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. . .

Good Rejection from VQR

Dear Jackson Bliss,

Thanks for your recent submission to VQR: [ ]. While the piece had obvious merit it just doesn't fit our needs at present. We wish we could offer a more personal response to your submission, but the number of manuscripts we receive makes this impossible. Please know, however, that we've read your work and appreciate your interest in our journal. Please do keep us in mind in the future.

Best regards,

The Editors

TC Boyle Responds to Email

I could pretty much drool all over myself at the prospect of studying with TC Boyle (not to mention Aimee Bender), both of whom are at USC, but I wanted to know whether I'd actually be able to actually study with him if I got in, so I sent him a quick email yesterday that went like this:

Dear TC Boyle,

Hi + greetings. I'm kinda amazed they actually list your email address in the USC website. Pleasantly surprised. Anyway, I have one question for you: I'm in the process of applying to USC's PhD in creative writing program, but I wanted to know whether I'd actually be able to work with you (in some capacity) assuming I was accepted? I know you're a busy man and a prodigious writer so I don't have delusions. But it would be nice to know ahead of time what I might be potentially diving into: are you and the other USC fiction rockstars available, and willing, to interact with the doctoral students, assuming they don't annoy the shit out of you, or are you guys way too busy for that kind of thing?

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I think "After the Plague" is fantastic, by the way. I'd like to see more literary fiction writers embrace futuristic landscapes like that.

Peace, Blessings,

--Jackson Bliss

And goddamit, he responded in less than 24 hours:

Dear Jackson:

That's a resounding yes. I teach the fall workshop each year so that incoming students, if they're so inclined, can begin with my class. And we work closely together. You've also got Marianne Wiggins, Aimee Bender and Percival Everett to work with subsequently. Not too shabby, I'd say.

Cheers,

TCB

::

I don't know what I find cooler, getting my first email from TC Boyle, or knowing that if I manage to get into USC's program, I'd be able to work with the man who practically redefined the contemporary short story.

3rd Story Accepted in 2008

Today LB and I got a new care package that her Mom sent from Chicago. Inside there were some of the usual suspects:

Greenies for Zoe
Nurse Magazines for Erika
A copy of Vegetarian Times
Zyrtec
A mysterious letter from some lawyer
Rejections letters for me from: The New England Review, Washington Square, New Letters

But at the bottom of the stack--I always put the thickest envelopes at the bottom for the sake of build-up--was what every aspiring writer dreams about in his obscure literary career: a new acceptance letter, this one from Connecticut Review. Let me quote the exact page because it just feels so good to read it:

Dear Jackson,

On behalf of the Editorial Board of Connecticut Review, I am delighted to accept the work listed on the enclosed contract.

To help us prepare for the printer, please follow the directions for submitting an Electronic file of your work. The directions are attached. As soon as your Production Editor receives your work, she will begin processing it for publication . . .

I am very pleased to be publishing your fine work.

Sincerely,

M C-F

::

So, I'm really happy about this. The amazing thing is I sent that manuscript almost exactly a year ago. I'd almost forgotten about it. Now I have to send the editor an email and tell her I'm in Buenos Aires.

::

In related news, my lyrical essay "Piano Lessons" published in volume 10 of the South Loop Review is now in Chicagoland stores and in Columbia College's bookstore. Info about this issue can be found here.

Good Rejection from the Missouri Review

Well, this rejection makes up for the impersonal ones I received from Tarpaulin Sky and the Boston Review. Thanks Missouri Review. Now, if only you could tell me what I'm doing wrong, I'd appreciate that:

Mr. Bliss,

Thank you for giving us the chance to consider your story [ ] for publication in The Missouri Review. Though it does not fit our current needs, we appreciate your interest in our magazine and your commitment to quality writing.

I've been a reader on your work before-- last spring's submission, [ ], thoroughly impressed me-- so I was happy to once again see your work. Again, you use such vivid, well-crafted language to bring your characters and setting to life. Ultimately, this story was not accepted for publication, but it is still a fresh, commendable piece. We look forward to seeing more of your work, and strongly encourage you to enter something in one of our contests, which are described in more detail below.

We wish you the best of luck publishing your work and hope you’ll consider sending us more in the future.

