Thursday, 02 April 2009

• Optimism

  Happy times are here again.  Well, that's the plan anyway.  I finally asked to reduce my hours at work because I was just becoming absolutely non-human constant exausted chick.  SO!  Now I only work four days a week, and three of those only half days. 

  I have now submitted to, and I'm not even joking here, 159 literary journals.  I keep an excel spreadsheet to chart them.  I have recieved 42 rejections, and 1 acceptance, and each time I'm learning a little bit more about what and what does not fly.  I'm writing better and better stuff I think, and revising and reworking the pieces that keep getting rejected.  I've even gotten a few personalized rejection letters where they said they liked specific parts of my writing style or story, but then told why it wasn't right for them.  I love rejection letters like that, any kind of feedback at all.

  This is the best to way to learn what the hell I'm doing in the literary universe, and what else is going on there, and how to be a part of it.  AND!  I just found out that the local state university which I was hoping to get into the MFA program and got the crushing reject from, has Spring admissions, so I can apply again in November for the Spring semester with a new portfolio.  I figure by then, I'll have at least two or three acceptances for some of the newer short stories I've been writing, and I can submit those in my portfolio.  Rather than what was in my last portfolio - which was random sci-fi and orphanage story - I realize now that I'm reading lit mags, was completely NOT what is being accepted or read in literary world.  So I'm going to cater to what they want, plus have several publications to slap on the application form, along with the addendum: ACCEPT ME, FUCKERS!

  My most recent short story involved a man who is so obsessed by numbers that he decides to recreate the Ten Plagues and bring them upon himself so that he will be finally purged from his obsession and be led into the Promised Land of spiritual freedom.  Understandably,  it doesn't work out so well for him in the end.  Apparently, I can only cater so much to literary without throwing in a little dash of the crazy, but I'm hoping to edit this story and submit it around later in the week to see if I can get a bite on it.

   

  • 2:36 PM
  • 27 Views
  • 14 eProps
  • 7 Comments