Sunday, June 24, 2007
Good & Bad
Bullet points today.
- The worst part about helping a poet move, as I did yesterday? All those damn books. One of the best parts? He had the good taste to get a bunch of free boxes from local liquor stores, so it looked like he was hauling case after case of Jagermeister and Coors Light and such into his new house.
- Several prominent journals have gotten onto my submissions shitlist recently. Shenandoah was the worst offender: I sent work to them in January or February, only to get a note back saying they weren't reading at that point and would start reading again on March 15. This information was not on their website, which is (in case they don't realize) easily updateable and the most convenient way for people to find up-to-date submission guidelines. So then I sent work in May over a week in advance of their May 15 deadline. I waited a few weeks, then got back a form note saying "We don't read after May 15." Sorry, guys, but even if that's not a postmark deadline, I'm willing to bet you had my submission in your office before May 15. Other offenders: Western Humanities Review, which did the same damn "We don't read after date X" thing without noting it on their website, and Gettysburg Review, which took a long time (though not as long as when I've sent there previously) and didn't bother to include a note of any sort when they returned my poems, so I had to double-check my records to make sure it was them.
- I obtained a new Microsoft laser wireless keyboard/mouse combo. It seems to be working very well with my computer, and it's ergonomic, which is good since I've had some hand/arm posture issues in the past (mild carpal tunnel, that compressed ulnar nerve). The only drawback here is that the space bar is flaky and doesn't recognize keypresses that well, but this is overall a good product.
- I'm going to stop labelling my blog posts. Sorry, but this feature is awful as implemented by Blogger. If I type "poetry" into the labels field and type a comma, it auto-completes as "not poetry." Really fucking great, people.
- Want to come to a barbecue on July 14th in Colorado Springs? You're invited!
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I had a similar experience with "Hotel Amerika" that I mentioned on my blog in April:
http://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2007/04/silly-rejection.html
http://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2007/04/silly-rejection.html
I can't remember the journal names, but that happened to me, too. No reason for them not to post online. Ridiculous.
Steve,
I can understand your frustration with Shenandoah, but, despite the absence of the announcement on the website, the temporary refrain from reading submissions in the early part of the year was printed many times in the journal (it was due to work on special issues), and a journal sometimes has to test who's been reading the pages themselves. I agree they should have and could have posted on their website, but the journal is really run by one person who has to read more than 5,000 submissions a year as well as layout, design, &c. For that reason, the summer blackout has always been just that: they don't READ anything during the summer, because the guy deserves a break sometimes. For my part, I'm always grateful when a journal returns the subs rather than sitting on them for 6-8 months.
(Full disclosure: I've been working as a contributing editor for Shenandoah for the last 4 years.)
I can understand your frustration with Shenandoah, but, despite the absence of the announcement on the website, the temporary refrain from reading submissions in the early part of the year was printed many times in the journal (it was due to work on special issues), and a journal sometimes has to test who's been reading the pages themselves. I agree they should have and could have posted on their website, but the journal is really run by one person who has to read more than 5,000 submissions a year as well as layout, design, &c. For that reason, the summer blackout has always been just that: they don't READ anything during the summer, because the guy deserves a break sometimes. For my part, I'm always grateful when a journal returns the subs rather than sitting on them for 6-8 months.
(Full disclosure: I've been working as a contributing editor for Shenandoah for the last 4 years.)
The thing is, Jake, that I have one of those special issues and at least one other recent issue of Shenandoah, and I don't remember the reading period stipulation, so the little test is obviously not very reliable. And I think that concept is rather silly in general--just require that people submitting buy an issue first. I'm a past subscriber to the journal, so as a matter of fact I resent such testing.
Was the note printed big and bold somewhere, or was it in an editor's note, or was it in those little fine print guidelines? Wherever it was, I missed it. If a journal wants to restrict its reading period to reduce the workload, great. I'm all for it. The notification simply needs to be better. If I need current guidelines, I'm going to check the website, not a year-old back issue.
