The Broken Clepsydra

I’ve decided to write a novel.

I can’t say it will be good or bad. I can’t say whether people will like it or not. I’ll just do my best and what comes, will come.

Up until now I written mostly short stories and flash never wandering too deep into the water so to speak and I can’t say that my decision was based purely on my knowledge that my sister has contracted brain cancer.

Not the friendly sort of co-existent tumor that lodges itself into one part of your body or another and gradually sucks the life out of you like my mom died of, but the nasty rat bastard type that lives inside that place your skull where you live, where you exist as a human being.

I can’t say that I wasn’t pissed, that I didn’t rail at that asshole people call God or that I didn’t cry after I learned.

My sister is probably the most alive person I know. She runs a couple miles a day, ski’s whenever she can, hikes all over the friggin’ place and eats like a health food nut. On top of it all she’s the head nurse of pediatric surgery at her hospital.

What a strange, fucked up God it is that gives her Glioblastoma, the same brain cancer that killed old dumpster head Ted Kennedy.

I saw her this weekend after they operated on her to remove what they could. I was happy to see that she was still there; some problems with motor skills and numbers, but the thing that makes her unique, that thing living in all of us that makes us individuals still lives inside her and didn’t have to be cut away like some wilted leaf.

She was good. We spent the day at her pool soaking up the sun of a perfect August day.

And even though I made my decision before I was armed with this knowledge, I’m going to write that novel. Not because she will die one day, like we all will, but because she lives, like we all do; one step away from oblivion.

So I’ll write that novel and what will become of it, who can say.

I’ll just do my best and what comes, will come.

Engine Misfire

I’ve joined a few submission engines as of late. Most, like submishmash or Hey Publisher, are required to submit to certain mags.

I really like the idea of uploading a piece in a required format and then quickly sending it to the mag that piques your interest. It seems as though it takes some of the stress out of formatting, cover letter and the other ad naseum things you must include.

The problem is that each of these two has no real search engine. So to use them to find a publication you’d like to submit to is really a waste of time. The only way to do is to search for a publication, go to Duotropes’ and find response times and payment amounts, if any, nip over to their site, see if it works for you and read a story or two, then go back to the submission engine and repeat this as necessary; usually a month or two between submissions.

(I had one “reputable” publication tell me they were interested in a piece, when in actuality they just tabled it until they came back after a hiatus and opened submissions again holding my work hostage for almost three months.)

It takes longer to place a story then to write it in some cases.

These submission engines should take a cue for this and link all multiple submission engines under one link. With one click you should be able to submit to all of their paid or unpaid publications and then let those publications send you offers.

I’m under no illusion that all of my stories are great, and that some of them might not even be good and so spending hours attempting to get them published instead of writing is a waste of time. If I could find a one stop multiple submission resource, I’d love it.

BTW, occasionally you may have to withdraw a submission.  When you do so, be a professional. Tell them in a simple, perfunctory fashion that your work has been picked up somewhere and that you appreciate their time. Don’t send one like this;

Hey Folks,

Although it’s been an enjoyable ride over the past year or so, I’m going to have to withdraw my story, Discovery, from consideration.

After a non-response sub and query it makes me wonder what’s going on there.

I’m not really sure who runs your submission department, but I’m pretty sure I saw them with neon pink Krylon paint adorning their faces on the People of Wal-Mart.

(My favorite BTW is the lady who wore no shirt, but her tits were so saggy she tucked them into the top of her pants…)

I was so put out by your amateur level of incompetence that I took some time to check out Duotrope’s regarding your publication;

Responses (70.00 %) Acceptances: 5.00 % (0 avg. days per acceptance) Rejections: 65.00 % (47.1 avg. days per rejection) | 61.54 % personal, 23.08 % form, 15.38 % unspecified Rewrite Requests: – Non-Responses (30.00 %) Lost / Never Responded: 10.00 % (142 avg. days before reporting submissions as lost or never responded) Author Withdrawals: 20.00 % (116 avg. days per withdrawal by author)

Withdrawals count as responses, so you lose around 50%.

There are two alternatives when it comes to this. One, you are so idiotically incompetent that you can’t send back an e-mail that say’s “No Thanks”  or you just delete them off-hand when you don’t like them.

I would hope that you are not so arrogant that you’d just delete someone’s work like that, so I’ll just continue on thinking you’re incontinent editors.

