John Woodington The official site for the author.

KarmaPosted by John Woodington on November 30th, 2009

My last post was to announce that I’d received notification that a short story of mine has been accepted for publication. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I received three rejections for three different stories. That’s okay. I figure it’s a form of writer karma. You know, something great happens (publication) and then something not as great happens (rejections) to balance out the greatness of the great thing that happened.  As it happens, all of the rejections were very nice, especially the one I received from Narrative magazine, in which they declined to offer me fame and fortune for a short story of mine, which I had submitted to their “30 Below” competition.

Dear John Woodington,

Thank you for entering “Memorial” in the Narrative 30 Below Contest. Your work was carefully read and considered by several of our editors in a field of compelling entries from all around the world. Many of the entries deserved repeated readings and, like yours, received close attention from our editors.

In the end, however, we could choose only three winners and ten finalists, and hard choices had to be made. We regret that your entry was not one of our winners or finalists this time. We’re grateful that you gave us the opportunity to read your work, and we hope you will keep Narrative in mind for your work in the future.

An announcement of the winning stories will soon go out to the magazine’s readership.

Again, thank you for your entry, and please accept our kind wishes.

Sincerely,

The Editors

Now wasn’t that nice?  A form letter, yes, but at least it’s longer than one sentence, and at least it takes up a full page of an email.  It’s a little disheartening when I receive a rejection letter in the mail that is smaller than a postcard, and is obviously cut from a page of many rejection slips that are sent out to many authors.  I use those slips as bookmarks sometimes, so I guess they do serve a useful purpose.

In other news, I did not go out shopping early on Black Friday, but instead decided to make my purchase online around noon.  I bought a netbook (a Dell mini 10v), and now I am terribly excited for it to arrive at my house.  I’ll post a review of said netbook once I’ve used it enough to review it intelligently.

In still other news, I have been accepted to write and post at Fictionaut, which is putting out some really great writing by really great writers.  I have found it extremely refreshing to see writing of the caliber that is being published at Fictionaut, so I say thank you to them.

Thank you also to my alma mater, who put a blurb about me in their alumni newsletter.  Go Blugolds!

A Short Story has been Accepted for Publication…YES!Posted by John Woodington on November 24th, 2009

I went through my mail this morning at 5:47 am while eating a bowl of banana flavored granola.  In amongst the ads for shopping specials this weekend was a white envelope from Pennsylvania.  More specifically, from Seton Hill University.  Inside was a brief letter that said they had accepted my short story “Visitation Hour” for publication in their next fall issue of their college literary magazine, Eye Contact.

“Visitation Hour” will be my one dozenth (a.k.a 12th) story published.  I will post a link here to the website where you can order a copy of the journal once it is released.  I would post a teaser piece from the story to whet your appetite, but that would be a breach of contract, and I don’t want that on my conscience.

I’m really excited that this story will be published soon, and I want to thank Seton Hill for giving me the opportunity to share my work with them.  I also have to thank my friend Deanna for referring me to Seton Hill and their lit journal in the first place.  To thank her, I am posting a link to her site where she sells really great handmade ornaments and other such masterful creations.  Pick one (or a dozen) up for the holidays!

Also, “dozenth” is not a real word.  Microsoft Word gives it the Infallible Red Squiggly Line of Incorrect Spellings.

iTunes U is wonderfulfillingPosted by John Woodington on November 23rd, 2009

I have discovered the plethora of wonderful, fulfilling lectures and speaches and author readings that is iTunes U.  iTunes U is a sections within iTunes that houses numerous items from even more numerous topics, and everything is imported from colleges around the world.  I’ve found particular interest in the sections dealing with English and Literature, and in one sitting I downloaded 109 different lectures and podcasts.  One of my favorites so far is a lecture on Raymod Carver.

What’s the best thing about iTunes U?  Its wealth of information and its ability to let you see inside lecture halls and author readings when you might not otherwise have a chance to.

What’s the second best thing about iTunes U?  As far as I can tell, everything in the entire collection is free.  Hour-long videos, hour-long (and longer) readings and conversations with authors.  All free.  Another favorite of mine so far is an evening of reading and conversation with Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman, which took place at the Walker Arts Center in January of 2007.

