Some people may think online literary journals don’t matter, at least not as much as a print journal.  Which I understand, print journals are alluring.  You can hold them in your hands, you can buy copies to give to your granny.  It is a physical manifestation of your creative work.  But look at our economy, look at our new eco-friendly stance on the world, online journals are the present and future.   Also while your print journal cost readers money and has a limited distribution, online the number of people your piece can reach is unlimited.  Those people in high school who thought you were a big nerd probably won’t shell out money to read your story, but they might be curious enough to follow a link on your facebook page.  Also your story is there essentially forever unless the journal removes it from its archives.  So when people google you that story is going to pop up.  So do you want that story to represent you poorly?  Do you want the piece everyone reads to be your best work?

Now that being said there are a lot of online journals and it is super easy to submit to them, almost too easy.  Everyone and their brother can submit to The Whistling Fire, and considering we don’t have a reading fee I can tell you everyone and their brother probably has. That can mount up to a big head ache.  Here are some things you should be aware of when submitting to an online journal.  Things that bother me and that I have heard fellow editors at other publications complain about.

Remember what is Important

Every now and then someone .:cough poets:.  freaks out because there is a mistake in their work or it doesn’t look exactly how they want it.   It isn’t that I don’t give a shit.  But often authors think issues are a lot bigger than they really are.  And when I am juggling my full time job, my own writing (which will always take precedence over yours), my pets, my family, my web editing duties at other journals, and buying/moving into my own place—I find it a bit hard to get it up for your missing line break.  I want your work to be perfect, I do, but let us remember there are starving kids in Africa.

So think about what is really important before you email an editor, or before you email them a second time before they have time to reply.  Does your change have major bearing to how your story is read?  Then I will make it a top priority.  If it doesn’t I will do my best to get to it in a timely manner but chill. So if your fiction story uses the name Rustin Ave and you’ve decided you’d like it to be Rustin Street, guess what my answer is going to be.  First of all no one cares, it doesn’t change the story in any way, so that one I might leave for a bit cause now you’re annoying me.

It Isn’t that Complicated

I shouldn’t say this, I should tell you that running a journal is terribly terribly difficult and you need years of experience and special training.  But really, that isn’t true.  I get a lot of people worried about legal issues.  Which is annoying cause I decided when I started college that I didn’t want to go to law school for a reason. It really isn’t rocket science.  I once had an author ask if there was a legal reason her title showed an address of Street rather than Ave, and was worried there was a legal reason we couldn’t say the actual street name.  Well guess what, the big legal issue was a copy/paste issue.  I copied the title from a list someone had written out and in the list they accidently wrote Street not Ave. Yea major legal debacle there.  That is not to say that we laugh in the face of legality.  We have simple rules we follow. We don’t own any of the work, you do.  If we are going to republish the work the author has to own the rights and we give credit to the previous publication.  There is no money involved at this point, so it is pretty simple.

Don’t be A Nuisance

Interacting with journals should be about promoting good will, neither side should complicate things or annoy the other.  I am like a young guy in the dating scene.  I can deal with two or three emails from you in a day, but any more than that and I’m going to feel smothered and wish I hadn’t bought you that drink. I do a lot of our updating during my lunch break.  Which means instead of taking a break from the computer screen slowly killing my eyes, I am trying to do some html and send out rejection letters in between bites of PB&J.  In the last year or so I’ve become pretty good with html but I am not a computer science graduate, I do my best and sometimes all the html knowledge in the world can’t match WordPress not wanting to cooperate.  We’re all just doing our best here.

Editors and web managers are busy people, they either work at a big journal with lots of submissions or a small one and have multiple jobs. If they are publishing you, be thankful and make an effort on your end to help things move along smoothly… So if I ask you for something, send it promptly and don’t  email me a hundred times.  If I say that I don’t have a publication date for you yet, that means I don’t have one yet.  If I say I will email you when I do, I will email you when I do.  I have a good system.

Pay Attention

One of the most unnecessary annoyances I deal with are people who simply do not pay attention.  Either they blindly submit to us without ever having visited our site, they send a genre we do not publish, or they do not read our submission guidelines/rules.  Grossly ignoring our word limit is frustrating, we have a word limit for a good reason so follow it.  I am sorry if your piece doesn’ t fit, my work never fits literary journal’s word counts so I feel you.  Even worse is if I do not catch your word limit party foul and it gets to my reader/guest editor.  Then they read it, there by wasting their time when they could be reading a piece we might actually be able to publish.  Or they like it and I have to go back to them and say, sorry not only did you waste your time but we can’t publish this.  Small details may seem unimportant, like we ask you to state your genre in your subject line or when we have a guest editor we like you to tell us which month you are submitting to in your subject line.  This helps us immediately know what the piece is and where it is going.  If you do not put “November Guest Editor” in your subject line it will stay with our general submissions (unless I catch it in time).  Every journal is a bit different, not just in the type of work they accept but in their submission process.  It is all about what resources they have and what works for them.  So look over their requirements carefully before you send your submissions.  Journals receive lots submissions, so following these little rules can make a big difference.

