William Preston ([info]ladislaw) wrote,
@ 2008-07-01 14:33:00
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Writing and waiting
I'm working, in my fits-and-starts little-at-a-time way, on the novel, The Drowned Book. It's come quite a distance from its conception; in fact, it looks almost nothing like the original idea. Even as I proceed with it now, it reshapes itself, plotwise (which I'm glad to say is largely sorted out, though the end is open to seismic changes), in terms of voice and tone (which do seem to have settled into something I like a lot), and in its structure. The challenge is in living up to the aims I have for the work--or perhaps I should say the aims the work has for me.

I have eight stories out right now. I know exactly when I'll hear about one of them, since it's at a contest that will announce its results on August 31 (yeah, of this year, wiseacre). As for the rest, who knows? By summer's end, I hope to have heard about most of them. My stories, in order of how long ago I sent them out, are at:

A Public Space
McSweeney's
Massachusetts Review
Story Quarterly
Vestal Review
crazyhorse
Stone Canoe
Glimmer Train (contest)

I did finish among the finalists in a Glimmer Train contest for very short fiction several years ago (whereas, near as I can tell, I've never come close to being published there).

Please note: Since the inappropriately posted rejection letter was removed by the person who posted it, I also removed all related commentary. Sorry if that's a problem for anyone, but I think people have probably said their piece, if not here then elsewhere.

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[info]abbotofunreason
2008-07-01 07:37 pm UTC (link)
One more to consider, perhaps--the First-Person Contest at Narrative Magazine online.

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[info]ladislaw
2008-07-01 07:55 pm UTC (link)
Thanks for flagging that.

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[info]selfavowedgeek
2008-07-01 08:12 pm UTC (link)
Best of luck with that roster of subs. I'll say that you'll probably hear fairly fast from Vestal Review.

Keep at that novel. Among you, Clint, Marguerite, and me and a few other LJ friends who may or may not be on our mutuals list, it sounds like the summer of the novel. Which sounds like the title of a hokey Hallmark Sunday Night Movie.

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[info]ladislaw
2008-07-01 08:21 pm UTC (link)
Re: Vestal Review: I've had a piece of flash fiction with them since 5/12. That doesn't seem like a long wait to me, but do you think that's slower than usual?

"The Summer of the Novel." A group of friends gathers at a summer house to work on their books in relative peace. But old conflicts--and new passions--stir the pot in the idyllic setting, until they all become not just a more complex part of each other's lives, but also a part of each other's stories. Featuring a soundtrack that'll soak you in nostalgia and a cameo by Kevin Costner as the friend who will never get the chance to finish his book.

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[info]selfavowedgeek
2008-07-01 08:31 pm UTC (link)
"since 5/12"--OUCH. Er, ignore previous comment. I sent some flash fiction to them a month ago and got rejects on all three pieces inside two weeks. Have you politely queried?

That TV Guide-esque synopsis is tops! Besides Kevin Costner, let's add his film-mate from Open Range (one of my top ten fave Westerns)--Robert Duvall as the incorrigible, crotchety local small press publisher/editor playing mentor to the youngest writer of the group and who dies in a barfight but had the foresight to redo his will so as to bequeath his duties at the small press to aforementioned young upstart crow.

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[info]ladislaw
2008-07-01 08:50 pm UTC (link)
"Have you politely queried?"

Nope. Like I said, that seems like a short wait, relative to most journals. I'll look into it. Thanks.

As for Duvall...so who's the youngest writer of the group? Are you angling for that role?! I'll let it go as long as Costner still plays a dead character. That remains his finest work.

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[info]selfavowedgeek
2008-07-01 09:00 pm UTC (link)
No, not angling for that role. I'm more of the Cheeky, Fraternal Guy (in credits) who chews up scenery with smart remarks as a coping mechanism, especially when functioning as a sounding board for despondent members of the group.

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[info]ladislaw
2008-07-01 09:20 pm UTC (link)
Let me guess: You get the big breakdown/weepy scene with the camera slowly moving in while you sit alone on a large sofa, confessing everything.

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[info]selfavowedgeek
2008-07-01 11:01 pm UTC (link)
Exactly! I'm this movie's everyman! I'm this movie's Voice Over guy!

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[info]ladislaw
2008-07-01 11:36 pm UTC (link)
As long as you aren't also its deus ex machina.

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[info]silk_noir
2008-07-06 11:43 pm UTC (link)
Do you look like Paul Rudd?

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Alas,
[info]selfavowedgeek
2008-07-07 01:18 am UTC (link)
no. More like Jason Biggs from American Pie; however, I don't like apple pie _that_ much.

But, yeah, Jason Biggs.

With the martial sensibilities of Sho Kosugi.

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[info]ladislaw
2008-07-01 08:55 pm UTC (link)
The Vestal Review site (and Duotrope) says to give them three months. I see from Duotrope that rejections (not surprisingly) came back a lot faster than acceptances. Maybe I'm still in the running.

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[info]selfavowedgeek
2008-07-01 08:58 pm UTC (link)
Good deal, then. Ignore the polite query bit, in that event.

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[info]ladislaw
2008-07-01 09:21 pm UTC (link)
Admit it. You were trying to RUIN my chances!

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[info]selfavowedgeek
2008-07-01 10:51 pm UTC (link)
Well, you caught me playing both sides against the middle. That way, we could have even more snottin' and whinin' over at the forum . . .

