A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experience meaning, the purpose of making statements about the meaning of a story is only to help you to experience that meaning more fully.
~Flannery O’Connor, from “Writing Short Stories”
I’ve always been a fan of short stories. I subscribe to The New Yorker just to get a new one each week to read.
Short stories are magical. So compact and full of emotion. The good ones draw you in immediately without you realizing it. They’re a mystery, really. I’ve wondered what it takes to make a good short story work ever since the first time I tried writing one, over 20 years ago.
I can still remember the ancient-seeming Sabine Ulíbarri, one of my favorite Literature professors in college, raising a crooked forefinger into the air and saying that the short story began when something extraordinary happened in an otherwise ordinary life. Professor Ulíbarri’s seminar was held in a dim room—he didn’t like florescent lights—where a dozen or so students sat around a conference table and were so rapt by this physically small yet intellectually giant man’s charms that we endured his chain smoking.
He took his shaky hand and drew on the chalkboard an X in the straight-line trajectory of the life of a typical protagonist. Then he drew a bolt of lightening coming from the heavens above and hitting the X. “This,” he said in his booming voice, “is where the story begins.”
∞ ∞
Loving to read short stories and figuring out how to write them are two different things. The short story is a masterful art form, one that Alice Sebold in her stint as editor of The Best American Short Stories 2009 said provides
…endless access into another world, brought forth by an infinite number of gifted minds. A story about grief can comfort; a story about arrogance can shock and yet confirm; a story populated largely by landscape, whether lush or industrial, can expand the realm that we as individuals inhabit.
The dilemma for someone like me, who would love to comfort, shock, confirm, or expand a reader’s realm, is how to make my stories do exactly that. I don’t have an answer. I haven’t succeeded yet, although, if the truth be known I haven’t tried to hard enough either. However, all that is about to change.
If at First You Don’t Succeed…
I just refused to die as a person who had 30 pages of a novel in her drawer.
~Elizabeth Gilbert, answering a question during an Albuquerque appearance
The rest of this post is targeted to people like me who write and write and write yet rarely venture to send our works out into the world where those who’ve succeeded in the literary arena might judge them. I can understand the resistance. Writing is hard enough. Getting our work published is a whole ‘nother matter. But if like me you want to accept yourself as a writer, you may want to consider seriously pursuing getting your writing published in literary magazines.
Right now I’m focused on the short story, but editors of literary magazines care about all kinds of writing. Literary magazines contain fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry, and some even publish haiku, photography, the graphic narrative, and other art.
Why should we try to get our writing published in literary magazines? According to Poets & Writers, “most writers get the attention of editors, agents, and other writers by publishing first in literary magazines.” Not to mention, many of these venues offer great motivation in the form of cash awards. In fact, this is one of the best times of year to compete in writing contests—the stakes can be anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars to one or two or four thousand.
I just spent a large chunk of this past three-day weekend submitting a short story to several contests. I wrote the story a few years ago and even though I wasn’t happy with it then, I sent it out back then to a half dozen literary magazines for consideration. Not surprisingly, it didn’t get picked up, so I stuck it into a drawer where it sat for a few years.
Well, as often happens when you step back and stop thinking about a piece for a while (be it art or writing), I could see the weaknesses in the story when I looked at it anew. I spent several hours rewriting and editing until finally I had a piece I could be proud of. The next step was to send it out in to the world.
…Try, Try Again
I take writing and competition very seriously. I believe that all writers should compete—even if I now know this to be a quixotic quests—on a level playing field.
~Alice Sebold, Introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2009
The Poets & Writers website is an amazing place, well laid out and chock full of excellent information for figuring out where to send your work. The site has a “Tools for Writers” tab that shows deadlines for Writing Contests, Grants & Awards in both a Submission Calendar format and in a searchable database where you can filter by genre, entry fee, and timing. There’s also the Contest Blog, with frequently posted gems, including interviews with authors who have won contests in the past.
NewPages.com—a website that touts the goodness of independent bookstores—also carries a list of Writing Contests categorized by monthly deadline. It has a list of hundreds of literary magazines—aptly named “Big List of Literary Magazines”—so that you can get a feel for those that fit your writing style and vice versa.
A source I didn’t find in either Poets & Writers nor NewPages.com is A Room of Her Own (AROHO) Foundation, a non-profit organization that helps women achieve their artistic goals by providing prize and grants, including a $50,000 biennial grant “to an American woman writer of merit working under financial hardship.”
It should be said, contests are not the be-all end-all of writing. Most important is getting your work published, which these sources provide just as much information about as they do contests and awards. But in the event you need that extra boost, now is an excellent time to vie for prizes.
