Good Rejection from Frederick Hill Bonnie Nadell Agency

Here's the rejection I got from Carolyn Kellogg. Originally, I wanted Bonnie Nadell to read BLANK since she helped get Infinite Jest published, which is a miraculous feat considering how hostile publishing is to innovative literary fiction, especially when it's prolix. Instead, I received this very kind (but obviously, very disappointing) rejection from Carolyn Kellogg. Here it is:

Dear Jackson:

Thank you for thinking of Hill Nadell Agency for your novel BLANK. While you clearly are an accomplished writer, I'm sorry to say that we've decided your project is not a good fit for our list.

Best wishes in finding the right custodian for your work.

Sincerely,
Carolyn Kellogg

Restructure Amnesia + New Query Letters

After licking my wounds from Molly Friedrich's rejection (I respect her enormously, but still feel cheated that she only read 45 pages of my novel), I decided that the best way to get over the hope and rejection of one of America's most prominent agents, is to:

1. Restructure The Amnesia of Junebugs. Virtually every writer and editor who has read my novel (or a portion of it), from editors at Harper Collins, the best literary agents in the whole world, to respected writers like Valerie Sayers, Frances Sherwood, Chuck Wachtel at NYU + Julianna Baggot at FSU, has loved the voice of Winnie Yu, the culture-jamming graffiti artist in the second section of my novel. But after MF stopped reading at page 45, I realized it's possible an agent may never actually get to the 2 couples with more substance, where the heart of the novel is (my first couple just fucks a lot and overintellectualizes everything, kinda like going to Oberlin College). So, to remedy this, I've switched sections one and two. Now, section two, the middle section, is chock full of sex, sandwiched by deeper, more complex, and more human characters.

2. My second response, which is just as healthy, and just as likely to break my heart someday, is to send out new novel queries to new agents. So I sent out a query letter to an agent at The Gernert Company in New York, and another one to David Foster Wallace's agent in SF.

Stay tuned. . .

Molly Friedrich Rejects BLANK

Yes, it breaks your heart. How could it not? When one of the best literary agents in the whole world (who represents four Pulitzer Prize winners for the love of God) asks to read your complete novel, and wants the right to respond first in case the other literary agents you'd send a query letter to, decides to represent you. It all seems so possible. But it's not, not with this agent. Anyway, here is the rejection letter I got ten minutes ago. I'll get over this in a day or so, but right now I have to say, it hurts. It fucking hurts. Here it is:

Dear Jackson,

Thanks so much for sharing BLANK with me. I've now had the chance to read a fair portion of the manuscript, and I'm confident that it's not for me. I think you've got an ambitious concept here that is vastly appealing and you pitched it quite well, but for me, the writing left me feeling at once both raw and disconnected from these characters. It's very tough to pull off an ensemble piece, and it may also be that when it comes to this kind of speculative, or if you want to call it "post apocalyptic" fiction, I'm predisposed to be an unusually harsh judge. But whatever the root of my reasoning is, the narrative just didn't reach me. I do appreciate your thinking of me with this submission, and I hope that your other agent prospect has had a more enthusiastic response.

Warmest wishes for the New Year,

Molly Friedrich
Post-apocalyptic? Speculative Fiction? What? Did I send her a copy of Minority Report by accident? Molly Friedrich is a fabulous, fabulous + smart agent.  She has an impressive client list.  She knows what she likes + she knows how to sell the novels she loves. But the reality is that BLANK is none of those things--neither post-apocalyptic nor speculative. It just appears that way for the first 30 pages or so. But then again, "Magnolia," seems like a real downer for the first hour too.

Molly Friederich Responds in 12 Hours!

This is the second email she sent me today! Of course, it doesn't mean anything in itself, and I won't get my hopes up right now. But this is possibly one of the best replies I've received from an agent since Lynn Nesbit told me she wanted to read my entire novel. Rad! Check it out:

Dear Jackson,


Thank you for answering everything, and quite thoroughly! You don't, by any chance, happen to know N.H.? The G. Smith and Yale connection made me wonder, and she's one of my newest clients.