New items are posted to iTunes U all the time, so there’s no shortage of items for perusal.  They make for a great listen (or viewing) when you’re looking to listen to something other than your new Taylor Swift album (or, in my case, your new Third Eye Blind album).

Narrative Puzzler Riddles…No ThanksPosted by John Woodington on November 19th, 2009

This week’s Puzzler at Narrative Magazine is to write a riddle. I don’t like riddles. I think they are somewhat cheap, and don’t really benefit anyone except the person telling them. Which seems selfish. I doubt I’ll enter this week.

Here’s a riddle: Who hates riddles and does not think they provide value to society?

Answer: John Woodington.

How to Publish Short Fiction and PoemsPosted by John Woodington on November 17th, 2009

I think there is a misconception around the writing world when it comes to the sensitive topic of publishing.  I’m talking specifically here about the publishing of short stories and poems, and not novels, which have a different, lengthier process, with multifaceted ways to get to the end goal.  In the world of publishing short stories and poems, becoming published lies solely in the hands of the author, and does not take an editor or publicist or agent to get a story into a publishing house. In fact, my previous literary agent said she would specifically not take charge of submitting short fiction for me, as there was very little money in it for her, and that she would only handle novel-length work. This makes sense, since her cut of my sales was 15%, and a top sale in short fiction would be $5000.00 at the very most, leaving her with a profit of only $750.00 for her work.

So the burden (and ultimately the success) of getting a short story or poem published lies with you, the author.  And it is not impossible.  Trust me.  I mean, yes, it’s impossible to get published in The New Yorker, but it’s possible to get published anywhere else.  You only need three things to get your short story or poem published:

1) Dedication
2) Consistency
3) A handy dandy submissions chart

I published my first piece of fiction when I was twenty.  It was wonderful and exciting, and it happened because I followed through on the list above.  I should tell you that this list was imparted to me through some wonderful writing instructors, and is not entirely of my own invention.  Here’s what each point means, and why you need to do it to get published:

1) Dedication – This is the most important (and therefore #1) item on the How To Get Published List.  You need dedication, and eve before that, I suppose, you need a realistic outlook.  The truth of the matter is, you are not going to be published right away (in all likelihood) and it is going to take time, and a little bit of effort.  And everyone goes through it.  You are not the only person to get a rejection letter (or, in the case of The New Yorker, a rejection sentence).  Take pride in them, save them in a folder, and realize that they are the paving stones that make up the path to publication.  You have to remain dedicated in the face of failure.  I have a story in submission right now that has been rejected over forty times in various versions and drafts, but I keep sending it out, because I feel it is a good story, and deserves to be read by others.

2) Consistency – This is important because it can save you a lot of time and a lot of indecision.  Be consistent in your submissions.  If a story gets rejected, send it right back out to the next place.  When you write out a query letter, perfect it ahead of time and use the same one for all of your submissions.  My entire query letter body reads like this:

Enclosed is my short story “[Title]” for publication consideration in [Name of Magazine]. The story is 4000 words long. A SASE is enclosed, and I look forward to hearing from you.

You don’t need more than that.  When I get a rejection letter, I drop it in my thick file of rejection letters and send out the story to the next place within 15 minutes.  The key is to keep your work out there.  You can’t get published unless you’re submitting your stories/poems regularly.  You have to assume that you will be rejected numerous times before your piece finds a venue that wants your work.  Keep sending it out, and don’t despair when The New Yorker says “No.”

3) A handy dandy chart – This is, for me, the most valuable item on my computer, aside from the stories themselves.  The chart consists of a list of your stories/poems that you have out for submissions, and where they are currently submitted, and when you submitted them.  I’ve worked on my chart over the years, and I track everything on it.  Here is a screenshot of it for your visual amusement:

In the left-hand column are the various stories that I have out for submission.  The ones highlighted in blue have already been accepted and published.  Across the top row is a list of various places that accept short story submissions.  Certain places are highlighted in light blue, which means they have rejected work in the past, but would like to see more work (sometimes publishers note this on their rejection letters; make sure to keep track of this as these places can be of value to you in the future, since you already know they like your writing style).  This is just a short sample of my list, which has over 130 different places that I have found to submit to.  Needless to say there are countless others that I don’t have on my list, but which you could put on yours.  The row directly beneath the list of publishers tells me if they take email submissions or snail mail submissions (email are far quicker, and cost no postage), and the row directly beneath that tells me which places pay their contributors (green highlighted boxes) and which don’t.  The little Xs in the cells denote where a particular story has been rejected, so that I don’t submit that story to them again by accident.  The cells with the dates in them denote where and when a particular story was submitted.  Those stories haven’t been rejected or accepted yet.  When they get rejected, I change the date to an X.  If they are accepted, I change the date to an A and highlight it blue, because blue makes me happy.

