The Waiting Game

Everything in the literary world is behind schedule: that short story I submitted a year and a half ago to Zoetrope, the literary agents that placed my manuscript in the sludge pile after telling me they'll read my partial, one of my stories I gave William O'Rourke to publish in the Notre Dame Review more than a year ago, the Kenyon Review's online version of my short story "Cowboys of the Heart: the 6-DVD Boxset", Stand Magazine's Winter issue that "Nimble Calligraphy" will be published in + of course, the 2 PhD programs I applied to, none of which have responded yet. I expect some uncertainty + delay. Actually, a lot. But I what I don't expect, is uncertainty + waiting across the board.

My bad.

4th Story Accepted up in 2008

Wow, inertia works in mysterious ways. I just found out one of my more experimental short stories "Cowboys of My Heart: the 6-DVD Boxset" just got accepted by The Kenyon Review, which, in case you didn't know, but of course you probably did, just happens to be one of the top 10  literary journals in America. Shit, that makes me really happy. Things are slowly happening for me as an emerging fiction writer, little by little.

I just have to keep at it. . .

New Wave of Submissions for Fall 2008

Because talent isn't enough in the world of lit. fiction, I've submitted manuscripts (self-contained novel chapters, short stories and lyrical essays) to the following journals for Fall 2008 (electronically, of course):

McSweeney's, One Story, Nimrod, 9th Letter, Indiana Review, Black Warrior Review Fiction Contest, Meridian, Virginia Quarterly Review, 3rd Coast, Ploughshares, Emerson Review, The Literary Review, Sentence, Quick Fiction, A Public Space, The Kenyon Review, Cimarron Review, AGNI, The Baltimore Review, Witness + The New South.

Should I expect more heartache and agonizingly long wait periods, followed by a storm of rejection letters and a bunch of generic form emails based more on taste than technique? Of course. Do I think my odds are slim to none that most of these journals will pick up something of mine? Yes, I do. Do I still have the same naive hope that this time things will be different? Of course. Please read my Writing Is A Viral Entry if you want to know why. Will I let the staggering odds against me prevent me from slowly developing my fiction career? Absolutely not.

See, this is my attitude: I already know that I'm a gifted fiction writer. I'm just waiting for the rest of publishing world to figure this out. In the meantime, I'm going to keep paying my dues and continue improving as a new voice in fiction until I can finally get editors to see my talent. Yes, it's difficult. But I knew this going into it.

Delilah in Collision published in the Pittsburgh Quarterly

Recent rejections from:

kenyon review
epoch

Recent submissions to:

danforth review
new england review
north american review
nimrod
writer advice

Recent publication at:

the pittsburgh quarterly (the site looks great. i'm so happy about that).

recent--as in, just two minutes ago--acceptance at:

writer advice. it's an edited version of my response, but hey, i'll take it.