Do Yourself a Favor...

If you haven't yet, run out and get Kelly Link's short story collections Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners (or run over to Amazon, that's where I got my copies). Man her stuff is sooo good...

Never mind the fact I bought these a year or two ago and didn't read them till now. Not sure how these things happen but I am pretty sure that judging by my blog's sporadic posts it's pretty clear my time management skills aren't so great.

That said, although I am still super excited about the site Duotrope's Digest, in some ways it makes waiting for responses from magazines even more like watching grass grow. Not that I look forward to getting rejections, but something about seeing in black and white how a submission has been out for like, 94 days or whatever makes it a bit more frustrating! Still, it's worth it, what a great tool.

LLB

Happy 2007!

I find it a little bit amusing that my last post, back in September, was called "Sure is Quiet," and then I stopped posting for three months. LOL. The last couple months it's been hard to keep up with everything. But, let's get on with things, shall we...

However, in keeping with New Year's literary resolutions, I ran across a great (free) site, called Duotrope. If you're an aspiring writer, please check it out! It allows you to look up markets, according to a great many criteria, and just that part is cool. But even cooler, is, you can use its submission tracker to keep track of your submissions (duh) as well as easily ascertain if your pieces were accepted/rejected in, say, less than the average response time, or maybe more than the average response time, and it'll be alert you if maybe it's time to follow up with specific markets (due to your piece being there longer than average). Each market has great stats on acceptance vs. rejection ratios, the percentage that get personalized responses, etc.

This is an awesome tool that's long overdue what with all the community intelligence services out there -- and I have to say, the more of us who participate on the site, the smarter the Duotrope service will become. So let's all do it!

Here's to a successful 2007 in writing and all other endeavors!

LLB

Sure Is Quiet

It sure is quiet around here. Then again, like I'm one to talk. Work's a little much right now so I haven't gotten much reading or fiction writing done.

Does anyone know of any literary magazines that are similar in tone and sensibility to Gargoyle? I'd appreciate any feedback if anyone has any.

Thanks for reading,

LLB

Food For Thought

In one of my recent posts I was a little bit snarky about Poets & Writers magazine. However, on further reading I have to say I'm enjoying the most recent issue (the September/October issue).

One article I enjoyed was by Azita Osanloo, who discussed the recent interest in memoirs and autobiographical literature in the publishing world as well as the "pressure to be exotic" driving that interest as well. Should who you are and what you represent be seen as the most important element (and indeed, the most marketable element) of your writing endeavors? Osanloo provides a frank discussion of that idea, and also points out the sort of sensationalistic interest in memoirs as part of her article as well. Maybe the artist really should stay behind the scenes when it comes to literature. Osanloo addresses such issues as writers "selling themselves" as well as the recent scandal involving Kaavya Viswanathan. It's a good article and makes some excellent points as to the nature of literature and the artist.

I also enjoyed an article by Ken Gordon, called "The Posthumous Pickle." It deals with the sticky business of editors publishing famous artists' works posthumously. Maybe it's sort of morbid of me, but I have often thought that if I were to leave a will, I'd want to leave my unpublished works to some responsible, literary friend who would be kind of enough to take an interest in trying to get my finished stories published. However, the article discusses the ethics of publishing pieces that the artist might never have intended being published -- and that does seem a bit sticky. After all, we've all got crazy unfinished works or stories that maybe we finished but knew should never see the light of day. It really made me think about what we might innocently leave behind that we would never want others to see. It really made me think a lot (as well as think about how I'm a packrat with story drafts -- even though it's all digital, I can't bear to throw even the worst stuff away!). Of course this is probably not something I should worry about seeing how nobody's exactly beating down my door to publish my stuff now, but it's interesting food for thought for anybody who has set their sights on a literary career.

Anyway, I thought I'd mention the articles since they're both interesting reading and thought-provoking subjects that some of us would likely enjoy pondering, at the very least.

Thanks for reading and keep on writing,

LLB

Turning a New Page

I haven't dug too deeply into the Web site NewPages, but I stumbled across a great tool for writers there -- a very thorough listing that links to many of the most well-known literary magazines' Web sites. Check it out... It's a great place to look around for any magazines you haven't hit with submissions.

Hey, it's September. That means a lot of literary magazines are open to submissions again after the summer doldrums (although I am also noticing a fair amount this year that aren't open to submissions until October). At any rate, it's time for us aspiring writers to get busy again, in terms of submitting, right? I just wish I had some inspiration for new stories, but at the moment the only ones I have kicking around in my head or on my desktop don't really have that "spark." I hope others are feeling more inspired right about now!

Thanks for reading and keep on writing,

LLB

Put on a Pedestal

All right, last time around I was beating up on Poets & Writers a bit but I did run across what looked like an interesting online literary magazine in its pages, called The Pedestal Magazine.

I admit, I've never heard of it, and I didn't find a listing for it on the most recent Novel & Short Story Writer's Market. However, apparently it's been around since late 2000. It also pays writers it publishes.

I really enjoyed the introduction to the fiction section by Nathan Leslie. He discussed what has been a prominent literary trend for quite some time now (I actually am not crazy about it), confessional/self-expression in fiction, and compared it to intellectual detachment of the T.S. Eliot variety. I highly recommend reading the piece, it does give some good food for thought. (And of course, for those of us who aren't crazy about highly personal, confessional fiction, it seems like it's still pretty well ensconced, since it does segue well with the current fascination with reality TV, documentaries, and memoirs, as he points out in his exploration.) At any rate, I appreciated that he brought up the subject, it's a good one for writers to mull over.

Meanwhile, I did enjoy several of the stories I read there, in particular "The Real Story" by Jim O'Loughlin.

The Pedestal Magazine also publishes poetry, and has an online art gallery and bookstore (more specifically, it lists books by authors it has published that can be purchased from Amazon). It's well worth a look.

Thanks for reading and keep on writing,

LLB

Lorraine Has Left the Building Already

I just got the latest issue of Poets & Writers in the mail, and as usual, flipped immediately to the back, to the call for submissions section. I was interested to see that they're still running the ad for Lorraine and James, despite the fact that that Internet publication has had a note up on their Web site for months, saying it's on hiatus for an unspecified amount of time, maybe even forever. (I posted about this recently, when ranting about submissions that go unanswered for months).

I have to wonder if Poets & Writers has enough people doing research and fact checking. I'd say many writers are mostly interested in the magazine as a resource for researching new markets, and for that reason I'd think they'd fact check those listings in the back to make sure they're still up and running. Maybe advertisers pay for ad space for large blocks of time, but regardless, I'd say a writer would be much better served not to run up against a lot of dead ends. Even if the advertiser paid for the ad in advance, if it no longer exists, couldn't there be some sort of notation across the ad that says the magazine is now on hiatus? It doesn't seem to me that it would be that difficult to do and would be a much better tool for writers to know not to even bother with that market.

Maybe I'm being a little harsh and ignoring the business elements here, and after all we do all have our own responsibilities to do our own research into literary markets, but when you pay for a subscription to a magazine like Poets & Writers, you want to find a lot of useful tools there. Situations like this remind me that I don't always feel I'm getting that experience.

Thanks for reading and keep on writing,

LLB