I’ve been working as an Associate Editor for Bound Off for a few months now, and I think it’s time to talk a little bit about what I think you can learn from working on a literary journal.

1.      Reading submissions gives you an idea of an editor’s perspective. I’m given ten submissions to read every two weeks. It’s not an overwhelming number by any means, and since we only publish flash fiction, I DO read every submission all the way through. I know, however, from previous experience working for journals that this isn’t always the case. Many editors and slush pile readers stop reading as soon as they feel they can justify saying no—why waste their time reading the entire thing when they already know they won’t accept it?

But even people like me who do read every story all the way through expect to be sucked in quickly. If your story gets off to a plodding start, or has lots of exposition right away, or is extremely confusing for the first few pages, you’ll be really lucky if an editor sticks with you to the payoff later in the story. And even if the editor does stick with you, that payoff will have to be damn good to justify an uninspired beginning.

2.      Reading failed submissions forces you to think about what makes writing good or bad. When I respond to submissions, I’m supposed to give a brief summary of the story and say a thing or two about what I liked or didn’t like about it. Then I give my yes or no (or sometimes maybe) vote.

Because I have to articulate why I’m saying yes or no, I have to really think about the strengths and weaknesses of each story. I can’t just say, “It wasn’t my kind of story.” Instead, I have to figure out what about this story makes it not good enough in my opinion. It goes the other way too. When I say yes to a story, I have to put into words why I think the story deserves a spot on the podcast, and it’s got to be more convincing than, “I just really liked it.”

3.      Reading submissions helps you put rejection into perspective. I can’t stand it when editors claim that most of the submissions they see are terrible. That’s BS! I’ve found that in any batch of ten submissions, two or three are “terrible,” although I would probably opt to describe them as amateurish instead. It doesn’t mean these writers will never amount to anything, but they’re not there yet. I don’t feel bad saying no to these stories because, aside from the fact that I want our journal to only have good stories so people will actually listen to it, these writers need to learn that their writing is not up to par yet. Rejection is probably the most painful for writers at that stage, who are submitting though they’re not ready to submit, but it’s also an important part of the process of becoming a good writer.

The other seven or eight stories in each batch—which, keep in mind, amounts to seventy to eighty percent of the submissions—could not, in my opinion, be reasonably  described as terrible. These are stories that are clearly NOT written by novices. They’re well written; they often have elegant prose and make good use of craft techniques. But that doesn’t mean they get accepted. We accept only a very low percentage of the stories that get submitted to us, which means we reject the majority of those pretty good stories.

I sometimes agonize over whether to say yes or no to a particular story. Some stories are so good in so many ways, but there will be just one thing bringing it down. It might be too much exposition, or maybe some element of the plot doesn’t feel original enough. Whatever it is, I have to find reasons to whittle that remaining seven or eight stories down to maybe one “yes” vote. From there, the stories will be read by other editors, who will add their own votes without knowing mine, just as I didn’t know what those who had read the stories before me thought.

Since I’ve been volunteering for Bound Off, it’s happened exactly three times that I read a story that I instantly and uncontrollably fell in love with. Two of those stories ended up getting accepted—and pretty quickly, too. To my knowledge, so far none of the other “yes” votes I’ve offered have ended in an acceptance.

So you see, everything has to come together just right for an actual acceptance to happen. Rejections, then, shouldn’t devastate anyone too much, but do bring your work back to the drawing board if you get a lot of form rejections for it. Many of the stories I’ve said “no” to might have earned a “yes” had they just been revised in XYZ way. A rejection doesn’t mean your story has no potential, but sometimes it does mean your story needs a little more work.

This week, Damien received several boxes at work, packed with the newest issue of New Ohio Review. It’s always exciting when the new issue arrives. He puts so much energy into designing and editing it that it almost feels unreal, I imagine, holding the final product in his hands. He brought a copy home and read aloud to me some of his favorite poems from the issue. I loved them, too, though it’s safe to say that as simply a reader, I don’t have quite the same experience reading the journal as he does, having been in on the issue from its inception, having watched it grow and become what it eventually became.

His enthusiasm, sharing the new issue with me, reminded me of why I decided to volunteer to work as an Associate Editor at Bound Off. Certainly, the amount of work I’ll put in at my position is nowhere near the amount Damien puts in at New Ohio Review (and a good thing, too, since he gets paid for his efforts, while mine is just a volunteer, few hours a week kind of job). Still, I look forward to having that satisfaction again, that feeling of accomplishment every time a new edition goes out (especially when a story I recommended we accept is part of that new edition).

I’m also looking forward to the ways slogging through a journal’s slush pile will improve my own writing. As writers, we sometimes forget that our work must first win over an editor before it can ever make it in front of a reader. Editors read slightly different from readers. While readers go into a piece expecting it to be good (because, after all, the bad stuff has been filtered out through the publication process), editors have no idea what they’re going to get every time they open a new submission—they may be about to read something brilliant, but it’s just as likely that they’re about to read something terrible. The most likely scenario, though, is that the story will be neither brilliant nor terrible, but will exist in that hazy world between. Those are the submissions it’s most difficult to decide on, but decide we must—and quickly! Quickly! We don’t have a lot of time to devote to each submission!