Good Luck,

Carter Peters

This is not the way to handle or write a thing like this. Burning bridges is the easiest way to find your self on an island.

But it does feel good and sometimes you want to be alone.

You Must Submit!

If you’re going to submit, you’re going to get rejections. It’s part of the whole dynamic of writing. Most of these you can’t take personally, even though most you’re bound to.

They can range for insulting to, believe it or not, good.

Dear Pete,

Thank you for submitting ‘Of Cabbages and Cribbage’ to Redstone Science Fiction.  We are going to pass on your story.
Your story is well-written, and you turn the idea of the ‘man in the machine’ around quite well. Ultimately it’s not the type of story we are looking to publish, it has more of an ‘Alfred Hitchcock presents’ feel to it, but we did enjoy it.

We liked the attitude in your story and hope to see more of your work. We’re next open for submissions in May, and look forward to hearing from you then.

This is the best rejection I’ve ever received. Silly to say that, but it’s well thought out, succinct and expresses real rational reasons for rejection. A class act.

That was followed by this rejection to a different publication;

Dear Peter,

Thank you for the opportunity to read “On Cabbages and Cribbage.” Unfortunately, your story isn’t quite what we’re looking for right now.

In the future, we’d appreciate it if you formatted the story in standard manuscript format (SMF). You can find out more about SMF here: http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html

Sincerely,

As if somewhere in the future, they are going to be stuck for a story to finish an issue and then, out of the blue, “I Got It! A story I rejected a few years ago and told him the time wasn’t right for it. It will be perfect!”

And on top of that what he added, on the patterned form rejection,  makes it sounds as if he wants me to format and send “the story” again. As if the editor of a sci-fi magazine where anti gravity is common place and physics is a play thing of man can’t figure out how to open a .docx instead of a .doc.

But then there is something much worst than rejection. Something that even the “No thanks” response (which sometimes is the best of all) pales before. That is the non-response.

You wonder day-after-day after checking your in box if they even received it. And if they did receive it, why didn’t they send you anything? So you wait until the query date and then finally you send something else out;

Dear Editor’s,

I just thought I’d write a note and find out how you and my story are getting along. I couldn’t really get a good indicator from the site as to how long I should wait, so at the risk of being pushy I’d thought I’d drop a line.

I hate to bother you because we both know you’re busy with your Bizzaro site to run, magazines to publish and hanging out with all your friends at Bizzarro.con, but  it’s just we worry about you sometimes. Worried that you’re eating right, getting enough sleep and taking care of that thing you’re supposed to be taking care of we promised never to talk about again.

I open the .doc file the other night and caught it sitting on the edge hard drive sniffling a bit. I asked if something was wrong and it said, “Nothing”, but we both know that sometimes there is an adjustment period. Perhaps a sense of loss that happens when something’s gone and you think about everything you could have done before sending a submission out into the world. It’s something you never get over.

In a way, I suppose that the world’s a big, ugly place full of leaking black slush and the light at the end of the tunnel is only that way because it’s radioactive. We know. After a while you find out the glow is pretty and the tunnel’s pretty friggin’ cool.

Take care,

Carter J Peters*

In this day in age multiple sites out there are handling the submission process; this should never happen. Gone, should be, the age where editors divide submissions between slush readers and hope that none are lost or dealt with improperly.

For those of you interested, here are the stats from Duotrope on the “Magazine for Bizzaro Fiction”;

Responses (70.00 %) Acceptances: 5.00 % (0 avg. days per acceptance) Rejections: 65.00 % (47.1 avg. days per rejection) | 61.54 % personal, 23.08 % form, 15.38 % unspecified Rewrite Requests: – Non-Responses (30.00 %) Lost / Never Responded: 10.00 % (142 avg. days before reporting submissions as lost or never responded) Author Withdrawals: 20.00 % (116 avg. days per withdrawal by author)

Withdrawals count as responses, so they lose around 50%.

Damn….

I should have done a better job looking into a site before I submitted. Your work is your baby. Make sure you are not leaving on the roof of the car as you drive away.

*(Yes, the answer is for those few, if any, who read this, this is in response to the submission I sent out here http://carterpete.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/please-dont-publish/)

Writer’s Building Blocks

I’ve been blocked lately.  For some writers it can be agony; the inability to express oneself and a bottling of a required emotion outlet. For me, it’s been different.  I’ve become ranked in the top 200 for angry birds.