Yes, I said it. Unabashedly.

Bill, if you have no other fans of YOUR sense of humor, at least count me in.

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[info]ladislaw
2008-07-01 11:35 pm UTC (link)
"Bill, if you have no other fans of YOUR sense of humor, at least count me in."

Well, I'm a fan...

Yeah, that Asimov's forum has become sad. But it's all one person. And it's refreshing to see everyone taking turns to point out that he's a cretin. Everyone getting together against a common enemy--it's enough to make you believe in fascism.

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[info]selfavowedgeek
2008-07-01 10:53 pm UTC (link)
Good deal. You might just. Vestal Review seems a tough nut to crack, anyhow. Uber-good quality flash/micro-fictive efforts.

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[info]ladislaw
2008-07-01 11:49 pm UTC (link)
Also: Sorry to hear about your rejection.

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[info]selfavowedgeek
2008-07-02 12:04 am UTC (link)
Thank you. But it's already back on the market! I subbed it to an anthology invite where I was going to send a different zombie story set in the South, so I guess it works either way. And, please, have a look at my two entries today, particularly the latest one regarding an encounter with my son over the rejection and re-marketing of the story. He floored me.

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Non-Genre Markets
[info]solipcyst.blogspot.com
2008-07-02 11:01 pm UTC (link)
How different are your submissions to genre and non-genre markets? (Beyond not having SFnal elements, of course...)

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Re: Non-Genre Markets
[info]ladislaw
2008-07-03 01:04 am UTC (link)
You know, Luke, the first time you visit someone, you should ask the person an easy question, like, "Since there's no such thing as a smooth surface, and the more exacting one's measuring tool, the more one finds to measure, making every surface of infinite length, is the universe a finite construct containing infinities?"

That one I could at least ballpark.

I started formulating a long answer, but I'll spare us both (and anyone else listening). The two published SF stories I have were not written as SF stories, with an SF audience or market in mind (with this qualification: the final version of the second story, "Close," on which I'd worked for many years, took its shape entirely because making certain changes suddenly made it a genre story). I had never submitted to an SF publication until I wrote "You Will Go to the Moon" and had no idea where else to send it. My prize-winning story "A Crisis for Mr. Lion" was not conceived of as for a fantasy audience; it's a fantasy, but I simply wrote it as the story I wanted it to be, without any sense of a publication or audience, and its award came from a mainstream publication.

Subsequently, I've written and submitted several SF and fantasy stories to the usual places, without success. Those stories were specifically written with those audiences in mind. My non-genre work, which has been the vast bulk of my writing life (though as a kid I wrote some SF), is not haunted, I think, by this notion of an audience in the same way. I am still trying to sort this out, actually, but, at present, this seems the case to me.

I think I try just as hard on the genre stories; I've certainly rewritten things many times and submitted them to several places. I've aimed to make the stories good as stories and to make the writing just as interesting to me. There's something, however, less . . . natural? . . .about the production of these tales. They're less truthful. In them, anything is possible; it is not a universe I recognize. I can enjoy reading such things and coming up with the ideas, but I may be out of my element in the execution.

This is not to say that my non-genre stuff is what you might call ordinary. Every story seems very different to me; every story has represented a different narrative risk for me. They are variously funny or sad or painful or--one of them, much to my surprise--uplifting. If they're different than the genre stuff, maybe they're only really different in that they seem to be better.

Check back in a few years to see what I say then.

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Re: Non-Genre Markets
[info]solipcyst.blogspot.com
2008-07-03 03:57 pm UTC (link)
Oops-- I should have at least doffed my hat and said hello before throwing you a curveball question like that one. :)

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I was basically asking in an attempt to figure out these crazy, crazy markets. Some people think of writing as more of an art, others as more of a trade.. you seem to be more in the first category? It's refreshing that you don't seem to be overly concerned with flavoring your fiction to editorial taste.

I was wondering if there were substantive general differences between the genre and non-genre markets because some people are extremely genre-bound whereas I find the boundaries rather mushy. I've had strange experiences, such as having a story submitted to Interzone called a very good SF story but then having Helix rejecting it because it's not an SF story whatsoever. But then there are plenty of mainstream places that publish things that might be genre, from the New Yorker to Fence and Conjunctions, and non-SFnal work is published in several of the genre mags.. !

Ah, to see inside the mind of the editor.

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Re: Non-Genre Markets
[info]ladislaw
2008-07-03 05:41 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, I see writing as an art, a craft that has its own existence outside of me. ... Or something. It seems to run counter to my personality to approach it as a trade. Maybe I just don't have any interest in making money with it, or rather I don't expect to.

Mainstream places certainly publishes stories with genre elements. As I've often pointed out at the Asimov's forum, American short fiction is built on such elements. Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Bierce--these guys wrote crazy stuff! Literary fiction does not equal realistic fiction. Both of my stories that got into Asimov's were called, by the editor, "barely SF." (I do wonder about your Helix rejection; it seems like, whether it fits very well into a genre category, it still should be undeniable whether or not something have SFal elements.

It does seem important to me to have some sense of what kinds of things certain genre mags want--if they're very narrow, like sf horror rather than broad sf. Literary journals tell you all the time to "read a copy to get a sense of what we like." I have never been able to figure out "what we like" from an issue or two of something.

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