John Woodington The official site for the author.

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.

Do Publishers Want Novellas in this Economy?Posted by John Woodington on December 13th, 2009

I got a really insightful comment from writer Minnie Estelle Miller who said, regarding the publishing industry and the publishing of novellas, “since the market is so tight and crying black tears about the loss of income, why not publish novellas?  One would think they are less expensive to produce than novels.”

One would think that, yes.  In fact, I would assume that a 150-page novella would cost a publisher a fraction of the price it would cost them to publish a 400-page hardcover novel.  I think the trouble comes in not in the cost of publishing, but in the money earned back per the sales of the published novella versus the novel.  A hardcover novel can sell for upwards of $30.00 and even more, whereas a novella would probably sell in the $10.00 to $15.00 range at the most.  So the publishing company pays a couple more dollars per unit to publish the novel, but they make a far better profit margin on the novel than they would on the novella.  Remember, it’s all about the money (mostly) for the publishing house, so even though they spend more to publish the novel, they make more money on it in the end anyway, which is what they’re looking for.

Which brings up a good point.  If you want to make money as a writer–money that would amount to enough so that you wouldn’t have to work another job to supplement your income–you should probably be writing novels.  I can’t think of anyone on the planet (literally) that makes their living writing short stories or novellas.  Then again, I believe Nicholas Sparks’ “novels” are actually novella-length works packaged into novel-esque books.  Sparks aside, novels are what bring in the dough–when you can get them published and earn advances and royalties on them, that is.  Still, as far as the short story is concerned, the most you could make off of a short story is around $1000.00 (maybe a little more if you get one picked up by the infamous New Yorker).  And while that’s no paycheck to sniff at, it’s not enough to feed, clothe, and house you for any length of time.  Even writers who frequently publish short fiction in top venues (like T.C. Boyle, for one) still have day jobs to pay the bills.  (T.C. is a prof at USC, I believe).

There is something that publishing short stories can get you, though.  They can get you credibility, which can get you a book deal, which can get you on your way to selling those novels you’ve been writing.  Publishing short stories has proven, for me, to be significantly easier than publishing novels, and I like to think that the more short stories I publish, the more credibility I’ll have in the eyes of literary agents and publishers, which could lead to a publishing deal of the lucrative nature.

In other news, I’m very much in the Christmas spirit, enjoying our Christmas tree, hot chocolate, and the first round of Christmas cookies.  I’ve put our Christmas lights out in the trees around our house, and have realized that I’ve many many more lights to go before I realize my Clark Griswold dreams.  Maybe next year….

Dealing With and Avoiding Literary RejectionPosted by John Woodington on December 9th, 2009

Maybe we should have a little talk about rejection.  Every author goes through rejection at every stage in their career.  Rejections from small, online literary magazines, rejections from big literary magazines, rejections from The New Yorker (of course), rejections from literary agents, rejections from publishers, rejections from cooler people in high school and college.  Rejections galore.  It’s a part of the writer’s life and should be embraced (except for those rejections by cooler people in high school and college–those you should weep over and console yourself with Ben & Jerry’s and Meg Ryan movies).  How to deal with rejections in the literary world?  That should be relatively easy; it’s all about venue.

I would recommend dealing with literary rejections the same way you might deal with romantic rejection: by taking those rejections and posting them all over the Internet for the world to see.  Just kidding.  Don’t do that.  Seriously, don’t.  You’ve got better things to do with your time.  No, what you should do is take that rejection as a learning opportunity, and then move on.

Unlike romantic rejection, literary rejection is not meant to be a personal attack against you.  It is simply a way for editors to say that your story (or poem or article or novel) is not right for their publication, and that you should try placing it elsewhere.  If you are serious about writing, you will come to learn that everyone likes different things, including editors, and they will accept or reject a piece solely because they think it is not a fit for their particular publication, not because it does not have literary merit.

One thing I am assuming here is that you are submitting work that should or could be published somewhere, in some venue.  I do believe there are stories that don’t deserve to be published, like your ten volume fantasy epic about a bodice-ripping paladin, or the last six books in the Sword of Truth series.  That said, there are a few things you can do to avoid instant rejection.  Like I said, rejection is fine, as long as it’s based on the publication to which you are submitting.  The New Yorker is rejecting your short story because it isn’t a right fit for them (and because they hate you a little), but not because your story is “bad.”  There are, however, things that will get you rejected without an editor even reading your story to the end.  And these things should be avoided at all costs.

1) Poor grammar/spelling – This is basic stuff.  Don’t misspell any words, and use proper grammar (unless, of course, you can break the rules of grammar to wonderful effect).  Poor grammar and misspellings are the sign of an amateur writer, and are sure to get you rejected without any sort of basis on the literary merit of your story or poem.

2) Failing to adhere to submission guidelines – Again, very basic.  If The New Yorker says “email submissions only,” don’t send them your poem packet via snail mail.  If they say “paste your story into the body of the email,” don’t send it as a Word attachment.  There is one caveat to this rule, and it is a submission guideline to which you should never adhere: many places prohibit simultaneous submissions.  They want you to submit your story to them and them alone, and not to anyone else at the same time.  This is straight up BS, and you should ignore it.  I have yet to find a publication that has a way of telling whether you have submitted your story simultaneously or not, and you don’t really want to sit around and wait for six months while Granta works on your three-line rejection slip.  Send out to multiple places at all times, regardless of what the guidelines say.  You will benefit in the long run.

