The hidden codes of publishing
Publishing is hard work.
What's more, it doesn't make any sense.
For a long time, I'd get letters that essentially told me what they didn't like about my essays. In depth letters. Real burners. Basically, "you suck" in specific terms.
Finally someone told me that those letters were what you get if they like you. I always figured they'd write "revise and resubmit." Turns out, that's a euphemism. If you get any letter that tells you anything about your essay specifically, the implication is that you are supposed to change that stuff and resubmit it.
Here's another one though, the letters I always got were something like, "we sent your essay out for peer review. One guy liked it. One guy didn't. So, we sent it to a third guy. He didn't like it. Here's why..." What I've come to find out is that if they send your stuff out for peer review at all, it means that you're at the top of the "nearly there" pile.
That's happenned to me about six times and I never revised and resubmitted anything. Stupid. The first few times, I can chalk it up to ignorance of the system. Still, I have received high end letters of this sort from Modern Philology, Postmodern Culture, and Twentieth Century Literature. Not exactly journals you sneeze at.
My latest article to receive the revise and resubmit has today been revised and resubmitted. Cross your fingers. I'm hoping Postmodern Culture will pass me on to the next level of judges and get me published. Baby needs a new pair of shoes.
What's more, it doesn't make any sense.
For a long time, I'd get letters that essentially told me what they didn't like about my essays. In depth letters. Real burners. Basically, "you suck" in specific terms.
Finally someone told me that those letters were what you get if they like you. I always figured they'd write "revise and resubmit." Turns out, that's a euphemism. If you get any letter that tells you anything about your essay specifically, the implication is that you are supposed to change that stuff and resubmit it.
Here's another one though, the letters I always got were something like, "we sent your essay out for peer review. One guy liked it. One guy didn't. So, we sent it to a third guy. He didn't like it. Here's why..." What I've come to find out is that if they send your stuff out for peer review at all, it means that you're at the top of the "nearly there" pile.
That's happenned to me about six times and I never revised and resubmitted anything. Stupid. The first few times, I can chalk it up to ignorance of the system. Still, I have received high end letters of this sort from Modern Philology, Postmodern Culture, and Twentieth Century Literature. Not exactly journals you sneeze at.
My latest article to receive the revise and resubmit has today been revised and resubmitted. Cross your fingers. I'm hoping Postmodern Culture will pass me on to the next level of judges and get me published. Baby needs a new pair of shoes.
posted by Monstro D. Whale at
1:35 PM
2 Comments:
I think the first time I got paid for writing (creative), I was a sophomore or so. A local poetry paper paid me $4 for a particularly bad, though mildly interesting, poem. I was pretty excited. In fact, I never cashed the check. Other journals paid me in copies, which was cool.
Never got paid for criticism, though.
Once I hit the road in the RV (hopefully later this summer), I've got three novels to work on. One's a quirky self-publisher for the blog (just needs another 30,000 or so words). Then there's my magnum opus -- the one that's going to break me, I can just feel it -- and which I'm going to try to publish traditionally. Then there's the vulgar comedic parody piece I've been kicking around for many moons.
Anyway, yeah, if you're getting REAL feedback, that's awesome. I've got a HUGE stack of boilerplate rejection letters from my early attempts. Very few have comments.
You're doing it the hard way, of course... It really helps to know someone if you want to be published. That's how it worked in my grad program. Whenever my teacher edited, say, Ploughshares, you'd find a half-dozen kids from our MFA program in that issue. That's probably one of the biggest benefits of MFA programs, IMHO.
good luck!
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