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Underground > Creation >

Writers' Helpdesk, how may we be of service?

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12:17 / 13.10.05

I'd be curious to see what he thought about this article that criticises Rushdie for moonlighting as a columnist: "The vocation of the novelist is to pluralism, but now it seems that one of our greatest writers has become a true believer."

Alternatively, you could ask him why Midnight's Children was so shit.

22:24 / 14.10.05

Mr Rushdie;

i)Out of the novels that make up your ouevre, which one would you say is the best-executed, or, to use a rather gauche term, your 'favourite'?

ii)Looking back over 'the fatwah' incident, is there anything that you'd differently, if you had your time over again?

iii)Where do you get your ideas from?

iv)Growing a beard - how's that worked out for you, career-wise? Would you advise aspiring young novelists to do the same?

v)That Harry what's-his-name, oh you know the one I mean, he's a fucker, isn't he?

vi)Your girlfriend, mate, crikey - ten out of ten! How did you manage to get her in the sack?

And, finally,

vii)Do you have any advice for aspiring young novelists?

17:37 / 23.10.05

Anything further for Ask Salman? Last chance ...

10:12 / 24.10.05

Why do you never come to Bradford any more?

Whisky Priestess

20:41 / 27.10.05

Har.
Har.
Har.

I just bet his armed guards would have loved that one ...

06:45 / 28.10.05

Call for submissions: Dead by Dawn, Scotland's International Horror Film Festival, will turn thirteen in April 2006. Over the last twelve years, the event has grown into a four-day event full of gruesome indulgence - showcasing the very best the genre has to offer in short film, indie and mainstream features and classics.

To coincide with their 13th celebrations, Beautiful Books will launch a horror imprint - Bloody Books - with the inaugural publication being Read by Dawn Volume I, an annual collection of contemporary horror writing published under the Bloody Books imprint. Ramsey Campbell has already accepted an invitation to host the collection and has contributed a story of his own.

13:55 / 05.01.06

Dundee International Book Prize for unpublished authors.

Closing date for email entries 1 Feb 2006, postal entries 1 March 2006.

No entry fee. £10,000 prize plus publication. So dig that novel out from the bottom drawer or find another doorstop. Send the bugger off and claim your cash. Don't forget your old pal Loomis who tipped you off about the competition though.

01:06 / 06.01.06

Excellent. Thanks, Loomis.
*in the voice of young Mr. Grace:* "You've done very well!"

09:38 / 06.01.06

Whisky, how's your course going?

15:02 / 06.01.06

March 1st you say? Ten grand? I might actually have a go at this - what's yet another crushing rebuff for my.. my child after all...

Ta Loomis.

Whisky Priestess

16:35 / 06.01.06

My course is all the better for not having started again yet, giving me the ooportunity to earn such much-needed cash, thank you for asking. But when it does start it will be teh cool, as I am having short story lessons from Patricia Duncker (who shares my obsession with sci-fi and boy-on-boy action, although alas the reading list does not reflect this.)

Whisky Priestess

08:41 / 17.01.06

from www.pulp.net

20 Jan: Chroma / Cinema
Chroma, the journal for queer writers and poets, is looking for fiction 2500-5000 words, poetry, and artwork for its fourth issue: Cinema. Send submissions to Shaun Levin, editor, Chroma, PO box 44655, Stoke Newington, N16 0WQ.

3 Feb: the Clothes issue - Pulp Net, guest editor Sarah Salway

How people dress can be seen as a defence or an attack; a chance to show off or to blend in; to be colourful or neutral; to say who they are or to pretend to be someone different; for comfort or appearance; personal fashion or in-crowd identity.
Stories wanted on all aspects of clothes and style to editor@pulp.net by February 3rd. Please send your story as an attachment to editor at pulp.net., with ‘FAO Sarah’ in subject header. Please provide your address & phone number in your email but NOT in the attachment, to facilitate contact if your story is selected. Submissions close 10am London time on 3 Feb. The fee is £100.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

21:39 / 17.01.06

Curious if Pulp Net accepts out-of-country submissions, as I'm in Canada. I'll go have a look in a bit.

Otherwise - I'm two scenes into a new short story. I don't think it's going to be any good, but that's just early-draft-jitters. I'm curious about the meaning of the differen em and en dashes and such...I might go do a bit of a search after this, but does anyone have any particular insight? I'm think of the shorter dash between phrases versus the longer dash extending off the end of the world, which I like to use for cut-off dialogue but it looks quite nice in the middle of a paragraph and that could be completely inappropriate.