By following the three points listed above (Dedication, Consistency, A handy dandy list) it is only a matter of time before you find yourself among the published authors of the world.  But it takes time.  I currently have 5 stories that I am submitting, and those stories are each submitted to five places at a time.  It’s okay to do this.  Make multiple submissions at once.  Send your story to four or five different places at the same time.  Odds are you’re going to be rejected by most places anyway, so you may as well speed up the process of finding the right place by submitting to multiple places at once.  The worst that can happen is that your story gets accepted somewhere, and you have to email the other places you submitted to and tell them that your story is no longer available, which will probably make them think, “shoot, we should’ve taken that story before our competitor did.”

So send out your story or poem to The New Yorker and four other places, and when The New Yorker sends you their rejection sentence two weeks later, send that story right back out to the next place on your list.  Once you do this consistency, publishing only becomes a matter of time.  And while you’re waiting for rejections and acceptions, maybe you write out a few more stories or poems.  Because that’s what it’s all about, right?

What to Do with Novellas?Posted by John Woodington on November 13th, 2009

Ever have this happen to you: you write a short story, and it ends up being not so short?  Example: I began writing a humorous short story about a teenage boy who was a Lutheran, but who also had innate desires of being a serial killer.  After a few drafts, the story became  a little less humorous, a little more dramatic, and a lot lot lot longer.  Instead of 5 or 6 thousand words, we’re looking at 21,000 words.  So what do you do with that?  You call it a novella (which it is) and file it away.

There’s nothing wrong with writing novellas.  Some of the greatest stories are novellas.  Melville’s Billy Bud, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.  All novellas.  By definition (and these definitions vary from place to place) a novella is a story that is between 15,000 and 40,000 words.  Anything shorter is a short story; anything longer is a novel.

The problem with the novella is that it is extremely difficult to sell to any publisher, unless, of course, your last name is Melville or Conrad or Steinbeck.  Mine’s Woodington, so that doesn’t help.  Publishers don’t usually want novellas for obvious reasons.  They’re too long to put into a literary journal of short stories, and they’re too short to be sold as standalone books (for the most part).  Publishers can’t charge the $29.95 price tag that they can for a hardcover novel, the hefty length of which warrants the hefty price, and the hefty price of which fills the coffers of the publishing houses.

A few brave places do accept submissions of novellas.  The Missouri Review published a wonderful novella a few issues back entitled Bearskin.  Narrative accepts submissions of any length (they also host the Puzzler competitions I’ve been posting about).  Quarterly West does a competition, as does failbetter.  That said, after doing some research, it proved very difficult to find any place that accepted submissions of novellas at all, and the ones that did were usually competitions which required a hefty reading fee, or obscure websites with web page space to burn.

The only thing I can think to do with my novella is to someday include it in a collection of short stories.  I’ve been noodling around the idea of compiling a short story collection (another difficult sell to large-press publishers).  If anyone has any ideas of what to do with this thing–aside from self-publishing, which I currently refuse to do–I’d be happy to hear them.

What makes me sad is that I think it is a great story, and I’d love for people to read it.  It’s one of the stories I’m most proud of, so getting it into print would be very fulfilling.  The novella is entitled Goodwill.

Narrative Puzzler Week Off MethinksPosted by John Woodington on November 11th, 2009

So the competition for the Narrative Puzzler of the Pied poem (in which you take a poem or piece of a poem and use all the words to make a new poem) has concluded, and since I did not win the competition, I thought I’d post my entry here, along with the poem from which I derived my own.

The original:
From Jon Loomis’ “The Pleasure Principle”

It’s early, cold out. These bodies
are nothing, wear them once
and throw them away–

but they’re good nothing. Your warm neck,
small snore. Roomful of salmon light.
Night unzipping its sequined gown.

