Submissions: My Worst Submissions Story Yet

Since I'm always waxing about how to get the submissions process done right, I thought I'd share, for a change, the story of my own worst mishap.

In February of 2010, I received that email that ordinarily would make my heart sing: The Gettysburg Review, one of the best literary magazines in this country, had finally accepted a piece of mine. Only in this instance it made my heart sink because that very piece had just been published in another magazine. Had I not withdrawn it?

I knew I'd spent a frantic evening in December sending emails to the magazines I had also submitted it to; I had even written two actual letters to withdraw it from magazines that did not list a contact email on their website. However, I could not find an email going out to the Gettysburg Review. Had I sent them a letter? I couldn't find a file for that either. I looked through my submissions log, an Excel spreadsheet where I list where I've sent what, and what response I received. Sure enough, I had withdrawn it from three other magazines. Then I filtered the spreadsheet for the Gettysburg Review and found my error: The piece was titled "The White World" but I had entered it two different ways in my spreadsheet: with the article, and without. I had filtered it for "The White World" to withdraw the manuscript, but not for "White World" and had thus overlooked the Gettysburg Review.

What made this all worse is that I personally know both the woman who was the Gettysburg Review's managing editor at the time, Kim Dana Kupperman (we were at VCCA at the same time), and the editor, Peter Stitt, who was my workshop leader in my first semester at the MFA Program at Queens University of Charlotte. Can it get any more embarrassing? I'd committed the ultimate sin in literary publishing, the one that probably gets you blacklisted more than anything else, and I'd committed it towards people I knew.

What to do? I kicked myself, ran about the house pounding my fists into my thighs, and after that there was nothing else to do but fall on my sword and write a personal mea culpa to both Kim and Peter. I did not hear back, and I did not submit to the Gettysburg Review again for more than a year, and I still haven't heard anything. I did, however, run into Kim at a conference last fall and she did give me a hug, so maybe, just maybe they are too busy to be mad at me anymore.

I learned the hard way that even the best intentions can go wrong, and the best spreadsheet and system can fail you. Little errors creep in. Yes, I was tired and overworked that day in December when I withdrew that manuscript, but still, it shouldn't have happened.

I also learned that I have absolutely no way of predicting what piece an editor might accept because I did not consider this piece one of my stronger ones, and had only sent it to more high profile magazines once I'd gotten some "ink." When I complained about all this to my writing group, one friend kindly said: Well, at least now you know you can get into the Gettysburg Review. Well yes, I guess, but I wish I had.

Fall Recipe: Zwetschgendatschi

I don't plan to turn this into a cooking blog, but in my September 27 post I promised the recipe for this tongue breaker of a cake: Zwetschgendatschi (click here for pronunciation), because it is one of the things that means fall to me. Plus I have no compunction about including recipes in my writing, so why not my blog?

First I'm sure you're wondering what the hell this is. As some of you might know from my writing, I grew up in Bavaria, i.e. Southern Germany, and Zwetschgendatschi is a cake you will find served everywhere there in the fall, when the necessary prune plums are ripe.

"Zwetschge" means prune plum, but the origin of "Datschi" is unclear. I like the explanation that it comes from the Bavarian dialect word "datschen," which means "to press flat." This seems fitting as this cake is made of yeast dough that is spread out flat on a baking sheet and covered with a layer of prune plums, then sprinkled with streusel. The streusel are, however, a bone of contention: Many bake it without that topping, but for me it's not complete without the streusel, and whenever I'm in Munich this time of year I hunt through the bakeries to find one with streusel.

This past week I found prune plumes at our local farmers market, so I bought them with the goal of making Zwetschgendatschi, and this weekend my daughter and I set about baking it. This was a team project because it was high time that I taught her how to make yeast dough. Following is the recipe with some how-to photos.

For the yeast dough:

4 cups flour
1 packet dry yeast
3/4 cup sugar
dash of salt
1 cup milk
1stick butter (unsalted)
1 egg
grated rind of one lemon (important for flavor!)