02:07 / 18.01.06

Could you provide an example, papers? Of, you know, said paragraphs. It's not too clear what you mean.

(If a £100 entry fee for a short story competition on an interweb netsite is considered germane these days, incidentally, I dare say I'll be running at least a couple of these in 2006...)

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

02:10 / 18.01.06

And then I noticed the entry fee and went NO. Not even.

Excusing the, ah, purplenes of the prose - this is definitely first draft:

"You seem like a good person." Oh, hello. She knows, even with the voice behind her, even with the acid reflux in her stomach. Religion, cigarettes, spare change or drugs. She turns, stilted, she turns though rusted through with discomfort—he shivers, rain spatters their faces, and she squints.

That last sentence. It doesn't neccesarily show up the best in here, but I like the way the dash completely connects the words, rather than the more traditional shorter dash with space between it and the words. That articulate enough? I have no idea.

09:06 / 19.01.06

It's traditional to have a long em dash like this - (but longer, can't do it on here) dividing sentences and a shorter hyphen like this-one connecting words.

BTW the fee is given TO the author on publication of their story, not taken FROM them on entry. Pulp.net have Arts Council funding to do this which is why they pay. And yes, I believe they take international submissions.

(WP in Alex's clothing)

20:11 / 19.01.06

My favourite rejection letter so far:

"Please forgive me for sending a form letter ...

"From the hundreds of people of all kinds who write to me each year, I probably take on 2-4 new clients. For most major publishers ... the figures for unsolicted manuscripts are even worse: between zero and two out of literally thousands ... However the overwhelming majority (over 95%) of submissions are so hopelessly bad that one shouldn't really include them in any 'significant' statistics ...

"That there is a vast amount of undiscovered talent out there is a delusion. If you have genuine ability, persist; the odds are less fearsome that they might at first appear."

Of course everyone who receives this is going to think that they're in the 5% and should persist, but still, it was the best of the four rejections in the morning post.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

21:06 / 19.01.06

I got a rejection for a well-respected Canadian lit magazine a couple months ago - it was via email. The unfortunate thing was that the fiction editor misspelled the name of the magazine in the subject header. I felt a little better about them not wanting my story.

01:00 / 21.01.06

Loomis;

Was the letter from a publishing company, or a lit agency? If it was the former, you kind of do need to be pursuing the latter, in the first instance - yes they are all bastards, vampires and cunts, but once you've been signed up, they're your bastards, vampires etc, they're on your side. There are any number of places these days, I fear, that won't read anything unless it's backed by an agent, but unless you're writing sci-fi (in which case... well you're really making a rod for you own back if you are, let's put it that way - it does sell, sci-fi, but generally speaking the kind of character who ends up working in publishing really can't stand the stuff,) I'd figure you wouldn't have too many problems getting hold of same, you George Morrisson look-a-like, you. As I understand it, there are about four or five decent agencies in the UK, any one of which, if they put you on their books, would mean you had about a 50-60% chance of getting published, details available on request. 11! 23!

01:56 / 21.01.06

a long em dash like this - (but longer, can't do it on here)

Alt+0151 = — on the PC.

08:53 / 21.01.06

Alex - It was an agent. I've gathered that there's no point going directly to publishers so I'm working through the long list of agents in the Writers' Yearbook thingy. Although sometimes I do wonder why I wrote a whole novel (two, actually, and not sci-fi), when only the synopsis and first chapter are going to be read. Ah, well.

I did consider just writing first chapters for a few different novels and sending them out, but then if they wanted to see the rest I'd be in something of a tight spot. But now that I'm 25,000w into the third novel, I'm wondering if I should just polish that and send it out rather than spend a year writing the rest before I have an agent interested.

10:08 / 21.01.06

I'd be inclined to just send out the 25,OOO - Most agents, if they like the thing, will be happy enough to wait for the rest (I'm in the middle of an inadvertent experiment to see just how long, but that's another matter.)

Whisky Priestess

09:42 / 27.01.06

Is anyone else thinking about entering that Dundee novel thang? And whatever happened to Zombie Aid? Anyone get into that in the end? Will it ever be published?

