] three of the my favourite things I’ve read in the past few years)??
Anyone who also feels like doing this, please please send me a link so I can see (and maybe steal) some of your ideas!! Or feel free to use my comments-land if you are a non-blogger still interested in making book lists.
The Killing Circle by Andrew Pyper
When I Was Young and in My Prime by Alayna Munce
The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood (I have seen and owned multiple editions of this book, one of my favourite comic novels, and I have never seen the cover at this link before. Do you think it’s odd? I think it’s odd.)
Muriella Pent by Russell Smith
Where We Have to Go by Lauren Kirshner
Flyboy Action Figure Comes with Gasmask by Jim Munro
Heaven Is Small by Emily Schultz
You let me down easy
RR
I’ll always wonder
[RR is at the cashier at 7-11, paying for soda. A young girl enters, carrying pizza slice in paper bag, looking frazzled but cheerful.]
August 7th, 2009
The Professional Interviews (4): Scott, Assistant Manager of Retail Distribution (at a mass-market publishing house)
[Man, I love doing these things! I’ve known Scott for 6 years and borrowed his workspace to make airline reservations, and I still had no idea he did half this stuff at work. It’s me in the bold-face (’cause I’m that self-important), Scott in Roman. Also, you should know that while he was telling me all this, S was also making a wicked tofu marinade.]
So, what is it exactly that you do?
I work in the retail operations department. There’s 3 components to operations: what’s shipped out; what’s returned; and what’s sold. I deal with what goes out.
And by “dealing” with, you mean?
What I deal with is gross units, order files that are transmitted from our customers, entered by our sales force. I insure that [books] arrive on time, since we have a timeline from when the order files are received to when they are processed at our warehouse. I’m basically chasing down the customer or chasing down the salesperson to chase down the customer, to get the orders. Then I have to also verify the orders that we receive for reasonability. I’m also doing preliminary analysis on how we’re doing overall against these order files.
Reasonability?
Every month, stores order the same product lines. The theory is because the series’ are bought as a product line rather than as individual authors, it should be the same order numbers every months. That’s one of the major audits I do of the files, to make sure it’s the same. That’s only series. For single-title, I’m comparing it against projections, which are made by the sales force of what they think we’re gonna get.
So you’re checking that orders are reasonable, not that they’re lucrative?
Yep, just that they’re ordering what they said they were gonna order, or the same as last month. It gets more complicated, because there’s also distribution reviews done by sales force and sales analysis (the “what was sold” group) to see what’s selling, because if 30-40 percent of your book sells, that’s fantastic. Single-titles have a longer shelf-life, you’d probably want that over 50 percent.
Because of those distribution reviews, customers’ll come back and say “we’re gonna change our orders to reflect sales” (a chain will revise distribution for all their stores at once).
That’s a mere fraction of what I do. Do you want to do the rest as bullets?
Sure!
–I load the [order] files and make sure that they have all the information required for the warehouse to process the orders
–I do gross unit analysis for early trends and missing orders (that’s the bulk of my job)
–I do some summary delivery analysis reports (what does that mean? We need to know, ‘Did 30% of the stores get delivery early? 20%?’ I provide the numbers. Most shipments have a 3-day delivery window, [so we wonder] ‘what stores received stock on the first day of the window?’)
–I also take part in the weekly teleconference call with the warehouse to discuss any issues like stickering issues, inventory issues, basic return information.
–Also, I do a monthly video-conference (cool!) call with the warehouse that deals with bigger issues than the weekly call, like changing barcodes, or marketing has come up with a new product line that they want to ship.
–I am involved with monitoring inventory levels of backlist titles to see if reprints are required.
–I am helping to develop MS Sharepoint site, a document file-sharing website.
–I test and implement reporting in our data warehouse.
–print and binds—which is the process of determining how many books to print to cover initial orders and re-orders for the first 90 days.
What makes you qualified to do all that?
I’ve learned a lot of it on the job. When I started in 2001, I had basic Excel skills and MS Access skills. I would argue that logistics is just institutional knowledge—understanding how the system flows, what file format goes where, what needs to be massaged data-wise, and just…how things work. … There is technical stuff: I had to learn specialty software, but again, I learned them on the job. And then there’s just basic logic—things happen in steps.
So what is it about you, personally, that makes you good at this?
I like to understand things, that’s helpful. People have commented that I’m friendly (True!) which helps, but that is true of any job in an office—the friendly guy is well-liked. There is a certain level of intelligence required and they feel like I possess that level of intelligence, so… Asking questions is important too, so that when someone asks for correct information you can make sure you have it.
How did you get the job?