Sincerely,

The Editors

New Yorker Editors Respond to Old Message. . . Again

Here's the letter:

Dear Jackson,

We’re sorry that you have not received the appropriate responses from our editorial staff. We have a rotating group of fiction readers managing what you correctly identify as an “avalanche” of slush. While we cannot respond more specifically to your request for a status update on your story, it is safe to assume that since six months has passed since your last submission you can consider your work free to submit elsewhere.

As for your statements about your need to believe that the New Yorker isn’t “stacked against the emerging writer,” a perusal of our back catalog will prove that we have discovered and nurtured the careers of many new and exciting voices in literature.

Sincerely,

The Editors

::

And my response:

Dear Editors,

I didn't mean to touch a nerve, I just wanted to be honest. I'll keep plugging away until I'm one of those new and exciting voices in literature you speak of.

Affectionately,

--Jackson Bliss

Good (and by That I Mean, Upsetting) Rejection from Quarter After 8

Thank you for sending us [your story.] Although the editors have decided not to include your latest submission in the upcoming issue, we would like you to know that your work was considered as a finalist for volume 15. As a large percentage of submissions we receive do not make it past our initial readers, we hope that you will be encouraged to send more work our way during our next reading period (beginning Oct. 15, 2008).

We look forward to reading more.

Sincerely,

The Editors of Quarter After Eight

New Yorker Editor Reaches Out Again

Here is the last (of 10) emails I sent to the New Yorker editor who was kind enough before to let me send it to him personally, along with his response:

Hey B*,

I tried sending you at least 10 different messages from 3 different email addresses, but I smell conspiracy.

Anyway, just wanted you to know that I re-submitted my story since it disappeared in the New Yorker Database last summer, so if you decide you want to read it after all the hype and folly, it's there. Thanks for reaching out to an aspiring writer. It was a kind and thoughtful gesture. I hope you're well.

Peace, Blessings,

--Jackson Bliss


And his response:

If only we had the time + resources to actually cause conspiracy. It's sort of bizarre that I only get the most random of emails from you. Have you tried pasting the story into the text of the email? If so, go ahead + send it to my personal email address: ohwouldntyouliketoknow@yahoo.com + I'll read it there.


-B*******

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.

Why I'm Angry at David Foster Wallace

I just learned that David Foster Wallace committed suicide yesterday by hanging himself and I'm pissed off about it. I find this so depressing, especially considering how ambitious--and impossible--Infinite Jest is as a novel and a novelistic performance. I won't even claim to have an opinion on that book because I've started and stopped at least three times. But a writer of Wallace's talent, audacity and intelligence needed to fight the good fight along with the rest of us. It's not fair that he becomes an existential hero now, a writer with his own mythology. He gave up on us, on this mundane world, on the deeper meaning of language by betraying everything for a gesture. Yes, his fame as a rebel and a prodigy will germinate the lectures halls of contemporary literature seminars all across the world and his name will forever be consecrated for the brutality of his death. But meanwhile, the rest of us have to go on. We will struggle to make it as aspiring writers in a world that no longer cares about the things we write compared to the cheap semiotic porn of a classic suicide. Look, it's simple: suicide cheapens language, it devalues it. It says: I wrote all these beautiful things and yet none of them were important enough, meaningful enough, for me to stay here and understand my own germination as a writer with a box full of dangerous toys. Of course there's something grandiose and tragic about a novelist taking his own life. Mishima, Hemingway, London seemed to do just fine putting their symbolism on ice. But this is heavy-handed, especially for such a post-modern giant like Wallace. Men kill themselves because they have lost control of whatever it is that made the life worth living, because they have become powerless or hopeless. Suicide is ironically based on paralysis, always done for the person, never for the audience. But the rest of us still have to wake up every morning and make fresh committments to old vows.

It's too easy to kill yourself once you're famous. You know your death will mean something because you're already famous and killing yourself will simply enhance your mythology. It's so much harder to wake up each and every day and continue writing simply because it's what you have to do, living almost-famous and hoping that someday you writing actually matters to someone, hoping someday that your writing makes its way past the boundaries of your own mind to connect to another part of this world. DFW: how could you write such brilliant prose and not understand how important it was to every fiction writer fighting in this industry that you fight alongside us, where economic formulas, sale stats and sell-throughs become more important than creating worlds out characters and ideas out of language. You are supposed to be here donating your incredible energy to the sputtering literary engine. How dare you deny us that brilliant flame of yours simply because your arms are wobbly, your thoughts dreary than last year. What you've done is forfeit this sacred battle of words when you were on the front line. You did what so few literary writers have done: you changed literature. And now you leave us in this arena, stuck in a fixed fight.