Whisky Priestess

20:28 / 01.02.06

Update: the people at Snowbooks read my first novel, don't want to publish it (fair enough, I didn;t think they would), but have sent me back a highly detailed and useful set of comments.

I have nonetheless entered it for the Dundee International Book Prize, hoping they will be less discerning.

I am trying to organise a short story reading night for the people on my course (and anyone else who fancies it) at the Norwich Playhouse, some time in early March. Yell if you're local (or willing to be so for the night - I have a spare room) and up for it.

sibyline, beating Qalyn to a Q

17:14 / 14.02.06

hi. i'm new. i just got accepted into the MFA program at cornell university, which is awesome because they provide a two-year fellowhsip package for the degree, and a guaranteed two-year lectureship afterwards. four years of funded writing.... heavenly.

published a story in pindeldyboz last month:
Link here.

and got an amazing rejection letter from a public space, the new magazine that the former editor of the paris review started:

"Many thanks of thinking of APublicSpace for your work, and apologies for taking so long to reply. Although "The Last Sweet Happy Season" isn't right for the magazine--it's very well-written, but we found it a bit slow in pace for our tastes--we'd be very interested in reading more of your work."

So there's my little boast item.... I have no questions since I'm running on giddiness right now about the MFA program acceptance.

17:41 / 14.02.06

Two weeks ago, I made a submission-storm and contacted over 20 short story journals. I got the first rejection yesterday; absolutely no help whatsoever from the editor. Thanks, ya bastard. Keep your fingers crossed everybody.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

22:21 / 14.02.06

Two weeks to get a response is a fucking miracle, regardless of the lack of feedback. Feedback is an epheremal and possibly non-existent thing. Personalized or handwritten rejection notices are to be framed.

I'm waiting on a couple at the moment. Eight months to a year in these cases.

Whisky Priestess

12:59 / 01.03.06

Sorry, screwed the above up. I'll delete the dodgy version. It should have read:

Well done, Sibyline. Dare I ask, does Pindeldyboz pay? I can't find any mention of remuneration on the website.

I wanted to draw people's attention to Pulp.net once more, since they have a call for short stories on the theme of Riot, deadline tomorrow. Also because after I told everyone in my MA class about the website, one of my coursemates submitted something and got a story in this month's issue! (They pay £100 per story, by the way.)

And here's a link to APublicSpace.

02:06 / 02.03.06

RE: This post:

Got another rejection again today. No fucking help from the editor whatsoever.

04:43 / 02.03.06

Matt;

It's easier, and better I think, to see the editor as an obstacle that has to be negotiated, rather than anyone that's necessarily there to help. Let's face it, why would they? What's in it for them? You end up in that job because at best you're marking time before the world recognises your own genius, and at worst because you've given up on your dreams of the Booker and such, and still have to pay the bills somehow... Basically, you know you're in business when it seems as if every single last yard dog blue pencil-pusher in town has an opinion as to how you could make the thing 'better,' but up until that point, no self-respecting editor is going to offer you as much as a branch to cling to when you're heading fast downstream, because they hate you.

My advice would be to go back and (re?) read Hemmingway, Joyce, Franz Kafka, whoever, and ask youself, honestly, what it is that they were doing that you're, as yet, not.

08:20 / 02.03.06

matt - as alex says, it's extremely rare to ever get any comments on your rejections, so you'd better get used to it. Most publications get so many submissions that there's no time to send comments to writers whom they'll never hear from again. Stick with it, and hopefully you'll find someone who likes the story better.

Speaking of poor editorial decisions, there's a short story of mine in in Void this month. I can't seem to link directly to the story so mine's called "Amy & Horace".

Whisky Priestess

10:29 / 02.03.06

That's really annoying. The stories open in a separate window which is really small and you can't expand it. You have to scroll down every few paragraphs. They should definitely sort that out.

But I'll forgive them if they paid you, Loomis. Did they?

11:36 / 02.03.06

'fraid not. I'm pretty sure Pindeldyboz doesn't pay either.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

04:59 / 07.03.06

Want us to storm the offices and demand they pay you? I'll do it, too, if you buy me a pint afterward.

Got another rejection today! Shazam. I'm going to go fiddle with it for a bit and then send it out forthwith.

And this other story as well

Whisky Priestess

12:41 / 15.03.06

I sold a story to pulp.net and I have a play on in London this Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. I think I've pimped it on the Barbe-plug thread (scroll down to the bottom) if anyone's interested in coming along.

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