Your Countrymen (and Women) Need You
It’s tough for writers to write (and editors to edit) when faced with a shrinking audience. Once, in the days of the old Saturday Evening Post, short fiction was a stadium act; now it can barely fill a coffeehouse and often performs in the company of nothing more than an acoustic guitar and a mouth organ.
~Stephen King, “What Ails the Short Story,” in The New York Times, 9/30/2007
When he was editor of The Best American Short Stories 2007, Stephen King declared that short stories were alive but not well. Literary magazines have over time been relegated to the bottom shelves of magazine sections in most big bookstores, and even there only a few titles can be found.
So do your part. Read, write, edit, and submit. Then do it again and again.
Hints & Tips
Poets & Writers offers these common sense tips for submitting to literary journals and/or vying for writing contests:
- Do research to determine which publications are right for you. In other words, know your market.
- Each literary magazine has “a unique editorial voice, tone, viewpoint, mission.” Make sure that you read any literary magazine before you submit your work to it. (Many literary magazines have websites with archives where you can read past winning stories or other published pieces.)
- Read about the contributors to compare their backgrounds and interests to yours.
- Make sure to read the Submission Guidelines for each magazine. They differ. Some will accept only online; others only accept hard copies sent by mail. Some want 12pt. font with one-inch margins. One might have a word count, another a page count.
- Specifically look for guidance on simultaneous submissions, meaning submissions of a single work to more than one journal or contest at a time. Most of the literary journals that I submitted to allowed for simultaneous submissions but asked to be informed immediately if the submission gets picked up by or wins somewhere else.
- Some literary journals request cover letters and others do not. Some contests are done as a “blind review,” meaning that any identifying information about the author is stripped off during the actual reading/review. Poets & Writers suggested that where a cover letter is requested, try not to “discuss the merits or themes of the work you are submitting” but use the cover letter instead to provide a short bio and any past publication accomplishments.
Finally, beware of Writing Contest scams. My advice, and mind you this is only my advice, is to use a source that you trust (the way I trust, for example, Poets & Writers) to identify true literary journals and the contests they run. Others may be designed to simply get your dollars for a submission or reading fee.
Special Bonus: Sabine Ulíbarri
I wish I could have found a better link on Sabine Ulíbarri, but I am glad to have come across the YouTube video. The one I posted is the first in a series of three, and the other two come up on the sidebar of YouTube. Definitely worth a watch. I also realized that his reading voice reminded me of that of Pablo Neruda.
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Such an interesting post. I am sending the link to my writing group for inspiration. My plan was to write most of the day and you have given me a kick in the a**. Thanks.
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You’re welcome. I hope that you and some of the folks from your writing group decide to submit.
BTW, I found this great post from the website “The Millions” on all the short stories published in the New Yorker in 2008. Looks like he also did a synopsis for the stories from 2005.
A Year in Reading: New Yorker Fiction in 2008 [LINK]
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Great post. I used to subscribe to Poets & Writers, but let it expire a couple years ago.
Much like I did with my own short fiction writing.
I miss those days. And have been considering getting my feet wet again.
And then you come along with this. You led me here, and I am grateful.
So, now I need to polish something up. Or start anew. I’ve got a cool title that needs a story . . .
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Right on, Brian. Speaking for myself, sometimes I think that blogging becomes a substitute for this grueling process of writing and submitting for publication. In other words, we’re publishing every week, right? But I’ve recently felt like I was letting go, giving up my dream to write a book and to get my larger pieces published. I didn’t want to let go of that dream.
I’m going to revisit two stories I wrote while taking a class with another New Mexico literary gem, Rudolfo Anaya. I loved these two stories but never did anything with them. And then I have two others I want to write that I’ve never written before. The trick is to take it one step at a time. Do what you can and don’t feel bad for not being able to do it all.
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Oh wow! You took a class with Rudolfo Anaya?! Wow. I envy you now. What a gem indeed!
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Corina, how cool that you’re a fan, too! Have you read any of his later books? Bless Me, Ultima is still my favorite.
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Good on you, Roma. It is high time you followed this path. You are so right – taking the process one step at a time is a good way to remain encouraged to keep up the practice of writing. Plus, the more you write, the more the floodgates as to what to write open up with many possibilities – it’s sort of like sourdough starter, with regular maintenance it keeps producing. G
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It *is* high time, G. You’re right about the sourdough starter. Great analogy. Regular maintenance, too. I want to create a life where creativity is central and art and writing are central, and so I figure, this is something to become accustomed to, this idea of submitting, being rejected a lot, but doing it again and again until it starts to open up. And the persistence, the feedback, the going back and rewriting–it all makes you a better writer.