I'm angry at you David Foster Wallace. I feel betrayed by you. How can words truly matter if the last thing you leave us is not a final novel, but a goddamn gesture that will be used to reduce everything you have ever written? You have belittled your mission and ignored your responsibility in this world. Your writing wasn't just for you, or for pomos, it was for all of us that are still here fighting a fight you won and then conceded. Your writing gave us permission to defy the corporatization of literary fiction. It gave us a place to wipe off the tailor markings of realist fiction. But now you're gone. Your books will double, possibly even triple in sale, but you are not here to punch back at cost-benefit analysis. You have given up on the only fight you could win, and you did it because you couldn't live with your own pain. You couldn't stick around, just to understand the things we saw with that radiant mind of yours.

Good Rejection from Quick Fiction

Dear Jackson,

Thank you for submitting your work:

Shinjuku @ 4:O0AM

Although your work was in strong consideration for publication in issue 13 of Quick Fiction, our editorial process is based on consensus and we were not able to come to an agreement. We wish you the best in placing your work elsewhere and hope that you will submit again.

Regards,
Jennifer Pieroni
Editor in Chief

Quick Fiction

8th Message to New Yorker Editor without a Response

Hey B******

Yes, believe it or not, I've sent you at least 6 other emails with my story pasted. I have no idea what the f*** is wrong with electronic world but I'm pretty sure it's not on our side. It really shouldn't be this hard. My only guess is that the New Yorker Email system/Submission Manager filters messages with abbreviations and RE:'s to avoid spam. I wrote one email that started with BJJ, and several others as responses, all of them with the story pasted in the body of the email.

Anyway, let's try this again because we're stubborn. How funny would it be if you finally saw my story after it had been built up by days and months, and it was just:

Cute

Hi, she said.
Hi, he said.
You're cute, she said.
Not as cute as you, he said.

The end.

Okay, anyway, that's my pathetic attempt at making light of this because it's the only thing I can control right now Branden. On to business: so here it is yet again. I hope you finally receive it and most importantly, enjoy it. Please email to confirm:

Otra Chica

Wack Response from Cream City Review

11 Months after I submitted a lyrical essay, I received this slightly irritating response from the Cream City Review:

Hello Jackson,

I am emailing you as one of the non-fiction editors at the Cream City Review. Sorry that it has taken us so long to reply. Your essay was in our top tier, so we needed some extra time to deliberate over it.

Unfortunately, we found that there were other essays that were more prominent and better suited to our current needs.

Please feel free to continue to submit,

Sarah Joy Freese
Creative Non-Fiction Editor
Cream City Review

So let's review: we took almost a year to get back to you because your essay was really good, but not so good that we wanted to publish it. So sorry. And the clincher is, it didn't even say we thought it was well-written, or please send us more material. No. It said: feel free to keep sending us stuff, which is sort of like saying, you can keep sending us your writing if you want but. . . Look, it's a simple rule, if you make me wait almost a year for a response, I think the response better be kinda of good, otherwise, it doesn't make sense why you'd hold on to it for so long except administrative incompetence or insufficient staff--neither of which makes your journal look great. I don't have any problem with you rejecting my essay within 4-7 months or so. Hell, you could use a form letter and I wouldn't even be that upset. But to send me this lame email almost a year after I sent it to you is just uncool. It's the most impersonal personal response I've read in years. And fuck, The Paris Review is better at rejecting people at a merciful speed. Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading all the essays in this journal that are so much more prominent and better suited to your editorial needs. And you know what, they better be fucking amazing. I better shit on myself after each essay, or I'm going to send your journal photocopies of the NYC phonebook every two months as a story submission just so you have to waste your time.

Good Rejection from Brick

Dear Jackson,

Thank you for your submission. While your piece was very engaging, after careful consideration we concluded it was not quite right for Brick. Though it was intriguing, we found that it was a bit too personal for our general readership. That being said, [your piece] is very well-written and I’m sure you’ll find a home for it elsewhere.

My apologies for the brevity of this letter. The number of submissions we get forces us to resort to these terribly impersonal replies. We do wish you all the best with your writing.

Thank you again for thinking of us.

Best wishes,
A*** B**********
Brick, A Literary Journal
Toronto, Ontario
Canada

Katherine Fausett Asks for Partial of The Amnesia of Junebugs

Today, I received this email + it gave me hope:

Dear Jackson,

Thank you for contacting me regarding your manuscript BLANK, which I would be happy to consider. Can you please email me the first three chapters as an attachment?

