Lit Journal General

Did the ploughshares and tin house publications have anything to do with connections, etc? Or were they just good slush pile submissions?

I wonder what counts as "a lot" of rejections these days. I'm somewhere around fifteen.

damn, that's pretty impressive. But you've published in lower-tier journals as well, right? Or did you jump straight into Tin House?

Does it look bad to publish in low tier places? Or are all publications better-than-nothing?

I'd say to start at the bottom and then ttry to work your way up. No point in having 50 stories out there if they're all in shitty journals nobody reads.

No they were just submitted. I have an MFA but from a not-very-good place, and my connections haven't amounted to much help publishing yet. I've been introduced to editors etc but nothing concrete yet (besides a year long VAP position at a liberal arts school this coming year, which hey, no complaints).

MFA from what school, if you don't mind my asking? Also, any advice for an aspiring MFA'er? Applied last year with no results, giving it a second chance this year.

Yeah, the tin house thing hasn't come out yet. Started in meh tier places. I also have like more than 50 rejections. I've lost count.

Do you guys use duotrope or submittable?

Sorry meant to reply to you MFA from Arkansas. My suggestion: don't go into debt. Be smart in your applications. Contact recent graduates. Don't go into debt. See if the faculty actually mentor people or if they are just drunk narcissists. What do you want to do? If the answer is teach and you aren't going to Iowa, go somewhere where you will have lots of opportunities to teach. Preferably your own courses not just ta'ing. Ideally a course where you can design the syllabus.

>Don't go into debt

Most people are already in debt from their undergrad years.

I meant further into debt, which should be pretty obvious.

Go somewhere with funding. I managed to do a lot lot lot of teaching and got tuition remission. I was poor as fuck and worked an insane amount but didn't have to pay for my degree

>duotrope
Duo was good back when it was free, now I use thgrind, not as good but still pretty useful.

I would only attend if I were to get full funding, not going into debt for that. I just want a writing-intensive period to focus on my craft (lol sounds so cliched). Can you share any of your good/bad experiences in the program?

>more than 50 rejections
Do you submit a story to multiple publications and just wait, or do you send to one, receive a rejection, and then submit again? Also, if the former, do you mention it in the cover letter?

Most journals say "multiple submissions accepted" or something like that, which means you can send the same story to multiple places, and as soon as it is accepted somewhere, you notify the rest and cancel the submission. No need to mention it in the cover letter.

Right most places let you submit to more than one place. It isn't like academic journals where you can only submit to one journal at a time.

Simply not true.

Serious question, who the fuck reads lit journals?

publishers and people very involved in their local Veeky Forums scene.

its pretty much a filter to see if you can hang with the big boys

Some have pretty wide circulation and more people will read a story published in the Paris review or tin house than a novel you publish, even with a really good press like fsg

Hang with the big boys, what does this mean? Get published by a big publishing house?

More or less.

Get published by a literary press.

You know that this isn't true, right? Far, far more important that a submission comes from an agent...

(And LOADS of agents accept unsolicited shit)

Guess I have some research to do.

What an astonishing response. You know you can tell me to kill myself and stuff right?

This is unprecedented.

lol I'm not afraid of being wrong, its all good

Y'all are sweet

I've heard that with the places that accept simultaneous submissions you're supposed to mention that you're submitting whatever it is to other places as well in your cover letter as a courtesy so it doesn't come as a surprise if you get accepted somewhere else and cancel.

But seriously. Buy the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook. You'll find plenty of agents to get rejected by.

If an agent reads good sample chapters, which they think they can sell, they are not going to change their mind when they see the submission has come from someone who has not published anything.

This is the paradox that people think is there. But it isn't there at all. Write something actually good and marketable and it'll probably sell somewhere. The statistics are skewed by countless retards writing absolute garbage.

(I am a published children's author).

Sweet, thanks user. This will be helpful.

I don't normally do this. I also worked briefly as an assistant editor at a literary journal and it wasn't that common.

Good luck, reasonable stranger.

>cliffordgarstang.com/?p=4777
You son of a bitch. Who'd you sleep with?

Lots of people, but no one in the literary world who has helped me at all

>good and marketable
You underestimate how much the second part of that detracts from the first. And really, what the fuck would you even know about the problems with publishing if you only write books for kids?

I read some of them.

Children's books have to be published, sold etc in exactly the same way as other books. There is basically no difference. They just end up in a slightly different part of the shop.

But you're right about the good versus marketable issue. That's the balance writers have to find - it's obviously difficult to be both. Unless they don't care about getting published, in which case none of this is relevant.

any other great resources for us aspiring writers out there?