Make a note of submission guidelines as well for what kind of work journals accept.  We accept: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and experimental works. They do change, we’ve expanded our word limit before and we may someday expand our genre list.   Nowhere on our submission guidelines does it say we accept photos, take a look at our site…nope no photos.  We also don’t list plays in our submission guidelines, yes we did publish a play once but it was for a special occasion.  Once again read the submission guidelines.  Don’t send us a poem in “play format,” we are wise to your tricky tricky ways.  Also we do not review books, which you would know if you actually like went to our site.  This is particularly annoying if you are a publisher/agent/etc and I hope your client fires you.  We do not publish books!  We do not have a print version!  We do not do reviews!

Also do not say that you couldn’t find our submission guidelines anywhere, chances are if you found our email it was the same page as our guidelines.  That just tells me you didn’t go to our site or just decided not to read the guidelines.

To address or not to address?

Some journals have separate emails for different editors (poetry, fiction, etc).  Do not send a fiction piece to the poetry editor, do not spam all the editors.  For some you may want to address your piece to the editor in charge or your genre.  If you do know this information then it is better not to address your email to anyone specific, it is the same as sending a resume. It is better not to address it to someone rather than address it to the wrong person. In our journal it is hit or miss, depending on your genre it will be sent to one of our readers and if it passes inspection it will move to one of our editors.  It is all based on who has time.  Sometimes I will try to match the work with the appropriate person but the point of having readers is to screen the slush pile so I can focus on other things.

A lot of people address things to our editor Bryan because his name is first on the list of editors, assuming that makes him in charge, but if they looked carefully they would see our editors and readers names are listed in alphabetical order.  Or they address it to me because most communications come from me.  But Bryan may not read your piece, I may not read your piece, once again it depends on our readers and who has time available.

Bad Cover Letters

Nothing sets me up for not liking a piece more than a bad cover letter.  Now at our journal we don’t require a cover letter and we don’t really care about them, we only care about your work.  Your cover letter has no influence.  Don’t create extra work for me.  We may not even read it frankly, and the longer it is and the more links it contains the more likely I am not to read it.  However, if your cover letter is immensely annoying it might influence me in some biological or mental way I cannot control (usually intense anger, annoyance, or frustration).  On the other hand, your well thought out and serious cover letter may just have me in stiches the rest of the night (but usually I am laughing at you).

If your letter is long and messy with a hundred links (which I will not click on): I am going to groan, probably have an attack of the ADDs and decide to do something else for now and come back later. The longer and more elaborate your cover letter is the more risk you might say something stupid or make a mistake.  Keep it simple.  Don’t get too crazy with your bragging.  Don’t say stuff that doesn’t make sense like “I would like to grant The Whistling Fire first publishing rights in this hemisphere”
to which my reply is “ummm ok thanks I guess?”  We want to publish good work, so I really don’t care where you have been published or what prestigious school you almost failed out of, if the work doesn’t do it for us we won’t publish you.  Plus to be perfectly honest, usually the more lengths a writer goes to to explain their work or sell themselves, the more likely the piece isn’t going to be good.  This is just a pattern I have seen.  We accept short pieces, you should have a short description (though I’d rather not be given a description).  Let your work speak for itself.  Telling me your piece is about a blind mouse crossing a road doesn’t really spark my interest.  But your piece may be beautifully written; the mouse may be a metaphor for my relationship with my peers, and I will cry and laugh and think about it for days.  So let me discover that and find out for myself, don’t ruin it for me by pitching me a boring mouse story.  Now if a journal asks for a cover letter, do it; but keep it short and simple.

At the same time I am not a huge fan of comply blank emails with an attachment.   It is a bit cold and abrupt, too wam bam thank you mam.  Show me you care, we don’t need to be courted but introduce yourself before we go to bed. Sometimes for our Guest Editors we request a bio, we do this not because we really care that much about your past publishing work or that you are a super hero to your dog, but because it saves me having to ask you for it if we decide to accept your work.  On that note: learn what third person means.  Cause when we ask for a third person bio and we get first person I will laugh at you.  Also sometimes sending an email with nothing but an attachment can cause problems.  Spam folders are a wonderful wonderful thing which prevent us from sending our life savings to princes in Zanzibar.  But sending an email to a stranger with no body or no subject line can sometimes result in legitimate emails finding their way into our spam folders. Especially if you have an odd email like catloversurferdude22@earthlink.whatever.  Which, is this a good time to tell you to ditch your old screen name?   I know we all have stupid screen names from our internet early days that we are afraid to let go of… this is the world saying time to grow up now.

