The home of fiction author Val Gryphin…

I had to take a break unfortunately as the tail end of the semester kicked my proverbial ass. Because of my wreck in December I ended up way behind, so when you add my schoolwork and slowly working back up to full time at my job, it ended up being a lot. Plus, finishing my first revision was a huge step, so I relaxed LOL. I am going to design a sign graphic that I will hang when I am not posting for a few days so that you know I am not leaving, I am just working on stuff.

So after the revision of the book, I turned my focus to revising some of the stories I haven’t sent out yet. I have several stories that are making the rounds, but I also have a backlog of stories that are very close to finished that just need polishing, as well as some that are good but need a couple of revisions. So I’ve worked on that, and now I have eight stories out. Three that have been out for a while, but I also just sent stories to Glimmer Train, Clean Sheets, Modern Fiction Magazine, Not One of Us, and Vestal Review. Glimmer Train is a long shot I know, but still, I’d love to get published in there. I also have six in the pipeline for not a ton of revision, and then a few more that will take some work.

I’ve also been branching back out into multi-genre work. I love photography, drawing and oil and watercolor painting, but I haven’t done any of for a long time, like a few years. (Well, I have done photography when I traveled.) So I have been missing all of it a lot, and I decided that I need to get back into it. I think that it is important to branch out into different types of artistic works because they enrich and help other branches. (That will be the focus of an upcoming post.) I plan on posting pictures of my artwork as well as my photography here as I talk about how they are connected, and also to help me stick with it along with my writing.

So, back into the posting flow!

But I love them. Well, maybe not love, but close. I feel like every rejection letter I get is a letter closer to an acceptance. I have a stack of them, I don’t throw them away, perhaps because I feel like having them is a physical symbol that I “am a Writer” as it were. In this age of online submission, now most of my rejections are electronic, which means I don’t have that physical proof, but I still save every one of them. I have to say that my best rejection letter, or perhaps just my most memorable one, came from Glimmer Train, at least 7 years ago. At that time they were still doing submissions by mail, and they had a standard rejection letter, tri-folded, with three check boxes on the card. I believe they were , I don’t remember them all, I know there was one that was basically “no thanks,” ( I was like wooo, that one would suck) a second one I’m not sure what it was, it may have been we will be publishing this, and then a third one that went along the lines of “Thank you for sending this, we’re not going to publish this, but we liked it and would like to see more.” They checked that box, and underlined “like to see more” in dark pen. Coming from one of the top-tier literary magazines that was a huge boost to my ego. Glimmer Train** is one of the best paying, most well known, hardest to get into markets. And they wanted to see more of my work.

*sigh*

I felt like my daughter did when she got Corbin Blue’s (one of the hottest “tween” crushes) autograph by catching him at the back fence after a show. She was on air for days and laminated the fair ticket he signed. I felt like that. (Although, from my older, more cynical self this doesn’t count as a personal rejection exactly, but it was the most personal I had received up to that point!)

So far in the last twelve months I have submitted twenty-nine short stories. (Perhaps obviously, several have been out more than once.) Of those, I haven’t heard back on six, one was published (“Spring and Fall” in Khimairal Ink), and the other twenty-two obviously were rejected. However, of those, five were personal rejections, which means over twenty percent were personal. (Yes I am that much of a geek.) I’m not sure what the average is, but I do know that that’s not a bad average, considering some of the publications I submit to. (I tend to aim high, perhaps I shouldn’t but I do.)

I will post some of the personal rejection letters I’ve received over time, but there was one form letter I received that was so funny I have to post it here. It was from Postcards from Hell, and it went:

“Val,

We have subjected our victims to your story but they were not sufficiently traumatized. Your story has been consigned to the Lake of Fire. Thanks for trying Postcards from Hell. Have a nice day.

Minion

editor from hell”

How great is that??????

What do you mean postally isn’t a real word? Oh, ok. Well, on the serious side, as more and more publications establish an online presence, and more and more accept electronic submissions, this method of submitting had become less of a novelty and more of a norm. Glimmer Train prefers electronic submissions, and The Kenyon Review accepts this method exclusively. And of course, almost every magazine now has a website, usually with their guidelines posted, and often with sample stories.

My preference? I much prefer to submit electronically. Of the all of the stories I submitted over the last year, three out of twenty-nine (Artful Dodge - who I am starting to despair of hearing from, Cemetery Dance and American Short Fiction) went postal (Ahhh! Stories running around with machine guns!) and all of the others, including Glimmer Train and The Kenyon Review went electronically. For one thing, it is much more convenient to submit electronically. I can do it at any time of day, or on a weekend, I don’t have to worry about it printing right, (although electronic submissions have to be formatted correctly – I’ll post on that another time), and I don’t have to pay postage. (Which does add up, as does paying for paper and ink.) Also, when a story is submitted, many markets email you to let you know that your submission was received, and some of the larger ones even let you keep track of your submissions online at their website. Responses are also somewhat quicker I think, as the editor can write the decision in an email and send it right out. And of course, there is less paper used, and fewer manuscripts to recycle or discard.

The only advantage that I can think of to postal submissions is the fact that it has a physical aspect to it. There is a certain satisfaction in the tactile sensation of holding a manuscript, and of putting it in the mail, and I admit to having a weakness for a paper rejection letter, (although not enough of a one to make me submit by mail!) The downsides to postal mail is that pretty much they don’t notify you when your manuscript was received, (which I notified by over half of my electronic submissions,) following up on long-time manuscripts is a little bit trickier, and of course the amount of paper that is wasted. And I’m not just talking about wasting paper from a financial point, but because of the environmental impact. I hate how much paper I go through as it is, even though I try to keep it to a minimum, and I have gotten to the point that a huge amount of my revision is done on the computer. I try to print on the backside of other pages I’ve printed, and for the most part I just print them out for final polishing, and any errors I missed on-screen. Adding up all of the manuscripts that are sent out and discarded equals a huge amount of paper. In the end though it comes down to what works better for each individual author. For me though, electronic submissions are the way to go.