I actually was approached. I put my resume on Workopolis and a headhunter called me. Then, they made me do 2 interviews and a computer test (they sent me down to this independent third party testing thing) to see if I could actually use MS Excel. Apparently, a lot of people say they can use it, but… Since then I’ve actually done courses on Excel and there’s still a lot more I need to learn about it.
What sort of person would you recommend go after a job in operations?
(laughs) Someone who likes numbers! Um…someone who can think logically, doesn’t mind a stressful environment. Course I say that, but it depends on where you are—other companies might be difference. I think if you make toothpaste, it doesn’t change from month to month. But bread people, they have to get it there every day.
And who should stay away from this sort of job?
People who aren’t good with numbers, people who have trouble with logic, people who want to be able to sit and meander through their stuff. We’re one of those in-between departments that don’t get to control the timelines.
What is a typical day like for you?
There are no typical days.
There are greater cycles: if you come to me on a Friday, there are certain things I do on Fridays. Every cycle is different, every problem is different, unfortunately. If I had to split my day, parts of it are short-term problems and parts are long-term problems, and the short-term always eats up the long-term problems’ time. Lemme give it a crack:
First thing in the morning you are going through your email to find out what happened while you weren’t there. The warehouse starts at 4-5 in the morning; they were already packing books then. And then people stayed after you left, too. After that, I usually have either ad-hoc reports or reports that are due for the cycle that I’m in. Or I’m chasing orders. Long-term stuff, I usually have some reports that I have audit to make sure they work correctly, I have instructions to type out on using reports, my boss will come with some specialty analysis that he wants done… Usually there’s calls to be made for clarification. Also we have a partnership for distribution with another publisher, and they send me morning reports on orders and inventory and I have to deal with problems there.
In the afternoon, if you’re lucky you get to do your stuff; if you’re unlucky, you’re doing other people’s stuff. At a moment’s notice, my superior or their superior, could come and ask for something. Because I’m assistant manager, I’m lucky, because they go to the manager first.
The afternoon is a blur, really. You might have meetings: tomorrow I have meeting from 8:30 to 1. It’s our big monthly meeting, which no one ever wants to go to.
Is it catered?
It used to be, but due to budget cuts, it is no longer. Which has sped it up now that we don’t have lunch in the meeting.
So, you get to 4:30, and leave?
Usually, sometimes I have to stay an extra half hour to get some key things out, but more or less I leave on time. My boss is there until 6 or 7 often, but I joke that’s because he is a bachelor. I have a lot to get home to. I have a new baby, so I have to get home and get supper and spend time with the kid…who probably isn’t old enough to appreciate it.
Is there a people management part ot your job?
I don’t have anyone report directly to me, but in operations, if you’re brought into a meeting, you’re contributing to helping solve a problem. If book signatures have been mismatched, we have a meeting and I’m part of defining the solution, I don’t say, ‘you do this,’ but I say, ‘I’ll do this,’ other people say ‘I’ll do that.’ Sometimes I’ll take charge of a meeting, but that’s a dynamic, sometimes people just don’t want to make a decision and I want to get it done. You can get meeting-itis, and you’re just beating something to death. Some people just like the sound of their own voice, and those people don’t work in Operations. We can’t do that because we have to get out of the meetings and deal with the emails ticking away in our in-boxes. That’s why agendas are so important.
That being said, back to my point about institutional memory, I do tell people what to do sometimes just because I know do the answer, and I say, “If you go do this, it’ll solve your problem.” They don’t report directly to me, it’s just because I have the answer they listen to me.
What do you do at lunchtime?
I usually go to the kitchen, get my lunch, and come back and eat in my office. Unless I didn’t bring a lunch, in which case I go buy it. Then I read a book, websurf (Salon, Slate, Macleans, NYT, bookninja, bookslut, and whatever meets my fancy.)
No working thru lunch?
That happens, depends on the day. Some days I have to work through.
Degree of resentment?
No one likes working through their lunch. But sometimes you get in a groove, stuff is getting done, the emails make sense when you type them up, and you don’t mind. Other days, you’re like, “Why won’t this end?” But there’s always a sense of urgency, I don’t think I’ve ever had slow days. An example: Today, I’m dealing with books that just went on sale for August so we’re having ad-hoc meetings to see if we can deal with the orders. I’ve already got all the billing files for September, now the warehouse is actually starting to process them. I’m already looking at October on-sale because I’m trying to figure out where the orders are. We’re setting up some special projects for November. And I was just dealing with my boss on Christmas books, backlist Christmas books, I had to do a report on that, to see if we need to order them, which we do.
What’s the hardest part of your job?