Who the hell are you? Itchy trigger fingers. Spammers : Little things that Bug me

Here are some things that at least drive me up the wall.  So replying to rejections is always bad business, you want editors to remember you for good reasons.  And if you send us a creepy or hate filed rant we will remember you.  It not only closes the door on that journal, it also closes the door on those staff members who while they work at that journal now could be at another journal you submit to a few years down the road.  Also did I mention it is creepy.  But one of my dislikes is when people reply to a rejection letter with another submission, I mean not even send a new email they just hit reply.  Formally submit stuff please and if you get a rejection letter, take some time process the rejection and then if you wish resubmit.  Don’t hit reply the minute you get one with another poem.  This isn’t a drive-thru.  “I’ve got a million more where that came from,” just tells me you aren’t taking your craft very seriously.  Do not use online journals as recycling centers for the 100 poems you wrote while going through a phase in 1979. If we reject you often, by all means keep trying.   You may wear me down yet.  But just maybe you should think about your submission.  Wait a bit.  Maybe work on some on your stuff a bit longer, let it cook till fully done.   Maybe read other posts on our site to see the level or work we normally publish.  Think about why you have been rejected every month for the last year before you send us some more work.  If we have never published you and I recognize your email because you routinely send us a piece every month, you’ve probably overstayed your welcome.  I applaud your determination but you don’t want to be that guy who can’t take a hint. Also some journals do have a limit, like we only want two pieces a month because we get a lot of submissions, so no I will not read your twenty poems.

Who are you?  This is a big pet peeve of mine.  If you have a joint email with your spouse, I have some questions for you: WHY?  WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?  SERIOUSLY?  I don’t think anyone should have a joint email, especially if you are using that email professionally.  Joint emails are kind of like sharing toothbrushes.  There are lots of reasons it is a bad idea but let me let you in on something that has happened frequently at TWF.  I get a response from one of our editors or readers saying they cannot recommend we publish a piece.  I sit down one evening or during my lunch break (one hand on the computer the other shoveling food in my mouth) and get to work sending out rejection letters.  I open your email with my editors comments, write the rejection,  glance at the top of the email which gmail informs me is from Daisy Anderson (I just made that up) at DBAnderson@aol.whatever I  type Dear Daisy and presto sendo.  Then here comes an angry letter accusing us of not really reading submissions because Bob Anderson sent that email.  I scroll to the very bottom of the long email with no bio and see oh yea “—Bob.”  Can you see how easy it is to make this mistake?  Well the top of the email said Daisy, once again cover letters are just filler in my eyes, and I didn’t actually read your piece another editor did but it is my job to send you a letter.  Joint emails suck.  On that same note we have received an email where the top of the email says it came from Robert, the author introduces himself as David, and the bio reads Jonathan.  Who the hell are you?  I’m sorry did you forget your alias today world’s worst spy?  As you were sending your submission did you have second thoughts about what your pen name should be?

Do not spam and never send mass emails to a journal.  Submission should never be sent to multiple journals at once.  We accept simultaneous submissions, but send us a separate email. Do not try to kill multiple birds with one stone.  And if your work gets accepted by another journal: great!  But let us know so I don’t have anyone waste their time on a piece we cannot publish.  Don’t send mass emails period, especially if we have never published you.  We got one recently (which by the way was from a joint spouse email) which I believe was from someone we have never published announcing a poetry collection that they were having published.  At least I think that was what it was, I really have no idea what it was or who it was from.  Can you see how annoying this is?  Can you see how you may have just lost some good will from our journal?

You may think well, authors get over excited or people make mistakes.  Very true.  But imagine this from my side of the table.  Imagine this happening every day, imagine seeing this over and over again, and the tole that eventually takes.  Imagine the bitterness growing.  I am not asking to be sucked up to.  But be considerate when you send submissions.  Remember what your goal is: you want them to actually read your work and consider it, then you want them to hopefully publish it or at the very least be receptive to look at more of your work in the future.  At TWF if we could spend as much time reading new submissions and actually publishing work as we do dealing with crisis and neglecting our work because we don’t want to deal with all the crazy; our response time would be weeks rather than months.

In the meantime I’ve been a busy busy girl.  I was hired to redesign The Coachella Review, of course the time-line got moved up and I had like two weeks to renovate the site.  The Whistling Fire has been super busy.  We recently started having Guest Editors take over for a month, an idea I put in motion.  It has helped gain lots of attention for the journal as well as take some work off myself and my editors.  I also started taking a digital design course, well more than a course it is actually a few months long certificate program.  I’ve been working on some different writing and art projects.  Basically keeping myself busier than I was when I was working.

Then the week came this month  where I had two interviews in one week.  One for a writing job at the University I went to and worked at for four years, which I was very nervous about.  They had asked for a writing sample, which was nice since I’d be going in with a foundation to my interview.  The other one also at the University and in which I not only had to send in a work example but had to give a presentation at the interview.   So I was nervous to say the least.  The first one on Monday, for the writing job, seemed to go ok; but they said they were in the beginning of the process and all that, which meant if we call you it wont be for a long long time. I spent the rest the next two days working on my presentation.  Very bright and early Wednesday morning I went in for my second interview which was with the HR department.  I gave my presentation, which had to be about using some type of online application.  It seemed to go really good, the interview was just with two women which was a lot less terrifying than a huge search committee which seemed to be my lot of late.  They were both really nice and I felt very comfortable with them.  The interview ended and I went home.  When I got home I started to take off my interview clothes and figured I’d use the afternoon to go work my horse.  On chance I decided to check for messages, which I never do.  The department I had just interviewed for wanted me to come back that afternoon to meet the Dean.  This was a good sign I figured, but realized it may just be me getting my hopes up.  So I headed back that afternoon and met with the Dean.  No job offer though.  The next day I tried to keep myself busy but was a bit dejected.  I was half asleep and half trying to do some class work when a call came in at three.  And I got the job with HR!