3) Boring/unengaging work – You’d think this would be obvious as well, but surprisingly it is not, especially to the writer of a given story/poem.  Often we writers are too invested in our own material to judge it critically, and we can miss basic things (like engaging plot and character depth).  If you send in a ten-page story, and it doesn’t get going until page three, you’re going to get rejected every time.  You’ve got to hook your reader, even in literary fiction, which carries an unwarranted reputation for stuffiness, overintellectualization, and density.  I know, I know, you’re thinking, “But those stories in The New Yorker are boring from beginning to end and yet they get published!”  Yes, yes they do, because they are good stories, and while they’re not formulaic Dan Brown page-turning pulp, they do often work on multiple levels of consciousness that your bodice-ripping-paladin-fantasy-epic does not.

Finding the right venue for your particular work is probably the best way to accelerate the process of publishing.  I’ve written stories that have been rejected 50+ times because I’ve sent them to the wrong venues (*cough cough* The New Yorker *cough cough*), and I’ve also had stories accepted on the very first submission, because I knew the story was a perfect fit for that particular venue.  So don’t be discouraged when you get that rejection slip in the mail/email.  Stick it in a folder somewhere as a memento and send your work out again to a proper venue.  It will greatly increase your chances of publication.

Note: The New Yorker is rarely a “proper venue.”

Getting Published in The New Yorker is not Impossible (mathematically)Posted by John Woodington on December 4th, 2009

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about my reference to getting published in The New Yorker magazine (or, more accurately, not getting published in The New Yorker).  It seems a lot of people want to know what the odds are of this particular magazine actually accepting a short story or poem for publication from a writer who can not be recognized just by their last name (i.e. Wolff, Updike, etc.)  So I thought I’d do some digging.

On the wonderful Duotrope’s Digest website, they have a robust list of various statistics on every imaginable literary publication, and The New Yorker is, of course, one of them.  Various stats include genres accepted, length, payscale, response time, and the types of responses (acceptions, rejections, non-responses).  Since we’re interested in the acceptance rate, we’ll skip to that.

As of today, Duotrope has 289 responses in the last year from people who have submitted to The New Yorker.  Here’s the data (courtesy, of course, of Duotrope’s):

Responses: (80.97 %)
Acceptances: 0.00 % (No publication has a 0% acceptance rate. This data is based on response reports sent to Duotrope’s Digest, and we have not received reports of any acceptances yet. If one acceptance were reported, the acceptance rate would be 0.34 %.)
Rejections: 80.62 % (65.8 avg. days per rejection) | 14.59 % personal, 66.09 % form, 19.31 % unspecified
Rewrite Requests: 0.35 % (50 avg. days per rewrite request)
Non-Responses (19.03 %)
Lost / Never Responded: 15.22 % (287.9 avg. days before reporting submissions as lost or never responded)
Author Withdrawals: 3.81 % (125.1 avg. days per withdrawal by author)

I know, I know.  It doesn’t look good.  A 0.00% acceptance rate sure gives the impression that getting a short story or poem accepted by The New Yorker is literally impossible.  We know, however, that this is not the case, since they publish over fifty short stories a year, and even more poems.  It is worth noting that Duotrope’s lists The New Yorker as both an “Extremely Challenging Fiction Market” and an “Extremely Challenging Poetry Market.”  But I’m sure we could’ve guessed that, right?

So where does The New Yorker get it’s fiction and poetry from to fill its fifty plus issues a year?  Ginny Wiehardt over at the Fiction Writing section of About.com writes, “The New Yorker publishes only one story per issue (devoting one issue per year to new fiction), and it’s safe to say that pretty much every ambitious American writer tries them at some point or other. And while The New Yorker does take chances on new writers, it tends to draw from a stable of established writers, like Munro and Murakami.”

So being an established writer helps.  From personal experience, I have an author friend who, after having a story published in Glimmer Train, was able to land a literary agent, who in turn said that they would push to get one of this author’s stories published in The New Yorker in order to help promote a new short story collection by this author.  So having an agent might help (though in this case, in fact,  it did not help, since they were unable to get a story published in The New Yorker, despite the fighting powers of the agent).

Over at The Stranger, they have an interview with Deborah Treisman, the fiction editor at The New Yorker, in which she talks about the review process that the fiction staff at The New Yorker follows when deciding which stories to publish.  Also, she talks about why they select the stories they do.  She admits that people complain that The New Yorker publishes a lot of stories by the same writers (Munro, Murakami, Saunders), but she also makes a good point, that those writers are really good writers, and they are writing at the top of their powers.

Then, there’s an interesting an funny online diary of how one merry band of poets was able to get something published in The New Yorker, though it involved infiltrating the magazine’s actual New York office….

So basically you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle with this one.  I think the key to getting published in The New Yorker is the same as the key to getting published anywhere.  They want established writers, so make yourself established.  You don’t have to win the World Series the first time you pick up a bat.  Just be glad to bat .301 in little league, and you’re on your way.  Work your way up by starting with smaller, lesser known publications, and give it time.  You don’t need to be in The New Yorker today, or this year, or even in the next ten years.  It might take longer than that, and you need to be patient.

It’s also worth noting that The New Yorker is looking for literary fiction.  Your awesome short story or poem about a bodice-ripping druid is likely not going to be accepted (no matter how good it is) due to the subject matter.

Follow the guidelines I put forth in a previous post, and use those to get yourself some publishing credits.  Maybe someday in the future, The New Yorker will give you a call and offer you a bajillion dollars for your non-bodice-ripping-druid story.  Well, maybe more like $3000.00, but still.