Memorizing some stuff. There’s certain things that my boss is just gifted with–like numbers. I’m good at math, but I don’t remember specific numbers .Some ppl can work faster because they memorize certain things, but my mind just doesn’t want to do that.
When you tell people what you do at parties, what is the typical response?
No, I don’t do that. Frankly people can’t wrap their heads around it. I tell them the name of the publisher, and then I say, “I help get the books out.” I would say operations has an influence on your life, when product shows up and where it is. But it’s just too hard to explain.
Anything general about the job?
It’s been one of my pet peeves that there’s always this discussion about art vs. business. There’s this dullard Dilbert suck-your-soul element that everyone talks about in business, but I would argue every job has a soul-sucking element, even artistic pursuits. I have seen math artists– there’s a guy in our department–people who can read that patterns. And there’s an art to writing an email, there’s art in everything. There’s a human element to everything. Math is not as simple as A + B = C; it’s hard and there are some people who are gifted. Some people just have a knack for it.
RR
August 6th, 2009
An Apology for Crudity, by Sherwood Anderson
[RR: I don’t agree with everything here, natch, and it was written close to 100 years ago, but try substituting Canada for all the American references and see what you make of this.]
For a long time I have believed that crudity is an inevitable quality in the production of a really significant present-day American literature….
If you are in doubt as to the crudity of thought in America, try an experiment. Come out of your offices, where you sit writing and thinking, and try living with us. Get on a train at Pittsburg and go west to the mountains of Colorado. Stop for a time in our towns and cities. Stay a week in some Iowa corn-shipping town and for another week in one of the Chicago clubs. As you loiter about read our newspapers and listen to our conversations, remembering, if you will, that as you see us in the towns and cities, so we are. We are not subtle enough to conceal ourselves and he who runs with open eyes through the Mississippi Valley may read the story of the Mississippi Valley.
It is a marvelous story and we have not yet begun to tell the half of it….
As I walk alone, an old truth comes home to me and I know that we shall never have an American literature until we return to faith in ourselves and to the facing of our own limitations. We must, in some way, become in ourselves more like our fellows, more simple and more real. [RR: does he seem to change POVs here? Wasn’t it “us” and “we” a moment ago?]
To me it seems that as writers we shall have to throw ourselves with greater daring into the life here. [RR: I think this is gorgeous] We shall to begin to write out of the people and not for the people. We shall have to find within ourselves a little of that courage. To continue along the road we are travelling is unthinkable. To draw ourselves apart, to live in little groups and console ourselves with the thought that we are achieving intellectuality, is to get nowhere. By such a road we can hope only to go on producing a literature that has nothing to do with life as it is lived in these United States….
The road is rough and the times are pitiless. Who, knowing our America and understanding the life in our towns and cities, can close his eyes to the fact that life here is for the most part an ugly affair? [RR: I disagree, but…not entirely] As a people we have given ourselves to industrialism, and industrialism is not lovely. If anyone can find beauty in an American factory town, I wish he would show me the way. For myself, I cannot find it. To me, and I am living in industrial life, the whole things is as ugly as modern war. I have to accept that fact and I believe a great step forward will have been taken when it is more generally accepted….
It is, I believe, self-evident that the work of the novelist must always lie somewhat outside the field of philosophic thought [RR: Yup. Short story writers too.] Your true novelist is a man gone a little mad with the life of his times. As he goes through life he lives, not in himself, but in many people. Through his brain march figures and groups of figures. Out of the many figures, one emerges. If he be at all sensitive to the life about him and that life be crude, the figure that emerges will be crude and will crudely express itself.
I do not know how far a man may go on the road of subjective writing. The matter, I admit, puzzles me. There is something approaching insanity in the very idea of sinking yourself too deeply into modern American industrial life.
But it is my contention that there is no other road. If one would avoid neat, slick writing, he must at least attempt to be brother to his brothers and live as the men of his time live.He must share with them the crude expression of their lives. To our grandchildren the privilege of attempting to produce a school of American writing that has delicacy and colour may come as a matter of course. One hopes that will be true, but it is not true now. And that is why, with so many of the younger Americans, I put my faith in the modern literary adventurers. We shall, I am sure, have much crude, blundering American writing before the gift of beauty and subtlety in prose shall honestly belong to us.
***
I want to be a modern literary adventurer!!!!
RR
August 5th, 2009
Sad happy
Tomorrow is the last offical “sighting” post over at Seen Reading, and today is the last sighting by the brilliant SR founder and all-around lovely writer/human Julie Wilson. It’s a lovely post and no doubt there will be much more to read in future from JW, so we need not be too sad. The posts so far this week, from Ami McKay and Saleema Nawaz have been wonderful also, as usual; check back tomorrow for the very final post from Monique Trottier.