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I’m getting more inspired by the minute. As a matter of fact, I sealed myself off and wrote for about three hours yesterday and today printed it out for my writers’ group. I already know where it is going. Your blog is just the kind of kick in the butt I need. Thanks.
I, too, love the sourdough starter analogy. Terrific..
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I haven’t picked up anything by him recently. I think the last thing I read by him was Zia Summer. I’ll have to see what I can get on Amazon, hopefully in the Kindle Store.
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I was thrilled to read your comment last evening, anhinga, but only now had a chance to say so. Do keep us posted on how it turns out and if you submit.
BTW, I read an article about Writing Contests when I was doing research for this post, and I forgot to mention the one tip I took away from it that was different from what P&W mentioned. That was, don’t wait until the deadline to send in your submission. I can’t recall the data point, but the article stated that a high percentage of submissions come in at the very end, and while editors and/or judges do their best to read each piece, the sheer numbers of the submissions at the end make for a less leisurely read, perhaps, than if your piece arrives early.
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If you haven’t read Bless me, Ultima, do pick it up, Corina. I love how it reminded me of the old culture, that of our grandparents here in NM. Hey, are you liking your Kindle? Let me know if you happen to pop over again.
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I’ve just stumbled onto your blog and I can’t tell you how fitting it is and how glad I am that I found it. I don’t want to be trite and call it fate but when I clicked onto it, I got this feeling. I’m not sure if you’ve ever had the ethereal creep up on you while you’re internet surfing, but it’s a bit jarring. It’s just very rare and unexpected to find something meaningful when you spend all day sifting through the meaningless.
Thank you so much for investing your time in such a wonderful piece of living work.
You have influenced me to start a daily writing practice that’s not all about crafts and cheap eco projects. Again, thank you, this time for the inspiration.
I look forward to all of your future posts and will be following you from now on.
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I love your name! Thanks for commenting. You made my day (I’m sick and needed something uplifting) 8) . But really, it’s this kind of feedback that makes the work of blogging worthwhile. Looking forward to checking out your space and seeing what you’re up to.
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Wow, thank you for your inspiring comment. I agree with ybonesy, once in a while we see a comment like yours from a perfect stranger that makes the work of blogging each week all worthwhile. And that you were inspired to start a daily writing practice — that’s the best of all. I hope you will come back and let us know how your practice is going. I really appreciate that you took the time to comment on red Ravine.
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I wanted to come back to this post and report that I got promising news today. My short story made Honorable Mention in the New Writers Contest held by Glimmer Train [LINK]. This is one of my favorite literary magazines, one I highly respect. If you ever buy a copy of Best American Short Stories, you’ll notice that Glimmer Train almost always has entries that make that anthology.
This is a great shot in the arm for me. I would have persevered regardless, BUT it has given me more motivation to keep submitting that one story as well as to dust off a couple of others I had in mind and rework those.
From the letter that I received today, I learned that my story “was in the top 5% of over a thousand entries, earning you Honorable Mention….”
So for those of you who are writing and submitting, keep it up. Do not get discouraged. Don’t be tossed away. I will find my audience, and you will find yours.
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Congratulations, ybonesy! I can only imagine the thrill of getting such an award from Glimmer Train. Wonderful news.
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It wasn’t an award, just an honorable mention, but heck, I’m taking it! 8)
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And thanks, anhinga. I know you’re sending your stories out to the literary journals, and I’m so glad you are. How many stories do you have in circulation right now?
I read in one of the P&W interviews that one writer tries to keep about four, I think, out there. I have an art show weekend after next, but once I get through that, I’m going to dust off an essay and try to rework it. And then I have two short stories I’d like to at least revisit to see if they’re worth salvaging.
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i’m quite good in witing but i have not yet signed up on a writing contest “
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I just tweeted about this post today and while I was here thought I’d give an update. I continue to send my work to contests. The same short story that got Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train was also a finalist in The Florida Review last year, and then this Spring it was a finalist in Fugue (Steve Almond was judging that contest). That’s three close calls with this one story, which tells me that it’s either there and just hasn’t found the right venue or it’s almost there and might need a minor tweak or two. I will hit the contests again soon, not the same ones I’ve sent it to but others. There are SO MANY great literary journals (print and online) out there. I know it’s time will come soon.
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ybonesy, thanks for stopping by this piece and giving an update. It inspired me to read the piece again which in turn made me want to look up some of the contests you mention. Maybe that’s just what I need. A new challenge. I admire how you don’t give up. Your story sounds ripe for the big time. I’m pulling for you!
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