Was the note printed big and bold somewhere, or was it in an editor's note, or was it in those little fine print guidelines? Wherever it was, I missed it. If a journal wants to restrict its reading period to reduce the workload, great. I'm all for it. The notification simply needs to be better. If I need current guidelines, I'm going to check the website, not a year-old back issue.
Steve,
The summer blackout period has been a long-running submission guideline, printed on the colophon page of every issue I own and as well on the website, though the website does say that Shenandoah observes postmarks, so I don't know what to say about your recent return, but I'll mention it and maybe we can become clearer about that.
If it were me in a similar situation, however, I'd be happy the journal sent back my poems and didn't sit on them for five or six months. I have submissions that have been out for almost three years, though I consider those passive rejections. And I've got close friends who've written to another large national quarterly, people who even know the editor, only to have their poems sit in the office for 18 months and be returned apparently unread.
As for the earlier blackout period, I remember reading the notice several times, but I don't recall where just now. I take your point about checking the website instead of back issues anyway --- I think that should have been posted online, if it wasn't.
I'd love, with Copper Nickel, to require that those who submit buy an issue: if everyone who's submitted (I think we've gone through about 1,500 submissions this last year) would buy even a single back issue, we'd be doing much better financially. But I can't imagine there's any good way to test that.
I'm biased of course with good feelings toward Shenandoah, so, though as a writer and submitter myself I appreciate your frustration, I don't know, as an editor or a writer, whether I'd consider what you've described worth of "worst offender" status. Journals can, and do, do much much worse.
The summer blackout period has been a long-running submission guideline, printed on the colophon page of every issue I own and as well on the website, though the website does say that Shenandoah observes postmarks, so I don't know what to say about your recent return, but I'll mention it and maybe we can become clearer about that.
If it were me in a similar situation, however, I'd be happy the journal sent back my poems and didn't sit on them for five or six months. I have submissions that have been out for almost three years, though I consider those passive rejections. And I've got close friends who've written to another large national quarterly, people who even know the editor, only to have their poems sit in the office for 18 months and be returned apparently unread.
As for the earlier blackout period, I remember reading the notice several times, but I don't recall where just now. I take your point about checking the website instead of back issues anyway --- I think that should have been posted online, if it wasn't.
I'd love, with Copper Nickel, to require that those who submit buy an issue: if everyone who's submitted (I think we've gone through about 1,500 submissions this last year) would buy even a single back issue, we'd be doing much better financially. But I can't imagine there's any good way to test that.
I'm biased of course with good feelings toward Shenandoah, so, though as a writer and submitter myself I appreciate your frustration, I don't know, as an editor or a writer, whether I'd consider what you've described worth of "worst offender" status. Journals can, and do, do much much worse.
I was only talking about the early blackout period, not the summer blackout period, which I'm well aware of (which was why I sent the second submission prior to the stated deadline).
I do appreciate that Shenandoah returned the second submission when they weren't going to read it during the summer. I'm puzzled, however, by the fact that they have a listed deadline which I beat, but they decided not to read the material anyway. Most places who say "We read between X and Y" mean "You can send us material between X and Y." If Shenandoah literally means "We stop reading immediately at Y, so it doesn't matter if you send before Y if we don't get to it by then," then (A) they need to make that clearer since it's not the norm, and (B) I don't know how far in advance I have to send in order to make sure they've read it by Y. Seems like it would make more sense to stick with a postmark deadline but move it back to April 15 or so.
I'm not a bad submitter, Jake. I read journals before I send. I subscribe to several of the journals I send work to regularly, and I have back issues of all the ones I submit to regularly. I read new sample work online. I carefully read the website guidelines and also check Poet's Market and Dustbooks to see if there's anything else that's not on the website. I let editors know that I appreciate things they've done in the past, be it good work from the last issue or a nice note they wrote on the last rejection they sent me. Frankly, it's entirely possible that my work is not now and never will be suitable for Shenandoah, but when I send there, I do have a concept in mind of what sorts of poems of mine they might be more inclined to like, and I try to put together a coherent set of poems in that vein. So I end up a little sad when it doesn't seem like any of that matters at all.