Still a little sad? Yeah, me too. Maybe this will cheer you up. It’s pretty outstanding (thanks to Mark for sharing this!)
Find a handsome young maid for you to love
RR
August 4th, 2009
Submit, all ye who enter
I started thinking about story (and poem) submissions to literary journals when a friend said she was going to start sending some out. I’ve been doing that for a few years now, and our conversation made me realize how much I’ve learned since then. I thought maybe I could help someone out a little with that learning curve, if in fact anyone in need of help is reading this.
1. Where to submit?
Journals you like–if you like what they do, the odds are higher that they’ll like what you do. Don’t know any journals well enough to make that assessment? Go read some. This needn’t be all that expensive or time-consuming; you don’t need to subscribe, but one issue from the newsstand or library, or a serious peruse of the mag’s online archive (if it has one) would really help you decide if it’s worth your time to submit–and worth the editors’ time to read your work.
Ok, ok: If you are extremely talented and extremely patient, you can get published without reading the journals you submit to–you’re just going to wind up sending a lot of inappropriate places and getting a lot of nos first. Some journals only take a certain genre, or style of writing… Also, every journal I can think of wants new, fresh voices (show me the journal that is after “staid and tired” writing) but exactly how edgy they want writing to be, how fractured, how weird or funny or linear is various. Those are style issues that could cause perfectly good writing to get rejected because it doesn’t fit the journal’s aesthetic.
A great list of litmags, as well as contests and calls for submissions, is available from the generous folks at [places for writers] (no, I don’t know what what the brackets are about, but it’s still a great site). The Canadian list there is a little weak on genre magazines; there’s a few science fiction ones, but I don’t see any for mystery or horror. I think those are perhaps more common in the states, but genre and American publications are two areas I know little about. Sorry.
2. Paid or unpaid?
Doesn’t matter in the slightest. Many perfectly good journals don’t pay, or pay in copies, or in beer, or in love. If you would like to do this writing thing long term, it would help to become comfortable with that. Here’s why: If you should ever keep track of all the hours spent writing and rewriting a given piece of creative work, and then divide that into whatever you end up getting paid when it’s published (and I would strongly discourage you from doing this), nothing any journal could ever offer you is likely to approach minimum wage. And since any amount of money isn’t really going to be right, maybe $0 is only just as incorrect as any other amount.
The one thing writer payments guarantee is that the journal has the respect of subscribers, advertisers and/or granters to some substantial degree. Money doesn’t promise that it’s a good journal, but it does indicate someone thinks it is. So it can be harder, if doubt your own judgement, when you find a non-paying journal that you like the look of, to know what anyone else thinks of it. Ask around, maybe read a couple issues (so you know it’s not a fly-by-night)–good work is usually known. Submit to journals you respect, that you’d be proud to appear in, and that oughta be that.
The one exception to the money-doesn’t-matter rule is when you are working towards applying for grants. Both Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council require writers to have a certain number of publications paid in cash (no copies, beer, or love) in order to be eligible for grants. If you plan on seeking grants, this is something to be aware of.
3. What about this simultaneous submission thing?
I’d get more rejections if I could send the same stories to multiple journals at the same time (that’s what a simultaneous submission is, der). But many journals don’t allow that, which is I think a rather author-unfriendly policy, but it’s not my ball; I can’t play by my own rules. Several journals I admire and would love to be published in have that rule, so I suck it up and let them hold my story for 9 months before they reject it and I am free to send it elsewhere.
Not an ideal situation, but better than a) not submitting to journals I admire or b) lying. I have to admit, the tales of simultaneous-submission renegades getting blacklisted/scorned/never published again/shunned at parties are vague and apocryphal, but I still think honesty is the way to go, if only for it’s own sake, and the sake of keeping your submission tracking chart (mine’s in Excel) clean.
If you should screw up and, despite the Excel chart, send something to two places by accident (I’ve done this; Excel is confusing), just write and withdraw one; no need to admit the gaffe and say why, as long as you do it promptly.
4. Are you ready for rejection?
I was terrified to submit to professional publications–and didn’t–for 10 years. There were several reasons for this, but basically it boiled down to the fact that I wasn’t ready to have my work read by strangers, whether by hundreds of subscribers to a journal, or by a single editor flipping idly through her in-box. I didn’t think my work was good enough to stand up to criticism, but also my own little ego wasn’t tough enough to accept rejection and use criticism effectively.
