A New York Minute?

I think "a New York minute" means "fast." For The New Yorker, I think maybe there's no such thing when it comes to fiction submissions. In the horrifically long while since I last posted, I sent another submission to The New Yorker (I guess it's just a dumb habit I have when I have a new story I'm psyched about), and never received a response. When I queried, they simply responded they never received it (it was a canned response about receiving so many submissions, yadda yadda), and that I could send it again if I wanted to. You know, this was after, like, months and months and months and months. 

I don't know, you'd think they'd at least use the wonders of technology to do a search for it, but no, you can resend it and get back in the queue (which apparently is a bit disorganized if stuff just goes missing). (Speaking of the wonders of technology, so many journals now have online submission systems, but last I knew, The New Yorker still uses old-fashioned email. Better than paper-only submissions, but it seems weird to me.)

That's so completely sub-optimal, which is ironic for a major magazine that publishes short stories and is considered one of the gold standard publications for fiction writers. Not that you can break in there anyway if you're a nobody, I guess, but at least they could keep up the illusion that they actually give some kind of a crap. 

Oh well. Unfortunately The New Yorker is such a renowned publication (that actually pays, the exception to the rule) that I'm sure I will keep up with my strange little ritual (tic?) of throwing stuff their way, and probably get abused in that manner again, probably sometime soon. It's part of my philosophy that tenacity is the only way to get anywhere in this business, but that doesn't make it less irritating. I mean, respect might be nice, even in the slush pile. 

LLB