John Woodington The official site for the author.

The Best Weight-loss Plan EverPosted by John Woodington on April 7th, 2010

On Monday, I discovered the most effective weight-loss plan in the history of the world.  I call it the “Stomach Flu” plan.  In twenty-four hours I lost about 90 pounds.  At least, it felt like I did.

Glimmer Train has a nice little interview with Thomas E. Kennedy, in which he describes and provides a great little exercise called the “cut-up technique” which gets you to stop thinking logically and start writing better.  Scariest of all is that it makes sense.  And works.  I may have to try it.

The Alexander Patterson Cappon Prize for Fiction is taking submissions until May 18th, and if you win, you get $1,500.00, which is like $8,765.93 in Writer Money and $12,346.17 in College Money.  Of course, there’s a $15.00 reading fee when you submit, but that’s about as low of a fee as you will find for a prize that size.

My short story “Memorial” was rejected by Crazyhorse, though the rejection email disappointed me a bit.

We are sorry this particular manuscript was not selected for publication in Crazyhorse. We hope you will send us another soon, though. We could not publish Crazyhorse without the fine writing submitted to us. While we regret that the large number of submissions we receive makes it difficult for the editors to respond personally, we want to emphasize that an editor personally read your manuscript. Devoted reading is part of the Crazyhorse editorial mission; it is also our own personal one.

I was really hoping for an image of a truly crazy horse to come violently neighing out of my computer screen to slap me in the face with its oat bag and shriek at me that it hated my story and it had bigger fields to gallop through.  Basically Mr. Ed after a trough of Mountain Dew.  Ya feel me?

The New Yorker Rejection LetterPosted by John Woodington on March 5th, 2010

I submitted a story to The New Yorker on December 4th of last year.  Exactly three months to the day later, March 4th, 2010, I received the most current version of their standard rejection letter (email).  It reads as follows:

Dear John,

We’re sorry to say that this manuscript is not right for us, in spite of its evident merit. Unfortunately, we are receiving so many submissions that it is impossible for us to reply more specifically. We thank you for the chance to consider your work.

Sincerely,
The Editors

I told them not to be so long-winded in their response but they never listen to me.  I just hope the exactly-three-month rejection time isn’t some blatant indication that they never read the story in the first place.  I’d rather be rejected than not considered at all.

…

In more promising news, Glimmer Train has a $2000.00 top prize in their Fiction Open competition, which is accepting submissions currently.  So maybe I’ll send this New Yorker-rejected story to them.

I’m 150 pages into my edit of my novel AlieNation which is looking more and more like the title will change to either Alien Nation or The Alien Abduction Consultant, though the latter seems very bland and not-thoughtful.  I’m finding that there are certain section which are far easier for me to edit than others.  The most difficult sections to edit are the ones where I read through them, realize they are redonkulously horrible, and then agonize for an hour about cutting it out.  After the cuts are made, however, everything feels better.  Onward and upward.

Rejection, eBook Costs, and NeologismsPosted by John Woodington on February 2nd, 2010

We’ve talked about rejection here before.  Many types of rejection, but mostly rejection of the literary kind.  Terrence Cheng has some very good words about rejection (and not just the literary kind) over at Glimmer Train.  I like the Glimmer Trainers.  They’ve always published great writing, but they’ve also made a big effort to publish writing about writing, especially in their Writers Ask mini-magazine thang.  I’ve gotten a couple of these juicy tidbits, and they never disappoint.

Apparently eBooks will be costing more in the near future.

The new Puzzler at Narrative is a good one.  Finally.  Invent your own words.  I love it.  I’m always inventing my own words, because, as we all know, the ones that are already out there just don’t cut it sometimes.  Check it out: Gidottta.  Yep.  That’s a word of mine.  Gidotta.  You know, like, “Hey, gidotta my face, bra!”

So I’ll have to work on that.  Because “Gidotta” prolly won’t win me some Narrative competition points.

Finally, I’m about 50 pages into my editing of my novel AlieNation.  That title will change, don’t you worry.  Luckily, the book seems to get better as it goes, so it’s got that going for it.  That also means I’ll have to pump up that beginning a little more before I call it done.  The goal is to get it done in time to pitch it to an agent or three at a writing conference this summer at Seton Hill University in Pennsylvania.  Should be fun.