Rejection stings. It makes you doubt your work, your ability to select the correct forum for your work, your ability to judge, and is also just sad and annoying. I used to lose a couple days’ writing time every time I got a “no”, but now it’s down to only a couple hours. The time away from the story actually often gives some distance and insight, and by the time I get the no I might have already figured out what’s wrong with it, and other times I haven’t at all but the kindly feedback in the rejection helps me do so. And yet other times I’ve felt that it was the editor’s loss and I immediately sent the story elsewhere. In all events, the story is exactly what it was before it got rejected, and if it’s not good yet, I generally have faith in myself that I’m capable of making it that way.
Don’t submit until you feel that way. I have been alarmed recently to get several form rejection letters that said, “This rejection does not mean you’re not a good writer,” and in one case (jokingly???) “…a good person.” What kind of rejection responses are those journals getting if they feel they need to include this? Writing is very personal and very important if you do it right, but to keep doing it, one needs at least a little distance. If everyone who ever wrote anything dumb and/or was misunderstood by others let it crush them, there would be no writers left. I get more than 20 rejections a year (not counting grant applications, contest entries or dating)–I can’t afford the time to be blown apart by them.
5. What if I hear nothing?
Most journals have an ETA on responses published in their submissions guidelines, and though it’s hard, it’s pretty much good manners to wait until that time has well and truly passed before emailing to ask what they’ve done with your beautiful story (ie., if they say they’ll get back to you in 6 months, try to get more than a day past that before you email…if possible).
Most editors or assistants or interns will actually go figure it out and tell you if your work has passed to some higher level of editorial deliberation, or if the rejection is in the mail, or what. Occasionally the work is lost, and they have no record of receiving it, which makes that 6-month wait really sting. Even more occasionally, I get no response at all to my query. In that case, I wait a week and then send another note withdrawing the submission, which usually goes unacknowledged, too. Strangely, when this happens, I have twice gotten a rejection letter for the story about two months later. Quel bizarre.
Sidenote: do as I say, not as I do: write down how long you are supposed to wait (three months, six months, whatevs) before querying, and then query after that long. Don’t be like me who carefully logs story submissions, then forgets about them for months and feels like a giant loser writing to a journal to admit I lost track of a story I love for an entire year. Yes, this happens to me.
6. How should I format my work?
I’m not touching this; almost every journal has a very similar set of formating guidelines with one little wonky thing, often to do with headers/footers. Do whatever they say; seriously, it’s respectful and proves you’re not outsmarted by MS Word. If there’s actually nothing given, ok, fine: use the default settings and font on your computer, double-space for prose and single for poetry, your name and the page number on the tope right of every page. Use white paper and envelopes; resist the lure of stickers.
Oh, and be really respectful about maximum word counts. You don’t get far in the editorial community without being able to eyeball a wordcount in 15 seconds, no matter what spacing is used.
I hope that helps…I actually have no idea if it does or not. If I’ve left out something crucial, or am actually doing everything all wrong, please let me know!! It’s fun and exciting and crushing and thrilling to have work in the world and although this post somehow got monsterously long, it’s really not that stressful. Highly recommended, really!
Then begin again
RR
July 31st, 2009
More good stuff
This week is full of good things I can recommend in a quick list, which is good because this week is also scant on time for me to write longer blog posts. So enjoy the fruits of others’ labours:
Annabel Lyon does 12 or 20 with rob mclennan (have I mentioned recently how much I love this series?)
The Hart House Players’ outdoor production of Romeo & Juliet runs until Saturday and is highly highly recommended. The spot on Philospher’s Walk is beautiful and even you know the Walk, you probably haven’t been there before (I hadn’t–there’s a grassy park on top of flight of cement stairs!) Also, and most importantly, the cast as amazing, free and relaxed and passionate, which is how I like to see Shakespeare. They play the characters young and silly and bawdy, and Mercutio and Benvolio’s banter is an especial delight. Another highlight is Juliet, a role that often gets played as a pretty hysteric. Here, Cosette Derome makes the 13-year-old lover human and funny in her giggly ardour, and later in her wretched but wry sorrow. When I looked up Derome in the program, I was surprised-but-not-really to find she’d been in my favourite play of the summer, 36 Little Plays about Hopeless Girls. I wonder what else she’s going to be in…whatever it is, I’d watch it!
Steven W. Beattie‘s desk is now viewable on Desk Space. I also love this series a lot; there are no bounds to my nosiness about fellow writers!
And finally, a while back I talked books and bars with Ian Daffern at the Victory Cafe and Dave Kemp photographed the proceedings. The result is a slideshow feature at Open Book Toronto called Open Bar. I think it’s pretty cool.
Ok, now I’m outie for the holiday. Happy Civ–I promise to write something with real paragraphs next week!
Stay with me / go places
RR
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