I will read as soon as I'm able and will get back to you.

Best,

Katherine Fausett
So I sent her a 3 chapter teaser + prologue, that happened to be full of sex, but I told her the rest of the novel wasn't so Henry Miller. I can't get too excited about this, but I feel like I can make a few conclusions:

1. My Novel Queries are improving
2. There are some agents out there that are willing to give young, talented, committed, but also unknown, emerging writers a chance. I just met one today.

I Hope, Therefore I Write

I just sent query letters for my novel The Amnesia of Junebugs to Katherine Fausset and Jim Rutman and I'm wondering whether being in Argentina will positively or negatively prejudice my chances of getting a top-notch literary agents. Considering how many agents don't accept email queries, it seems like a bad move I admit. But I'm hopeful that Beth de Guzman will eventually help me out or that something else will work out eventually. I still hope because I'd stop writing otherwise.

The New Yorker Writes Back

I'm not sure what's more frightening, getting ignored by The New Yorker for two years, or getting a sudden and personal response on the same day that I sent out my email. Anyway, here is the response I got in its entirety:

Hi Jackson,

In the late summer of 2007 we had some server issues in the fiction department, during which your story was probably lost, in addition to hundreds of others. If you'd like to resend your story "Otra Chica" directly to me, I'll be glad to give it a read and get a response to you within the
next few weeks.

Best,

B******
The New Yorker
Fiction Department

Of course I'm flattered to get an email after two years of cold, impossible-to-ignore silence. But now it freaks me out--in a good way, of course--that an editor is actually going to read my story. As long as I can remember I've felt stilted by the fiction minions of TNY, knowing, fearing that only disgruntled, jaded and opinionated readers touch our unsolicited manuscripts. I dunno, maybe that's still the rule. But I have to say, this experience has taken the poison out of my bloodstream and the bite out of my bark. I'm not expecting any miracles, I don't expect them to pick up my story, but being accountable to someone at the Great Glossy is, in a word, exhilarating. I mean, this is one of the reasons I write--to have an audience, and to learn from people who know the industry.

My Civilized Letter of Frustration to the New Yorker

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

2nd Story Accepted in 2008

Well, it's been a very slow trickle in the great year of 2008 so far for publications. But I got an email recently that really made my day and gave me some real hope in the world of literary fiction: "The Molesters," "Skinny Boys" + "The Symmetry of Tablespoons," three chapters from my debut novel The Amnesia of Junebuys were picked up in the African American Review, a journal out of St. Louis University that includes essays, art, scholarly essays on Black history, cultural diaspora, anthropology, literature as well as poetry and fiction.

And not to brag or anything but the list of former fiction contributors includes impressive names like: Richard Wright, Clarence Major, Reginald McKnight, Rhodesia Jackson, Percival Everett, Rita Dove, Toni Morrison, Charles Johnson, and Gwendolyn Brooks. And damn, even if my piece doesn't come out until late 2009/2010, I have to say, it feels so good to know my writing matters to someone. It will keep me going for a while now to know that words matter, language is primordial reunion, and that I will have readers to connect with.

Maybe They Liked My Story. . .

I was checking up on the status of one manuscript I sent to FENCE Magazine 7 months ago. Of course, being a dumb ass, I hoped that this great lapse of time meant something. Maybe all the editors are sitting at a table, sipping espressi, discussing the merits and demerits of each piece, and one of the editors took a personal liking to my story and defended it with so much passion and intelligence that the other editors took a step back and were like, yo, let's do it! Let's give this Jackson Bliss a act in the Great Literary Show. . .

Reality Check: But when I woke up from my day-dream and tried to check my submission on their high-tech submissions manager, the fucking thing didn't even recognize my email address, even though I'd registered last year when I'd submitted my last story. It's as if I'd never submitted that piece. So, being a stubborn artist at the core, I did the SAME FUCKING THING OVER AGAIN AND REGISTERED AND SUBMITTED ALL OVER AGAIN. But this time I submitted a different story. Ah, signs! If only literary fiction writers would accept all the signs the universe is giving us, none of us would write.

::

On a good note, I recently finished another short story I'm very fond of, about a woman in Lima who drugs tourists and steals their shit. This actually happens. Oh, another thing, I think Erika and I are moving to Argentina. Fingers crossed.