Suddenly I had a week to get my affairs in order.  Had to do some shopping because they actually dress for work there, no more jeans and converse.  It all happened so fast.  I started this Monday and I can’t believe what a different world I’ve entered.  I don’t want to get into all the specifics but it is like a world away from my old job, in every way possible.  And I get to do some writing which is fun.  It is like a writing/technology job which is perfect for me.   I am on a year contract which is kind of scary but I figure I have a year to impress them, which means I will be working very hard this next year.

Now I have a new job, a month or so to go in my design class, am running TWF, doing web work for The Coachella Review, and….

After seventeen years of showing horses I am “retired,” or at least I am supposed to be.  The season started this month and after one show a member of our barn fell and shattered her knee.  They were already having a tough time so I was asked to come and handle a few horses at the next show.  So now I have that as well.

Hopefully I find some time to write during all that.

I had a really rough week last week.  I ended up shredding a tire on something in the road, I never saw what it was but it left some huge chunks of metal IN my tire.  Who knew run flats cost so much to replace.  Then one day my mom, trying to be nice, took my pea coat to be dry cleaned.  She didn’t realize however my car keys were in my pea coat.  Thankfully I have a spare but I ended up being late for work and without a house key.  But I had a very good weekend.  Got some major christmas shopping done, decided to take a certificate class in web design in Feb,  got offered a little side job for some extra cash, saw a bunch of friends in Palm Springs and listened to my favorite undergrad professors Susan Straight talk about setting, went out for Thai food, got my hands on a Boylan Black Cherry Soda.  Good times.  Also, last post I was talking about all the publishing successes of my friends.

December has been a good good month to UCR Palm Desert Low Residency Alumni.  Two of our classmates were published in Gently Read Literature, one got an acceptance into the next issue of the Santa Monica Review, Rick Marlatt’s chap book comes out this week.  Also we heard that Tiffany Hawk, who has already been published in the New York Times and appeared on Mike Huckabee’s show, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by The Potomac Review.  Also Debbie Graber has a short story coming out in the next issue of Hobart.  How cool is my school?!

In other news, I meant to post this last time and forgot.  My friends at the Hipster Book Club have their Holiday Gift Guide up.  Basically they have book suggestions for everyone on your list, even those hard to buy for people.

I have been super stressed lately and pressed for time.  I am working on this big Christmas project that I finally finished yesterday, before I blew out a tire and spent the rest of my day waiting for a tow truck and getting bled dry at the dealership.  Did you know Mini’s don’t come with spares if you have run flats?  Did you know run flats cost about the same as my car payment?  Neither did I.

I did get out of town this last weekend.  It is my Grad School’s first residency ever in which I am not a student. And a lot of Alumni were crashing.  So my friend Chera and I went for the weekend and shared a room. It was good to see all of our beloved professors and some of the new second years who were first years under us.  I got to see my mentee.  Got to see my beloved Bryan, my co-editor at The Whistling Fire, who is now the social organizer of the program- the cruise director if you will.

Speaking off… Chera just got news she is going to be published in the next issue of Santa Monica Review.  I was the first person she let read this particular story and one of the first people she told, along with her boyfriend and grandma.  I had to keep it under wraps for awhile but now I am free to tell the world how very proud I am of her.  Bryan also just got his critical thesis published in Gently Read Literature this month.  Also in Gently Read Literature this month is another of our fellow alumni Eileen Austin’s critical thesis.  Months ago another alumni Monty was also published there.  Also my friend, classmate, and Nebraskan native Rick Marlatt’s new poetry collection comes out this month from Seven Circle Press, where it was the winner of the 2010 Chapbook contest.

Poetry has never been my thing.  But I know so many poets now and I have to work with so much poetry in The Whistling Fire that I have to keep informed.  I am lucky that the poets I do call my friends are exceptional.  And while I may never be super into poetry, I can now appreciate a good poem when it comes along.

So yea I am sort of feeling like a loser now.  But I am super happy for all my UCR Pd people. Heading back to crash residency Saturday morning.