It's certainly true that journals do much worse stuff than this in response to submissions, and I tend to write about those things here as well. This spring's experience came as a disappointment to me because my submission experiences with Shenandoah had always been good in the past. I'm pretty sure I've shared my good experiences with Shenandoah on the blog, whether it was fast response time or my excitement the first time I got ink on a rejection there, so I feel like it's fair to point out when I think they could have done better.
By the way, I believe Forklift, Ohio asks that you buy a copy of the journal and query before submitting work.
I do appreciate that Shenandoah returned the second submission when they weren't going to read it during the summer. I'm puzzled, however, by the fact that they have a listed deadline which I beat, but they decided not to read the material anyway. Most places who say "We read between X and Y" mean "You can send us material between X and Y." If Shenandoah literally means "We stop reading immediately at Y, so it doesn't matter if you send before Y if we don't get to it by then," then (A) they need to make that clearer since it's not the norm, and (B) I don't know how far in advance I have to send in order to make sure they've read it by Y. Seems like it would make more sense to stick with a postmark deadline but move it back to April 15 or so.
I'm not a bad submitter, Jake. I read journals before I send. I subscribe to several of the journals I send work to regularly, and I have back issues of all the ones I submit to regularly. I read new sample work online. I carefully read the website guidelines and also check Poet's Market and Dustbooks to see if there's anything else that's not on the website. I let editors know that I appreciate things they've done in the past, be it good work from the last issue or a nice note they wrote on the last rejection they sent me. Frankly, it's entirely possible that my work is not now and never will be suitable for Shenandoah, but when I send there, I do have a concept in mind of what sorts of poems of mine they might be more inclined to like, and I try to put together a coherent set of poems in that vein. So I end up a little sad when it doesn't seem like any of that matters at all.
It's certainly true that journals do much worse stuff than this in response to submissions, and I tend to write about those things here as well. This spring's experience came as a disappointment to me because my submission experiences with Shenandoah had always been good in the past. I'm pretty sure I've shared my good experiences with Shenandoah on the blog, whether it was fast response time or my excitement the first time I got ink on a rejection there, so I feel like it's fair to point out when I think they could have done better.
By the way, I believe Forklift, Ohio asks that you buy a copy of the journal and query before submitting work.
Fair enough all the way through.
I didn't mean, by any means, to suggest that you were a bad submitter. I'm glad you've pointed out the omission from the website, which has never been very good. I hope we'll get better at that. But I know that early blackout period was announced somewhere.
I also didn't mean to crowbar my editorial self into your blog. I think we need to be able to write about our experiences as writers and our frustrations with submissions, but there's always another side, and I guess part of my ongoing frustration with blogs is that we usually just get one side of a story, and I think I just wanted to see the bigger picture, though I'm sure I just came off as a tententious ass, for which I apologize. I also think we should begin connecting our accounts as writers with our accounts as editors and publishers so we can rebuild the sense of publishing as a kind of correspondence or communication rather than the sort of target-shooter relationship that seems to be imagined by most of the submissions I get in my various roles. I'm not saying that you're viewing things that way, but I just wanted to feel around and see what else was here.
Again, my apologies.
I didn't mean, by any means, to suggest that you were a bad submitter. I'm glad you've pointed out the omission from the website, which has never been very good. I hope we'll get better at that. But I know that early blackout period was announced somewhere.
I also didn't mean to crowbar my editorial self into your blog. I think we need to be able to write about our experiences as writers and our frustrations with submissions, but there's always another side, and I guess part of my ongoing frustration with blogs is that we usually just get one side of a story, and I think I just wanted to see the bigger picture, though I'm sure I just came off as a tententious ass, for which I apologize. I also think we should begin connecting our accounts as writers with our accounts as editors and publishers so we can rebuild the sense of publishing as a kind of correspondence or communication rather than the sort of target-shooter relationship that seems to be imagined by most of the submissions I get in my various roles. I'm not saying that you're viewing things that way, but I just wanted to feel around and see what else was here.
Again, my apologies.
You probably provided a more eloquent case for the other perspective than I possibly could have. I'm sorry I made you feel like you had to do it. I hate causing arguments with my friends. I do try to bring the same standards and attitudes to sending work as I do to editing, but I don't really know how successful I am.
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