John Woodington The official site for the author.

Bob Vila War CryPosted by John Woodington on June 15th, 2010

It’s 5:56 am and I’m awake.  So I’ll let you know what I’m working on currently.  Over the past few weeks, I’ve been polishing up a few short stories to get them submission-ready.  I am planning to put another large chunk of time into editing my novel Alien Nation, and whenever I do that, I like to have a couple of stories that I can submit for publication in the background.  It gives me the feeling that, even though I’m holed up for months on a single project, I still have my short stories out there doing work for me.  The stories I’m working on currently are:

• “Memorial” – The one I’ve revised a bunch of times that I resubmitted after the last revision.
• “Reunion” – A story I’ve just finished about a married guy who reunites with his only other long-term relationship, which leads him down a path of personal corruption and self-examination.
• “Love Story from Scatterbrain’s Journal” – A flash fiction piece about a guy who can’t keep his thoughts in order, but who is positive that he is in love with a woman from his work.

I’ve got a couple other stories that need a lot more work on them, so I may just stick with these 3 for now, and see if they can get me a publication or two while I work on the novel.

In more physically fulfilling news, I think I may be a master plumber.  This past weekend I changed out my bathtub drain, which broke apart inside the piping that connects to the tub.  It took about a total of four hours of twisting, chipping, prying, cutting (with a hacksaw and a dremmel tool) and finally I got that beast out of there and put in a fancy shmancy new one.  When I finally finished, I stood up in my bathroom and raised my fists in the air and shouted “I am Bob Vila!”  Then I had a beer.

Side note because it just came to me: Speaking of drains, I wrote a novel about a girl who I called a “Drain”.  Whenever she touched someone, she drained the life out of them.  It was pretty good, though nothing worth showing the world.  In the filing cabinet it shall stay.

Updating Submissions in ProgressPosted by John Woodington on May 28th, 2010

So we’ll try a little experiment here.  In my last post I mentioned that I had updated my short story “Memorial” into a much better story, and was subsequently bummed out that I had already submitted the non-updated version to many of my top tier locations.  13 of 17 of those submissions have been rejected, but 4 are still out there in review.  So I thought I might query those four places and see if they would let me send them the updated version of the story, since they had not yet reviewed the initial non-updated version I had sent them in March.  Those venues are:

• American Literary Review
• American Short Fiction
• Black Warrior Review
• The Carolina Quarterly

I emailed these four fine literary magazines asking if I could send them the new version of the story.  I’ve never tried this before, so I really don’t know what to expect.  They could all shoot me down, or they could say, “ah, what the heck, send us the new draft.”  I’m hoping for the latter, obviously.

edit 6-1-2010: Black Warrior Review allowed me to submit the updated version of the story, and so now I like them more.  Updated story sent.

edit 6-3-2010: American Literary Review said I could resubmit, but I’d have to wait until October to do so, since their reading period is currently closed, and anything I sent to them now, even a submission update, would automatically be sent back by their interns.  That’s cool.  I had them withdraw the original submission I’d sent them and will send them the updated one in October, as long as it has not already published by then.

Resubmissions and ParentheticalsPosted by John Woodington on May 27th, 2010

I think I won’t write about not watching TV anymore.  It is boring stuff, and I can only say so many times, “Hey, I’m still not watching TV.”  It’s starting to sound like bragging, which means that’s the end of it.  I’m not watching TV, and I’m not writing about not watching TV.  The first rule of not watching TV is you don’t talk about not watching TV.  Ditto on the second rule.

I think I’ve completed my best short story yet.  It’s called “Memorial.”  I’ve had free time to work on it in the evenings, and I finally got a printer up and running in our house, so I printed it off, edited it through a couple times, made two moderately major changes (set it in the present instead of the future, and removed clipped coloquial verbiage, both upon recommendations of trusted readers) and now I think it’s quite publishable.  The problem?  I’ve already submitted it to 17 places in its “set-in-the-future-with-clipped-coloquial-verbiage” form.  So that sucks, because those 17 place were some of my top-tier places that I submit to, and since 13 of them have already rejected it, I can’t submit it to them again.  So now it’s off to other markets, hopefully ones that pay more than just contributors copies.

I know many authors think that if a story (or poem or essay or poemessay(?)) is rejected, they can significantly revise that story and resubmit it as a new piece of material to the very place that has already rejected them.  I don’t believe in that approach.  I say if you get rejected, you keep a stiff upper lip and move on to the next venue, whether you revise the story or not.  Were I an editor of a literary journal (or publishing house) I wouldn’t want to see the same story three times in three different draft forms.  That’d be a waste of time.  I’d say if an editor asks for a revision specifically, then go for it, but otherwise, don’t resubmit it even after significant editing.

(Also, I love parentheticals (and double-parentheticals) because they are so easy to drop in wherever you’d like.)