Frankly this article’s pomp and pretension made my eyes bleed after the third paragraph so I couldn’t really read it. Sir, Put down the Thesauras and back away slowly. I don’t really buy into an NYC literary culture.  I’m not saying there isn’t one but i don’t think there is an MFA culture and a NYC culture only.  MFAs exist in many forms around the country and globe, NYC is a place singular and specific.  There are a lot of places and a lot of writers.  And frankly if the NYC writer’s culture is the alternative to the MFA, sign me up for the MFA school of thought.  The article also seems to make a lot of claims based on the big MFA powerhouses.  Iowa, Irvine, etc are not the begin-all-end-all models for MFA programs.  There are a TON of MFA programs out there.  I would bet anything that if the author of this article spent a few days at our MFA residencies he’d quickly change his mind.  There is nothing tweedy or monotonous about that group.  That is not to say a large group of them don’t have similar tastes and senses of humor, they are after all… all writers.   Also they are not all 22 year olds looking to defer the real world a bit longer.  The variety of age in my program was refreshing to me, a 22 year old tired of people my own age.  I didn’t get an MFA to defer the real world or student loan debts (which I don’t have: i did college the old fashioned way–without a loan).  I went straight on to get an MFA because I knew that was what I wanted and I didn’t want to go get a career and get so busy with life that I neglected to follow my dreams.  I didn’t want to be the 50 something finally going back to school, I’m precocious.  But there is nothing wrong with going back later in life and giving the MFA a try and many of my fellow MFA students were doing just that.

We also don’t all read the same thing.  Sure there are some basic curriculum books they like us to read to give us a foundation but in my MFA program our professors tailored our reading lists to each student’s preference and writing style and they let us pick what we wanted to read most of the time. So automatons?  Really mr author man?

He also says some rather unsettling things about those who teach in MFA programs.  And coming from a program where most of the faculty I now count as close friends, I am offended. There is nothing wrong with wanting to teach creative writing.  I mean being an author is not always the most profitable career choice.  You have to diversify.  That is not to say these are writer who’ve sold out.  They just want to be able to put food on the table and afford rent in between sales.  Also, most if not all of the creative writing professors I know arn’t teaching because they haven’t been able to write in years.  Most of them balance their duties with their own busy writing schedule and are putting out books or articles all the time.  One of the many reasons I got an MFA was that so someday I might teach.  Not only to help make ends meat in my creative life path but because what could be more rewarding or more fun that getting paid to talk writing?  Getting paid to hang out with people who are doing or want to do the same thing as you.  What could be more rewarding than helping another person on their path towards realizing the story within them?  If you get paid to do that, consider yourself lucky and everyone else big fat haters.  It all comes back to writing, being in it for the act of writing.  That is what most of the creative writing professors I know, are in it for.  Many of them don’t need to teach in order to make ends meat, they do it out of love.

I am sure there are some valid points to his article but read them for yourself.  Here is what you really need to know.  Will an MFA make me a better writer?  It could, if you let it.  Do I need an MFA to be a writer?  No.  You don’t need a college degree to get a good job.  It helps.  It’s good in the long run.  One of my closest friends didn’t get his college degree and he is doing far better than I am right now.   Hell he owns two houses and he’s 26.  A lot of people get published who don’t have an MFA, A LOT.  I know a few people who got published before they had and MFA and then went and got an MFA.  There are many reasons to get an MFA.  Far to many for me to get into.  A response my friend Elizabeth Crane, a faculty member at my MFA program but never my teacher, wrote sums up one of the best reasons though: “Most of us want to get out of our caves when we’re done, we want to be read, and we want to connect.”  Connecting, yes.  Getting an MFA will connect you to a community of writers in ways you cannot imagine.  I will never regret getting an MFA at a young age or at the school I choose to go to (even though its not IOWA) because I met some of the greatest people I will ever have the privilege of knowing. And had a blast.  Any other time and any other place, that might not have been the case.  So I don’t get the debate.  If you want an MFA, get one.  If you really don’t think that is the route for you.  Don’t get one. There is nothing wrong with either school of thought.

Now if you want a funny response you must check out Tod Goldberg’s video:

When submitting to lit journals:

Follow directions closely.  As my friends at The Coachella Review say on their submit page. “If you’d like continued good will from the editors, please pay attention to the details.” I can over look little things.  Like when we ask for a specific subject title (like for our current theme month) and submissions come in without the proper subject.  I can say oh well at least I caught it and it got to the right editor.  Or when people send us things over our word limit.  Or genres and mediums we don’t accept (IE: STOP SENDING US PHOTOS-unless they are dirty)  But when it keeps happening those little things start to add up to a frustrated me muttering to my computer, “Cant They READ.”  You’re losing good will.

Another way to lose good will is if you require too much attention.  Now this might sound mean or funny cause HELLO writers are needy a lot of the time.  But remember, if I except your piece I am going to publish it and promote it and get hundred of people to read it.  So be thankful and don’t be a pain in my ass.  We use a gmail account and gmail works in conversations, keeping all the replies and fwds of an email together in a conversation.  The best conversations are the smallest ones.  The ones that include the original email, our editors fwds and replies, the acceptance, and the author’s acknowledgment.  Easy, clean, nice….  But when conversations start to build to 7 or 12 emails in one conversation I start to think, wow this person is kind of becoming a pain and requiring me to do a lot of work.  I read every email and every piece, so don’t torture me.