(out of 9,284,000 players)

 

But I think I’ve come to an understanding about my block and coming to terms with that has helped me to start writing again.

I’m utilitarian by nature. That is to say that if I have something, I have a deep seeded interest in using that thing somehow.

 

Let’s not confuse that with hoarders. Hoarders hang onto things regardless of their chances of ever using it and in some cases, when the opportunity comes to use this item, refuse to because it would deplete their resources.

Utilitarian people can see something of a worth in every item and discard it only if no worth can be instantly recognizable and none can be seen down the road.

The problem for me is that I’m a writer.

I have gads of stuff that will never be published and sits frozen and dusty in my document file. What do I do with it?

In a way I understand that those pieces were exercises that I did to sharpen my skills and their intrinsic worth lies in nothing more than that. But, I can’t just delete them.

 

You might say,” Well, leave them there! Who are they bothering?”, in which case you understand nothing of my sickness.

 

I’m compelled to either erase them from my files or entertain the fact that they might be able to be ‘repaired’ to be publishable. ( I did actually publish a story that I thought was good, but couldn’t find the right market in http://www.amazon.com/Faeries-Anthology-Chris-Bartholomew/dp/1617060631/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300627715&sr=1-1 )

 

But, in many cases that is impossible. After a few years of experimenting, I’ve come to the realization that there is no ‘fixing’ a story. It is what it is, for good or bad. You may be able to fix grievous errors in grammar and dynamics, but the core of that story, it’s soul, has been cast.

 

The utilitarian in me kept gnawing at my guts seeing those pieces there and I found myself wasting countless hours revisiting them like checking a cow patty looking for good grain. So for a lark I stole a piece of a story to bridge another I was writing. Then I used the opener in another for a different one. I started to feel better about those tarnished tomes.

I realized that those stories held dusty in my .docs were my junkyard. A junkyard I could wander around in the afternoon picking up this part or that and turning it over to see if it will fit.

This seemed to satisfy my utilitarian self. Knowing that I may not be able to use all the parts of every car in my junkyard, but pieces of them will live on in anything I write.

Now if I can only figure a way to crush the unused bits into a coffee table.

Please Don’t Publish

I saw some marvelous submission instructions yesterday. They said , “Please do not respond to rejection letters, even just to say “Thanks for the quick turnaround” etc. We appreciate the thought, but it is unnecessary and will just clutter up our editorial inbox. Most rejections will be sent out within two business days, while stories being seriously considered may be held for up to two weeks.”

My first thought was to include a note along with my submission saying I would never thank them for rejecting me, so please don’t bother sending one.

As a matter of fact, the longer it takes for them to respond, the better your chances are. So, I could tell them to never contact me again. That way there is always the chance that they will publish it.

My story will become the Schrodinger’s cat of the publishing world. And then it hit me, what if I could get the The New Yorker or Glimmer Train to hold one of my stories forever (as if they don’t already).  It could become a cross between published and limbo…

Pimbo? Limblished? Publimblished? What a minute…EXO-published!

For a small fee I can exopublish that for you with the Atlantic Monthly Journal. Think…

“All the submission people at the New Yorker love my story and have tacked my story up on the wall.”

Every major publishing outlet would have a huge refrigerator where they could post stories and in return each writer would get a golden star to wear on their head.

So armed with that knowledge, I sent out my submission;

Dear Editors,

I would like to submit my latest story, Discovery, to your publication. You have tons of slush to read and I’ll not bore you with my bio.

Thanks for your time,

Pete Carter

Ps; not sure if you prefer embedded or attached, so I embedded it as a .docx. LMK if this is a poor choice caused by inadequacies in rule following and reading comprehension which I scored quite low on in the Iowa Test. Why do they call it the Iowa Test anyways? ( It’s a test public schools used to administer in the form of sheets of multiple choice ovals only able to be filled out with a number 2 pencil (ominous name, btw. Can you wash off that pencil first?)).

Is Iowa that boring that people only speak in grunts and squeaks and strange ovalistist linguistics? If so, who ever thought they should be the best judges of reading comprehension?  Perhaps it’s a double negative. They could specialize in “Reading Incomprehension”. And if they can, in fact, gather sufficient information to understand what you are trying to relay to them, then it must be incomprehensible to the literary society in general and you must fail.