A reader goes in to a piece planning to like it, but an editor must reject 99% of everything he or she reads. This means an editor must read looking for reasons to say no, planning to say no. Knowing that 99 out of 100 submissions you receive will be rejected puts the odds in the “no” pile for every new submission you open. In a reader’s hands, then, each piece is innocent until proven guilty, but to an editor, the burden of proof (that the piece is worthwhile, that the piece deserves a spot on the page, or in Bound Off’s case, in the podcast) lies with the submission.

And it’s useful to remember this as a writer. It’s useful to remember it when you get rejected, because it takes the sting off a bit; it’s useful to remember it when you get accepted, because it hammers home how good you must be that your stuff is making it past the editorial hurdles; and it’s useful to remember it when you’re revising, because if you really want to make it into the hands of some readers, you do need to take the opinions of other smart, with-it, literary types into consideration. You do need other people’s feedback, and you need to seriously consider anything other people might say. The things your beta readers or workshop classmates are getting stuck on might be the same things that cause an editor to slide your submission into the “no” pile.

This doesn’t, of course, mean that every piece of feedback you ever receive should be taken or that you should change your work in a way that you, as the writer, don’t like. But. You should listen, and more than that, you should really seriously evaluate any feedback you receive if publication is one of your goals, and let’s be honest, for most of us, it is.

As If I Didn’t Already Have Enough to Do . . .

I talked last week about the new shared goal my friend and fellow writer Jenni Moody and I are doing to write our new novels. Our first milestone is 10,000 words by November 15^th. I have a little over 1,000 so far. Yes, I realize that’s not very much, but hey, I’m 1/10^th of the way there, and I’m feeling really excited about this project. I’m enjoying climbing into the voice of a new narrator, knowing that she and I are going to spend a lot of time together, that we’re going to really get to know each other in the next few months.

And maybe I’m getting overambitious, maybe the fumes from starting my engine to get going on this new novel have gone to my head, but I’ve decided—tentatively, and perhaps I’ll change my mind—to do one last revision of my thesis to submit it to Fence’s new Modern Prose contest. They’ve had a poetry contest for a while now, but this year they decided to create a prose contest as well. Their first prose prize will go to a novel. When I got the email announcing the prize, I felt like it was a sign. Okay, I don’t really believe in signs, but. You know what I mean. I felt like I should do this. I should try just one more time.

The thing is, I had recently been thinking about my thesis, anyway, thinking about how it’s been through who knows how many drafts and there are about 100 pages of cut scenes stagnating in a file on my computer. Most of those cut scenes were probably cut for good reason, but it occurred to me the other day that maybe the “right” form, the “true” form of this novel should lie not at one extreme or another, but at some halfway point between my early drafts and the current version. Maybe, in other words, I should look through those cut scenes and see if some of them should be put back in.

But my new novel is more important to me than trudging through an umpteenth revision of my thesis. I think there is more to be gained, right now, from working on something new, so if it comes down to it and I can’t possibly do both, I’ll focus on meeting the November 15 goal for the new novel.

Besides my two jobs working as a teacher and online tutor, and besides my other “job” as a mom, the reason why I might not be able to meet both these deadlines is that I’ve also taken a new volunteer position as an Associate Editor for Bound Off, the literary podcast in which my work has both appeared and is forthcoming. This new position, by the way, has nothing to do with my new story, Hair, which will be broadcast on Bound Off in a couple of weeks. My story had already been accepted when I started talking to the editors about joining their team.

Like the Fence prize, I learned about the opening through an email newsletter. I thought about it for a week or two, really weighing whether I thought I could handle the workload. Obviously, I decided I could. The job only requires me to read ten stories every two weeks, then offer my thoughts on the stories with a yay or nay vote. I think it will be fun and worthwhile—I’m just itching to get back into the editing game, to tell the truth.

But, of course, now that I’ve committed to this job, reading submissions and working on my new novel both take precedence over my thesis. So, right now, these are the things I have to do:

1.      Perform all the required duties for my two paying jobs

2.      Be a good mama—the best I know how to be

3.      Read and offer thoughts on submissions for Bound Off

4.      Write at least 9,000 more words in my new novel by November 15^th

Notice I put the new novel in the “have to” list. I consider this a true commitment. No excuses. I’m going to do this.

And, if time permits (and I hope it will!), I’m also going to work on these things:

1.      Revise my thesis to submit it to the Fence Modern Prose Prize

2.      Work on some stories

The following are things I don’t need to waste my time with, when time is in short supply:

1.      Watch old episodes of Mad Men on Netflix while Amalie naps instead of taking the chance to do something more productive

2.      Stuff my face with candy when I’m feeling overwhelmed (did I subconsciously buy too much candy for Amalie’s birthday piñata so that I could eat it myself after the party? Probably. Damn you, sweet-toothed subconscious!)

3.      Turn on my computer to work and, instead, spend the next hour reading and commenting on all of my friends’ Facebook status updates