Also, I’ve said it before and I will say it again.  Know the journal, you submit to.  Now I completely understand that you cannot possibly read every journal you submit to, at least most of us can’t.  But visit the website, know at least what medium they publish in (The Whistling Fire is online only, so don’t ask me months after you’ve been accepted when your print copy is coming), know maybe when they publish.  I dont know how many time I’ve gotten emails from authors we’ve accepted asking why they cant find their story up on our site.  There is good reason, it hasn’t been published yet.  I clearly state in the acceptance letter that I will personally email them and tell them the exact date of publication as soon as I know that date.  The Whistling Fire only publishes once a week (except for special occasions).  This started because it took awhile to  lots of submissions when we first started, so we didn’t have much to put up.  When submissions became regular daily occurrences we considered bumping it up to twice a week.  But after speaking with editors from other journals, the consensus seemed that our once a week posting was a good thing.  Good for two reasons.  When we publish someone their piece will be up, first thing you see on the main site, for one week.  That means a week in the spot light, just your piece.  We don’t offer payment, the only thing we have to really offer is the fact that your story or poem will get attention and lots of people will read it.  I believe I have talked before about putting your best work on the web, once your story or poem goes up on the web it is there forever (essentially) and anyone can find it and read it. They can google your name or the title and there it is.  That is what The Whistling Fire offers.  Also it benefits our readers.  I don’t have a ton of time, our readers don’t have a ton of time.  But we can all find time once a week to head over to The Whistling Fire and read something new. The downside of once a week publishing is we build up a lineup of work waiting to be published and everyone has to wait their turn.  We get a ton of poetry, I mean a ton.  There is a reason we now have two poetry readers, but just rely on our editors for the other genres.  We try to keep our posts varied.  Maybe a poem or two, then fiction, a poem, then nonfiction, etc.  So while I try to go by time, starting with the pieces that have been waiting the longest, fiction and nonfiction authors sometimes get to skip the queue just due to the fact they are in high demand.

Don’t make crazy requests.  I will not google you.  Put your work in the body of an email or in an attachment (a normal one not some program nobody in the universe has, I will not download Open Office for you).  I will not take links to other sites as submissions.  We accept two pieces a month (but we don’t even bat an eye if a poet sends three or four poems), if you are accepted you cannot send us more work for six months after your story is published (not six months after accepted)– the whole point is we want to give other people a chance.  Recently I sent a submission off to one of our readers, like I always do, and I got a hasty reply of “you got to be kidding me.”  I quickly opened the attachment to find this particular poet had not send a few poems but a sixty some odd page chapbook with a poem per page.  Our reader said it might take some time for her to read them all.  She was willing to do it but I wouldn’t let her.  Instead I asked that if the author wished to send us a few select poems we’d gladly look at them, but that we could not accept an entire book.  Don’t ask me to edit your piece 500 times, because you changed a word.  I will update bios, but they need to be reasonable updates.  Like you’ve gotten a degree or you’ve published with Tin House or something.

Also this is one that maybe, two years ago I wouldn’t have thought about but now kind of bugs me.  I have no problem if you publish under a different name, or an initial thing.  But some people get a bit crazy.  I am not really into publishing stuff under a screen name.  We’re a serious site and it doesn’t look very serious if you read a poem and at the end it says written by : HotForYou22.  It’s weird.  I understand why some people don’t want to publish under their real name, but publish under a name eh.

Replying to rejections is weird no matter what.  If you’ve been accepted elsewhere that is great, we’re happy for you, but our response is still the same. We’ve gotten some angry responses before. For instance recently I sent out a rejection letter and in this rare situation my fellow editors and myself felt we should add a little something extra to benefit this author.  Now I made the mistake of copy pasting what one of my editors had written.  We got a nasty reply which picked up on the fact that one of the words was misspelled.  I should have proofed what I copy pasted but I didnt.  It was an honest mistake and it didn’t make the critique any less valid.  I of course ignored the angry letter.  Because in the end these angry or sometimes creepy replies (poems about not quitting) are not actually directed at me or us, they are for the author.  They make them feel better.  But keep in mind that good will thing, we will always go on taking submissions from those we rejected, if we’ve rejected you multiple times we will even take the time to make some suggestions because we want you to understand why we are rejecting you and get better so we can accept you, but if you start to get annoying…. it’s hard not to take that into consideration.

And finally and maybe most obviously.  Sending out simultaneous submissions is cool. If you had a piece you’ve worked on and is ready to go out, it would be madness to send it out to one journal and wait till you got a reply from them before sending it out again. You’d likely grow old before that piece found a home.  But please, as all journals request, if you are accepted at one place let the others know. This might seem like beating the dead horse because every journal asks for this, it is common knowledge, yet it happens all the time.  I cannot tell you how annoying it is to go through all the effort of reading a piece, passing it around to the editors, getting their feedback (which can be like pulling teeth), and then making a decision only to hear “oo its been accepted elsewhere.”  Elsewhere?  I just spent time and effort on your piece?  Ignored other work in my inbox?  Begged and pleaded with my editors to get their thoughts and now I cannot publish it.  Good will. Good will.

