I’ve just sent out happy news to six short fiction submitters
for our summer updates. As always, I received a few emails from accepted and
declined submitters and a couple of people said something like, and I’m
paraphrasing, “Seriously, dude, what the hell took you so long?” I kid,
everyone was generally polite about the long wait time for responses, but hey, they’re
not wrong and maybe it’s time I said a few words about what I’ve been up to by
way of explanation.
I’ve just completed an M.A. in Writing & Publishing at
DePaul University. For the first year I was able to keep up with it all fairly
well, but I was offered an assistantship the second year and a job in the
administration of the University Center for Writing-based Learning (one of the
largest peer-tutor writing centers in the world). So this was all awesome; free
tuition! Fame! Fortune! Well… free tuition at least. But there were some
predictable side-effects: I was forced to take a hiatus from producing more
episodes of Breakfast With the Author, and the Online portion of Silverthought
has been subordinate to the academic calendar since then. I ended up reading
submissions mostly during breaks from classes in the summer and winter instead
of every month or two like I did before.
Silverthought has gone through a number of iterations over
the years, but currently Paul and I run the show ourselves and we’re both busy
dads with day jobs. Many companies have “reading periods” and “submissions
periods” that are essentially strict windows when these things happen, or they
farm out their reading to associate editors, or they charge reading fees to
make it worthwhile for the (usually unpaid) editors to sort through the
enormous piles of submissions. We agreed that rather than make any radical
changes to Silverthought to adjust, we’d just keep on doing what we’ve always
done: reading and accepting the best new work we can find, and bringing it to
you, the reader, all for free and the highest quality we can make it, no matter
how long it takes us.
“Well good,” you’re thinking. “Now that you’re done with all
your fancy book learning, you can get back to promptly accepting my short
fiction submissions!”
Er… sorta. Here’s the thing: I graduated with distinction
from DePaul’s M.A. program and in the process I was accepted to the University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s PhD program, which I will start in the Fall. The setup
is a little different; there’s not a desk-job that comes with my funding, but I
will be commuting from Chicago to Milwaukee 3-4 days per week and I’ll be
teaching introductory English as well while I complete the degree.
“Does that mean it’s going to take forever to hear back?” you
ask.
I’m not sure, to be honest. I’d like to think that I’ll have
loads of time between the homework for three courses per semester and teaching
my first non-internship classes, but I’ve got to level with you: my reading
times for your work are probably going to continue being on the slow side for
the foreseeable future.
“But… But your guidelines say—“
I know, they’re out of date, and we’re working on that.
Here’s some easy things to remember about our Online division, as we update the
info on our main site:
-Short fiction subs are all read and responded to by me
personally. If you’ve sent something a long time ago and haven’t heard back,
there are two possibilities: (1) I haven’t had time to read it and respond yet
or (2) I’ve read it and decided to delay responding because I may be interested
in publishing it. Let me say that again, so we’re clear: No matter what
Duotrope or WriteCafe or any other site says, I will respond to every Online division submission eventually. Unless
you get an email from me directly, your Online submission is not considered rejected.
-We accept simultaneous submissions and it doesn’t hurt my
feelings a bit when someone withdraws because they get a story placed
elsewhere. In fact, I even send out congratulations emails occasionally when
it’s a story that I liked but had to sit on for too long. Someone mentioned
that even though we accept simultaneous subs, other places don’t and this delay
affects their submissions to other places. Silverthought has always been a
company that champions the writer first, and in that sense, companies who don’t
accept simultaneous submissions are kidding themselves if they think their
submitters aren’t sending work out to anyone and everyone who might publish it.
If you’re feeling nervous about it, remember: if Daily Sci-Fi or whoever wants
the first shot at your story, all they have to do is read their submissions
faster than me.
-I got a lot of submissions this time around that were sent in .rtf file format. I CAN HAS DOCX, YES? SMEAGOL? YES? Seriously, I know you well-meaning cheapniks like to stick it to the Microsoft Man, but it's time to put on our big girl and big boy pants and send in your manuscripts in .docx. If you must use .rtf, we understand, but when your work gets accepted, we're going to start asking everyone to go through the editing process in .docx so we can track the changes from revision to revision. An editor that has to read two versions of your story in two windows is an unhappy editor, and you don't want me to be unhappy when I'm editing your work, do you?
-I got a lot of submissions this time around that were sent in .rtf file format. I CAN HAS DOCX, YES? SMEAGOL? YES? Seriously, I know you well-meaning cheapniks like to stick it to the Microsoft Man, but it's time to put on our big girl and big boy pants and send in your manuscripts in .docx. If you must use .rtf, we understand, but when your work gets accepted, we're going to start asking everyone to go through the editing process in .docx so we can track the changes from revision to revision. An editor that has to read two versions of your story in two windows is an unhappy editor, and you don't want me to be unhappy when I'm editing your work, do you?
-I recieved a few earnest submissions recently with cover
letters that said things like “would you comment on the quality of my fiction?”
by way of letting the submitters know what’s good or bad about their work and
even if they should continue submitting their fiction to other sites. While I’m
flattered that you’d ask such a thing of me, I unfortunately don’t have time to
respond to these in depth. I occasionally offer comments on work that I accept
or reject, but I try to keep this relevant to the process of either publishing
it or telling the author why it was almost-but-not-quite accepted so they can
hit the mark the next time around. If you ask for a response like this and get
a form decline email, don’t be offended. It’s not personal. Advising you about
the publish-ability of your work is the job of an agent, but there are easier
ways to get some feedback. Having just been a coordinator of one, I’d suggest
contacting your undergraduate university and asking if alumni can use their
writing center. Even most small colleges have writing centers, and their tutors
are trained to offer advice about how to strengthen and evaluate writing
objectively.
-Read our most recent short stories and this blog to get a
sense for what we want. I’m still getting a lot of faux-detective stories and
vampire-premise stories, and I think it’s my job as editor to make sure you
understand: I will say no to these almost the instant that I realize what they
are, no matter how well they’re written. It’s just not the way we want to go
with our fiction these days, and as a sympathetic writer, I’d rather you send
them to someone who will actually publish them than to wait through my
submissions queue to hear the disappointing inevitable.
“Wow, you got all serious on us there for a minute,” you
say.
I know. It’s like that time Dad sat you down and told you
where condoms came from. Above all, we’re working hard to do what we’ve always
done, and we appreciate your patience. We’ve got a great lineup of short
fiction coming your way including awesome new stories about space travel,
aliens, men and women in the future, dystopian medical experiences, supernatural
shopkeepers, hilarious drug-peddling idiots, and a cyborg that can halt time.