The only person I ever knew that claimed they were from Iowa was Radar O’Reilly, which was portrayed by Gary Burghoff, who was the only person to portray the same person in the movie as the TV show (M.A.S.H.). He specialized in filling out army documents as a company clerk and possessed psychic abilities to alert them that choppers with wounded were arriving. He also portrayed some mind reading skills which he used to control Henry Blake.

Gary Burghoff was trying to tell us something, which he reinforced with a few seasons on Match Game, although the producers tried to thwart him by carefully placing him next to the government’s top agent in Hollywood, Charles Nelson Reilly. (What else can explain his presence there?)

Obviously, Iowa didn’t exist previous to the Roswell crash and was carefully created by the government as a home to farming Extraterrestrials. (Meaning they like to farm, not that they grow them)

If you are from Iowa or know Gary Burghoff, I apologize.

PJC

I haven’t heard back from them.

Death of an Editor

The problem with writing stories is that you have to do something with them after you’re done. After all the editing, work-shopping and paring down, you have to do something with it.

I suppose you can just post them on the internet to catch the occasion passer-by or family and friends you beg to read. I thinks this is something akin to a great big refrigerator that’s cluttered with work pasted with shiny ‘A’ s hanging forevermore.

The other option is to submit to magazines.

There are some good ones and bad ones. Most are buried up to their necks in slush (codeword for literary shit). I think the real problem is that most writers think they can write and most editors think they can write as well.

I sent out a story and received this rejection;

Sorry Friend,

Unfortunately, we won’t be using your piece in an upcoming issue. I encourage you to submit more however.

Good Luck,

Conrad Taylor
Atomic Chipmunk

This put me off. Firstly asking for more and secondly calling me ‘friend’.  I’m not your friend. If you’d accepted my story, we may have become acquaintances, gradually growing into a tenuous acknowledgment where we could exchange Christmas cards.

But you rejected my piece, so at this point I’d say our friendship is in some real danger.

So I replied;

Dear Conrad,

You may want to read this,

http://www.diabolicalplots.com/?p=1367

Some really good tips on how to write a rejection slip. I think rule #6 is
applicable in this case,

Thanks,

complete-stranger-who-doesn’t-know-you

(the embedded link is to Chris Miller’s excellent piece that should be required reading for all editors)

And received this back;

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.

Unable to deliver message to the following recipients, due to being unable to connect successfully to the destination mail server.

atomicchipmunklit@astrapublications.com

Yes, they closed down. While this publication was sending out rejections calling writers ‘friend’ and asking for more, they’re busy walking through the house turning out the lights.

Some friend.

Reading the Paper

Reading the paper…

I read the paper every day. and am always amazed and mystified at the news but with the word selection for headlines;

Crow Poison Planned Killed

Some marvelous scientist came up with the idea to protect the endangered Piping Plovers by poisoning crows which can eat their eggs. Let’s kill birds to save the birds.

Church Leader Vows to Help Homeless

Standing headline. Vowing has really never done shit. Millions of churches and clergy help people all over the world. Many don’t vow, they do it.

Infrastructure Plans Could Improve Quality of Life

Then again, it could totally make life suck.

Jury Asks Judge about Insanity Defense

Not a good sign in traffic court.

Teen Stabs Mom Over Cell Phone

I thought sending pictures over the phone was complicated.

Students Get a Taste of the Aquatic Life

Salty

Collision sends SUV careening into greenhouse

Sweet irony

US Debt Like ‘Cancer’

 

I prefer to think of it like a lot of money we owe…more like alcoholism.

Centenarian Lends a Helping Hand

I hope they give it back after they’re done.

Energy Group Powers Needs

I’m fairly certain this isn’t English.

Falmouth Recieves $500,000 Block Grant

Seems like a lot of money for block. I wonder where you cash these in?

BP Pleased with Oil Cap Progress

Whew. So long as they are good with it.

Legislation Would Limit Shock Therapy

Hopefully not for legislators

Driver Killed after Crashing into Homes

One wasn’t apparently enough.

UMass  Struggles to Attract Students

and on the same page

UMass Pursues 400-foot Sushi Roll Record

Could these be related?