Enough of that.  I cant imagine what editors of larger publications go through, although they probably have more filters for this kind of thing.  In my situation I am constantly having to bring up the fact that this journal is not my job, it doesn’t pay.   I have a day job or at least I do for the next two months, I have a life, and I have my own writing.  And like I said, these are small things that don’t really matter much but start to add up after awhile. You don’t want your small thing to push the editor over the edge.

But in other Whistling Fire news, we have something new happening.  We are now going to have on going Guest Editor months.  Our Guest Editors all get to pick their own theme and then will be accepting work that fits that theme.  The themes can be anything really, what ever our Guest Editors want.  For instance our first Guest Editor is our good friend Chema, and Chema likes work that uses languages other than English, code-switching.  So he picked this as his theme and is accepting Fiction and NonFiction until December 20th.  For those who submit, Chema will pick four pieces which will be featured throughout the month of January.   This is a great theme because there are a ton of writers out there who perhaps do not write exclusively in English, and there are not a ton of journals out there for their work.  The other great thing about our Guest Editors is if they get a piece they like but doesnt work for their theme or they don’t have room to use, they will let us know and we will look into accepting it for our general submissions.  You can find out more about the theme, Chema, and submitting HERE.

We’re also going to be working on things for our second anniversary which comes around in Feb.  Got to plan early. The other day we went over the 20,000 marker of hits.  Not bad for a little journal that costs 14 bucks to run.

When it comes to The Whistling Fire, I have the unfortunate position of having to be “the man” so to speak who puts people down.  It is one of my many jobs  to send out the rejection letters.  I will admit I have a rather standard rejection letter that I send out. It’s not very personal.  But I do this for a reason.  I have heard a lot of people say they keep their rejection letters, to inspire them or whatever.  I am not one of those people, if I get a rejection for anything it usually goes in the trash as soon as I see a Sorry or Unfortunately. So I keep it simple.  I’ve heard some people like when an editor takes the time to explain why they are rejecting them.  I can see how this might be helpful to some. I rarely offer up my own or my other editors criticism unless specifically asked or unless one of my editors specifically asks me to address something in the rejection letter. Mainly because I do not feel it is my place.  Who am I?  I am not the says all, end all, know it all. We might reject a piece that could easily find a home elsewhere, so why should I say the piece needs to be changed this way or that way? I think a person submits when they think their piece is ready, so it is just as difficult for them to hear “these things need changing” as it is for them to hear NO.  No isn’t really critical it’s just No.

We do make suggestions and ask for edits if we wish to publish their piece but feel it needs some work and even then I am constantly reminding our editor in charge of that to keep it simple, we’re looking for slight edits not for them to change everything about their piece. If they need to change everything then we shouldn’t accept it.  And once again I don’t want to ask someone to change a lot if their piece has a shot at publication elsewhere as is.

It isn’t fun to reject people, it’s just necessary. I’ve worked hard to find a balance between making it impersonal and personal, straight to the point, but encouraging.  Because I feel encouragement is one of the founding principals of The Whistling Fire. As I said sometimes I will embellish my standard rejection letter to make it a bit more personal depending on the situation.We recently received a poem from a seventeen-year-old from India.  I remember telling a poet friend of mine this and she said, “so you’re going to reject it.”  Yeah, while it was nice to see such a young author from so far away take interest in our little journal, it was a poem written by a seventeen-year-old.  But I was once a seventeen-year-old fiction writer and not brave enough to ever have sent my work to a journal, so I wanted to be as encouraging as possible.  Or for instance if an author is continually sending us work with the same issue and we want to let them know why we are continually rejecting them because personally I don’ t want to have to keep rejecting them.

Then of course every now and then we get replies to our rejections.  From the self justifying to the fuck yous, they’re all really the same.  I know when we get those replies that it isn’t about us, its about the author.  That letter isn’t really meant to make us feel bad or me personally feel bad, its to make the author feel better.  Its their odd, all be it inappropriate way of venting.  So I try not to pay much attention to them, usually I read them.  I think to myself, ok this guy sending us a poem about not quitting is kind of creeping me out.  DELETE.  Oh thank you for letting us know the piece we rejected was published elsewhere, we are happy for you but if this is supposed to make us feel bad it isn’t working because we stand by our choice, DELETE.  Mostly I just say, please don’t start stalking me, DELETE.

I am always careful about giving critiques.  It is something I have fretted about since my very first workshop as an undergraduate.  I remember specifically asking my professor to meet me before class because I wanted to ask her if she thought I was being to harsh in workshop.  It was the first time I had ever critiqued peers work and I always felt I had an unfair advantage because I had been writing since grade school (which didn’t mean I was better I just had more experience in the trial and error of writing a complete story that my fellow 20-year-olds).  I was recently talking to someone about critiquing.  I reminded them that it is important to take yourself out of the equation when critiquing.  I could completely rewrite every piece that comes across my desk.  I am constantly fighting the urge to rewrite things the way I would write them.  But that is not my job, it is not my story, and it is not helpful to the person I am critiquing.

