The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: submission

  • Dancing and Feeling Good About Publishing

    "The politics of moving, aha - If this message's understood..."
    “The politics of moving, aha – If this message’s understood…”

    Recently I sent my novel to a publisher for consideration. I try not to think about it too much but I’ve got my fingers metaphorically crossed they’ll accept it. The key is to keep expectations low.

    However, I can’t not think about the future. It’s sort of what I do.

    To do that, I think about the past and what I thought the future would be. At some point I (and a lot of others) thought sure that the future would be filled with chrome and jetpacks and flying cars. Even silly things like The Jetsons gave us ideas, like video phones and the three-day work week.

    In every version of The Future, there were things that were a lot the same as they were then, or now, if you prefer. There’s always food, almost always entertainment of some sort and always relationships. There are always corporations, too.

    Since I’m a writer, the particular corporations I’m interested in today are the ones that publish stories, entertainments. Like the one I sent my novel to.

    In the last thirty years, entertainment has changed dramatically. Gone are the 12”, 33 1/3 Long Playing records of my youth in favor first of cassettes, then CDs and now digital formats like MP3. Gone are the four networks and their summer rerun schedules in favor of first VHS, then DVD and now cloud-based streaming on smaller screens. Not gone, but certainly less prevalent are the bound books made of paper that are migrating to a computer cloud where one can read but doesn’t necessarily own anything any more despite paying for the privilege.

    Books in particular come in multiple formats: paper, audio, digital. Some are from major publishers, some from smaller presses and a great many more are self-published. (more…)

  • What the Internet Taught Me About Submissions

    I have a weird relationship with sharing work and submissions. I’ve done it; I have my little pile of rejection somewhere in a box and I’m totally okay with it. For one: there’s something funny about how after something is rejected, you start to look at it and go, “Oh yeah, that totally wasn’t ready.”

    But my opinion of the submission process is very much affected by the way I’ve been sharing my writing since I was 17 — the Internet! (Ooooooooooh.) When it comes right down to it, the handful of submissions to small magazines and the single experience with sending a novel query is a minor experience compared to how I handle sharing most of my writing.

    Allow me to make this point with math! (Ahhhhhhhhhh.) Then I’ll tell you what the Internet has taught me about the submission process.
    (more…)

  • Small Presses and Hope

    I submit to the proper authorities, which is to say, none of them. I submit ideas to my audience/friends and family on social networks and blogs.  But to this point, with the exception of a poetry.com incident and a couple of dreadful entries in my college literary magazine, I do not submit my work anywhere else for consideration of publishing.

    The main reason for this is that I haven’t yet produced anything that I consider publishable. Not much to say there.

    But I have started looking into small presses where I might submit work someday.  Presses and publishing houses are a subject of much more interest to me as a writer than me as a reader; now, at The Dusty Bookshelf, I glance down the row of books for publishers I trust, rather than a limited smattering of  authors and titles already in my acquaintance. I know that a book from Verso or Haymarket Press is probably worth my time.  Poetry from New Directions usually merits a glance, if not intensive study. For fiction, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux publishes several of the authors I enjoy.

    I don’t believe that the rise of e-books spells the end of traditional publishing, nor that the demise of traditional publishing would necessarily be disastrous for writers and readers.  But I do hope my favorite small presses can continue to do their important work of connecting niche markets with niche writers, and helping the writers and editors involved at least make enough to eat or to supplement a day job.

    When I do revise some of my work to a satisfactory level, I would probably submit to PM Press, an anarchist press that is more sympathetic to spirituality than most; Ice Cube Press, which is out of Iowa and focuses on Midwestern writing; or my church’s publishing house, depending on the nature of that work.  (I mean, I would submit to these guys first, then pray a lot, and bite my nails while the inevitable rejection letters rolled in and I tried to find other presses of possibility.)  In the meantime, I support the heck out of them with my book buying.  They need to stay in business a few more years!

    Otherwise, where will I submit?

  • Just Write, Damn It!

    I struggled with my thoughts on the post this week: submitting vs. not. While I think it’s helpful to put yourself out there, if for nothing else than to get feedback on how you’re doing, there are those who would tell you that submission is part of being a writer. That somehow not being willing to fling your work over the transom makes you less of a writer, or at least not brave enough to fully own that title.

    At the moment, I’m not sure that I believe that.

    Several months back, I read a series of articles about what it means to be a writer. My own thoughts at the time were pretty snobbish. I felt that if you weren’t actively submitting your work somewhere then you were just wasting your time, as well as the time of anyone else who had been asked to read your pages. But then one blog post stopped me short. The gist was this: if you write, you’re a writer. End of story. No further validation needed. That really appealed to me.

    Although I like the inclusionary nature of this approach, I feel like I should add a caveat here. Be proud of the work you do. Enjoy the thrill of creation, and soak up that rush of finishing energy you get when you finally type the words “The End.” But understand your limitations as well.

    (more…)