And my Pied Poem derived from it:

Salmon are unzipping early, roomful of its warm,
sequined bodies. Your cold small neck–
wear them away. Good night, light snore.
Once it’s nothing, throw these out and gown them,
but they’re nothing.

I really liked this competition, and I think the people who did win did a great job.  I do not think, however, that I will be participating in the Puzzler competition for this week, entitled “Six Great Plays,” as it consists not of writing anything, but instead of answering six literature-related questions.  This seems kind of dumb to me, since you could probably Google the answers and cheat your way to victory.  Where’s the creativity in that?  Maybe I’m missing the point of this one, but in any case, I’m going to sit this week out and work on writing other things, like my draft of “The Tourist” which is now over twenty pages long and takes the main character from Minneapolis to (so far) Texas.

I am also getting my short story “Lawnmower Boy” out to more reviewers soon, and I look forward to hearing their thoughts on it.

Get Writing, and Read some New CrichtonPosted by John Woodington on November 9th, 2009

Remember that this in National Novel Writing Month, and if you are participating, you should have about 15,000 words written by the end of the day to keep pace with reaching the goal of 50,000 words by the end of the month.

Don’t worry if you are behind.  You can catch up.  The most words I’ve ever written in one day is a little over 7,000, and by the end of that session (six hours, I think) I was pretty wiped.  But it can be done.  So instead of watching Monday Night Football or Antiques Roadshow or reruns of Friends, sit down at the computer (or notebook) and get writing!  Don’t worry if it’s good or bad now.  That doesn’t matter in the first draft.  Just get the words on the page.  You will have to rewrite anyway.  Everyone does rewrites.  Except, or so I’ve heard, for Terry Goodkind, though I wouldn’t consider him a good writer.  A rich writer, yes, but not a good one.

In other writing and reading news, there will be a new book out by one of my favorite pulp authors who passed away not too long ago, Michael Crichton.  It also looks like Spielberg wants to do the movie adaptation of the posthumous novel, which is always promising.

It’s good to see one final piece out of Michael Crichton.  Jurassic Park was one of the few novels that hooked me into reading and, subsequently, writing.

Up and Up While Down and OutPosted by John Woodington on November 5th, 2009

My submission for this week’s Puzzler competition is in, and I’m pretty happy with it.  The Puzzler this week is a Pied Poem, which is a poem created by using the words of another poem.  I used a poem from a former teacher of mine named Jon Loomis, who is a wonderful writer, and is beginning to have some successes with his thriller novels, High Season and Mating Season.

As for other writings, I’ve been blissfully drafting up a story about a man on the up and up, while at the same time on the down and out, and though I think it’ll need a lot of rewriting and revision, the overall feel of the piece is coming together, which I find is one of the most important parts of a story.  You can’t have a good story if it doesn’t have a unique feel to it.  The current, tentative title of this story is “The Tourist.”  But who knows how long it’ll remain that way.  It could change to “Up and Up While Down and Out,” or something terribly crazy like that.

Here’s the first line as it stands now:

 To write a diary of Christopher Chambliss’s adult life would be the simplest thing in the world.

Also, I’m down to the final 441 pages of War and Peace, which is really daunting, considering I’m on page 917.  The book is turning out to be something wholly other than what I’d expected from the start.  To call it a novel seems unfair.  It’s more of a treatise on life, with numerous examples thrown in for illustration.  I’m slowly enjoying my way through it.

The Narrative Puzzler Strikes AgainPosted by John Woodington on November 3rd, 2009

This past week, Narrative’s Puzzler competition was for a Lipogram, a sentence that used every letter of the alphabet except for “E”.  It proved to be a fun challenge, and below is the entry that I came up with:

A boy bows to his patriarch, his kimono parts, and an amazing symphony of ghosts chants discordant qualms for his blind submission to a jailing history of lax motions, but to no avail.

I thought it was a very fun competition, and the winners did a great job.

The new Puzzler looks to be a fun one as well, though somewhat challenging.  The task is to create a “Pied Poem,” in which you “select an existing short poem, or a stanza from a longer one, and rearrange the words to form a new work.”

Sounds like fun, huh?  While poetry isn’t my thing, I’ll give it a try.  Any recommendations on which poem I should use as my source material would be welcomed.