Critiquing, criticism, and rejection aside then you have the haters.  I get to read a lot of hate mail via my friend and former professor Tod Goldberg, the man who introduced fucktard into my vocabulary.  He is always posting on his blog about run ins with people he encounters and hate mail he receives.  I can sum it up as this, people are stupid.  Most of his mail consists of people angry with their own confusion about his literary fiction and his Burn Notice Books (which are based on the television show Burn Notice).  People are constantly reading his short story collections and going, where is Michael Westen?  Then rather than using the internet to find out that this collection is not part of the burn notice series, they use it to email Tod with their ridiculous rants.  Lets just say his short story collection audience is very different from his Burn Notice audience.  Then there is the fact that one of his novels unfortunately shares the same title as a YA novel by Elizabeth Scott.  So he gets a lot of people outraged that he would market his book as YA when it is not in the least way appropriate for young people.  Are you getting the fucktard yet?  Tod Goldberg should not be allowed near children.  He does not have the vocabulary for children.  I once saw him baby talk to a dog, it was frightening.  He is not even appropriate to be around most adults.  So no his book is not YA.  But I was recently reading a post he wrote about some mail he received from a disgruntled reader of one of his Burn Notice Books.  I had this sudden realization.  I know what my first letter from a fucktard is going to be.  I can almost see it like a vision from the future.  That is of course assuming my current novel is the first thing I have published.  But when it is (me being positive) I know it is just a matter of time before I get my first letter from a fucktard who can’t read.   I’d go into more detail but that would require me to talk about what my novel is about, which I have vowed to never do here.  When I do get them, I am not sure if I will reply to them a la Todfather because that seems to be inviting trouble.  But at the same time I know it will be hard to ignore them and the need to reply will be so great.  But I know replying politely without overtones of “are you fucking stupid” coming through between the lines will be very difficult.

Being a writer is a difficult thing to declare as your “profession.”  If other people arn’t trying to bring you down you got your mom going, “ok now what else would you like to do.”  Really? Really?  I got my Masters degree like a week ago and we’re already having this conversation.  We had this whole conversation at our last residency about when you start calling yourself “a writer,” and that you are a writer when you say you are and if you don’t say you are then you are lacking confidence in your writing and you are not ready to be one.  I rarely get the opportunity to declare myself a writer because I am too busy trying to find a new day job to pay the bills and I often find when I do say I am a writer I am automatically hit with the question: “what do you write?”  To which the reply fiction or novels usually brings uncomfortable silence.  There are a lot of people out there who will tell you your not good enough or this piece is not good enough or a million other things.  The important thing is to remember is everyone has an agenda or a motive.  You need to learn who to listen to and who not to listen to.  In workshop there are always the people that you trust, who’s opinion you value, then there are also people you listen to and nod but don’t never actually take their advice.  Sometimes people offer up advice with the purest of intentions but the advice is still bad.  You need to learn to filter the good from the bad.  Criticism, advice, rejection it can either hold you back or move you forward and it’s up to only you which one it’s going to be.

July sucked right up to the very end but maybe August will be better.  Thesis is turned in.  Novel is still going well even though I have been a bit preoccupied with a new script I am working on.  I’ve kind of stumbled into the names of a few agents I’d like to submit it to.  But of course I need to go in with a finished product so I better keep slaving away.  My graduating class has already had some success stories.  One poetry chapbook in the works.  A few interested agents.  A best national humor columnist award.  One person got not one but two jobs teaching at community colleges.  All this and we haven’t technically graduated yet.  Well I guess I have now.

In other news.  I’ve been meaning to do some book reviews here cause I read A LOT.  But I’ve now read more books since my last review post than I have time to review.  But there is one book I want to talk about.  I have many times mentioned that I do not really understand the hoopla around the Twilight series.  I am not saying they are terrible, but not cult worthy.  They are not that well written, organized poorly, and the characters are sort of one dimensional.  Recently a group of my friends at our traditional MFA program were taking a young adult class and they all read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  They all raved about it on facebook.  I looked it up and it sounded interesting so I ordered it and left it on my book shelf till I was done with all my school reading.  I picked it up a few weeks ago and Oh My God!  Can all the annoying Twilight kiddies get on the Collins’ train?  Now there is a well written young adult novel.  I basically inhaled the book staying up late the last night finishing it and then immediately from my bed ordering the sequel and preordering the third installment.  I have Amazon Prime now, yes apparently students can get a year of amazon prime free WOOOO, so I got the sequel in two days and read it in less than a week, which is good for me cause I am a usually a super slow reader.  The second one takes awhile to kick off, I started to worry cause we hadn’t gotten to the action and the book was getting towards the end, but of course that was because Collins was preparing for a major cliff hanger of an ending.  Thank GOD the third book comes out soon.  Seriously its been a long time since I was able to become so enthralled in a book.