Yes, I'd love to take a look at BLANK. Could you send along the entire manuscript, as an email attachment? I'd prefer it in Microsoft Word, if that's possible. Thanks, and I look forward to reading. Do let me know if K.F. resurfaces, because I'd like the chance to respond first if she offers to represent you.
Best,
M.F.

Three Novel Queries for Amnesia of Junebugs

In the past two days, I've become so frustrated that this one awesome literary agent--whose name I'll keep to myself, but whose top client is one of the rising stars in the Paris Review--hasn't responded to me in 6 months after asking for three sample chapters (I've sent her 3-4 emails and I still have received a response yet). Anyway, it's been pissing me off so much that I decided to sublimate my frustration into fresh new hope, so I just sent novel queries to the following high-powered agents:

1. Molly Friedrich (who represents 4 Pulitzer-Prize winners). That should intimidate me, but actually it inspires me.

2. Mary Evans (who represents Michael Chabon). I actually think this is something like the third query letter I've sent her in the past 2 years, but I could be wrong. What can I say? I'm persistent, because you have to be in this industry.

3. Doris S. Michaels (whose literary fiction clients are represented in every major publishing house in America)

So, what do I think my odds are? Oh fuck, slim to none. But I knew that going into this profession, and I'm not going to let that stop me from getting published. I'm a talented fiction writer. I'm just waiting for an agent to figure that out, and I know someday one will.

2 PhD Applications Finished + Submitted

Well, after several months of working on 2 PhD applications, writing a bunch of personal statements, revising a critical essay, obsessing about 1-3 creative writing samples, requesting transcripts from 5 schools, shepherding 5 separate recommendations from faculty in Chicago, South Bend, Notre Dame and Tokyo, + taking the GRE in Buenos Aires, I am finally done with all my applications. In case you're curious I finally decided to apply to:

1. FSU (PhD program in Literature + Creative Writing)
2. USC (PhD program in Literature + Creative Writing)

Now, maybe some of you are asking me: you already have a M.F.A., why the fuck do you need another degree in creative writing? The answer is simple: I don't. But what I do need, is more time to write and publish. And it's not going to happen by teaching English in Buenos Aires and running all over the city like an amateur speedwalker. By the time I get home, I'm exhausted. Another thing: I picked Notre Dame to get my M.F.A. because I really liked Valerie Sayers, Steve Tomasula + Frances Sherwood, not to mention it was closer to Chicago, which ended up being the best choice for me, even though I really like and admire Indiana University's MFA program very much. Tony Ardizzone seemed like an awesome guy too.

This time, I'd really love to work with Robert Olen Butler, Julianna Baggott, Suzanne Stuckey-French, TC Boyle + Aimee Bender, so really, any of the above mentioned programs would do for me. Also, this time: Florida or LA will work just fine for me. More than anything, I just want to write, learn from the best writers in the world, read 200 amazing novels, and flourish. I've got the talent, the persistence and the devotion, I just want more time to become the next big thing, and maybe expand my network in the process. Holla!

(Basically) Good Rejections from Witness + Brevity

Here are two decent rejections, not effusive, not amazing, not completely encouraging rejection letters, but also not generic either. If nothing else, I know that their readers/editors enjoyed the manuscripts I sent them. And that, if nothing else, is really important to me. See, I can appreciate the small things too:

Dear Jackson Bliss:

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider your work. Although we enjoyed this submission, it does not presently meet our needs. We are grateful that you thought of us and wish you the best of luck in placing your manuscript elsewhere.

Sincerely,
The editors
WITNESS

And:

Mr. Bliss,

Thank you for submitting your work to Brevity, the journal of concise nonfiction. Although we do not have a place for your work in the issues for which we are currently reading, we wanted you to know that our readers enjoyed your essay.

We have been blessed with a large number of excellent submissions lately, and hope that you understand that we can only publish a small fraction of the material we receive. We encourage you to submit your work elsewhere and to consider us again (remembering our rule, no more than two submissions per author per calendar year.)

Good luck with your writing,

The Editors
BREVITY

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