Here is an email I just sent the New Yorker:
Dear Hard-Working Fiction Editors at The New Yorker,
I know you get a gazillion manuscripts a year and I know the slush pile is a constant avalanche. But as an emerging fiction writer who is trying to make it in literary publishing in small steps, I have to admit, I'm getting kinda upset here. I haven't received a response from your magazine for the last two manuscripts I've sent you, a time-frame of over two years, and I'm not asking for much, except an editorial response. I know this email is gauche, I should probably delete it, sublimate it into my next cover letter, possibly abandon the delusion that I'd ever publish one of my short stories in your iconic glossy until I score a top-notch literary agent, or become Pinochle partners with the editors. But I want to believe--I need to believe--that your magazine isn't so stacked against the emerging writer, at least one without connections, that with the right intersection of editorial taste, aesthetic temperament, and a manuscript with fresh language and a strong voice, eventually things will work out.
So it's with this blowhard first paragraph that I ask you to please update me on the status of the short-story I submitted on 7 August 2007 entitled "Otra Chica," with a follow-up email sent in March 2008. Thank you in advance for your understanding and response.
Yours Truly,
--Jackson Bliss
Dear Hard-Working Fiction Editors at The New Yorker,
I know you get a gazillion manuscripts a year and I know the slush pile is a constant avalanche. But as an emerging fiction writer who is trying to make it in literary publishing in small steps, I have to admit, I'm getting kinda upset here. I haven't received a response from your magazine for the last two manuscripts I've sent you, a time-frame of over two years, and I'm not asking for much, except an editorial response. I know this email is gauche, I should probably delete it, sublimate it into my next cover letter, possibly abandon the delusion that I'd ever publish one of my short stories in your iconic glossy until I score a top-notch literary agent, or become Pinochle partners with the editors. But I want to believe--I need to believe--that your magazine isn't so stacked against the emerging writer, at least one without connections, that with the right intersection of editorial taste, aesthetic temperament, and a manuscript with fresh language and a strong voice, eventually things will work out.
So it's with this blowhard first paragraph that I ask you to please update me on the status of the short-story I submitted on 7 August 2007 entitled "Otra Chica," with a follow-up email sent in March 2008. Thank you in advance for your understanding and response.
Yours Truly,
--Jackson Bliss