Warm the milk until it's lukewarm, sprinkle in the yeast, 1 tsp. sugar and 1 tsp. flour. Let this rise in a warm place (I heat my oven to 100F) for about 20 minutes until the top is frothy. In the meantime, cut 1/2 inch off the butter and place that on a baking sheet (You will need one with a rim.) for greasing, melt the rest of the butter. Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl along with the lemon rind, then add the milk mixture, egg and melted butter. Work through the mixture with the kneading hooks of your handmixer until a solid ball of dough forms. Knead that with your hands for a few minutes, then place it back into the bowl and let it rise in a warm place for another 30 minutes.

In the meantime, prepare 2 pounds of prune plums: Wash, pat dry, then slice open on one side to remove the stone, then make two more incisions to flatten the prune into a fourfold, keeping the skin intact.

Next, prepare the streusel:

2 1/3 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 stick butter (unsalted)

Mix flour and sugar, then add melted butter using the kneading hooks of your hand mixer. This should result in coarse crumbs:

When the yeast dough has about doubled in size, scoop it out of the bowl with your hands and knead it through one more time before spreading it out on the greased baking sheet. This will take some pressing and pulling as the dough will be elastic and prone to "jumb back."

Next, place the prunes on the dough in layered rows, with one fourfold prune overlapping another, as if you were laying shingles on a roof.

Then sprinkle the streusel over the prunes. We actually made a cake that was half Streuselkuchen, i.e. one half was only covered with streusel because my sons are not fond of the prune taste. For that half we mixed some raisins and chopped almonds into the streusel.

Then the whole cake is baked for 30 minutes at 350F. Below is what the final product looked like. In my husband's opinion it tastes best fresh out of the oven, with a dollop of whipped cream, and that afternoon cup of coffee (see first photo).

My Fall List: Things to Do in Fall

Given that I have a list for making sure I "have a summer," it's only fair to have one for fall, after all fall is my favorite season. So here's what's on my list of things to do to savor the season of crunchy leaves, colorful fruit, and crisp air:

• Bake Zwetschgendatschi (prune plum cake, recipe will follow in future post)
• Go apple picking
• Hike in Starved Rock State Park
• Carve pumpkins
• Have a hot chocolate picnic out on the porch
• Collect leaves and press them in fat books
• Roast chestnuts

My daughter has a few days off in October, and it turns out that, independently from me, she's been writing down all the things she wants to do to "have a fall." Apparently my habit is rubbing off. Her list adds to mine a hike in the Indiana Dunes.

What's on your list for fall?

Photo Essay: End of Summer

Does anything say "end of summer" better than an overturned lifeguard chair? Yesterday was the official end of summer, according to the calendar.

Some mornings I drive my kids to their high school on the northside of Chicago, and on the way back I go for a walk along this beach in Rogers Park. I thus avoid rush hour traffic on Lake Shore Drive, and blow oxygen into my brain. And I get to enjoy beach life on a sunny day like this, even if the lifeguards have packed up, and there's a nip in the air. The lighthouse is an old friend, and so are the sand and the waves, and the wide open view of the horizon, something I always long for, and something I miss from our long road trip out west.

And sometimes it is warm enough, even at the end of summer, to lie down in the sand for a while, and listen to the waves, and observe the footprint view.

Here the pebbles are rounded and well washed, as compared with the more rough cut rocks out west.

A long stone bench runs along the walkway, and every summer people can sign up to paint a section any way they want.

Before turning back into the city a playground figure affords this last view of the beach. Soon, I assume, they will carry the lifeguard chair away and store it for the next summer.

Submissions: Cover Letters

Many of my students wonder how to write the cover letter to send along with a submission to a literary magazine, so I thought I'd devote a post to that aspect of submissions even though it is not that important. And that would be the main thing to keep in mind: Unlike a cover letter you send along with a resume when applying for a job, you're not selling yourself, or your work, with the cover letter you send with your writing. The beauty of this process is that your writing sells your writing. You could even do entirely without a cover letter, although that might be discourteous.

 

So a cover letter for a submission is really a matter of courtesy. Keep it simple, keep it short. I once witnessed an editor hold up his favorite cover letter; it had one sentence on it:

 

"Dear Editor,

I herewith submit my [short story/essay] XYZ" for your consideration.

Sincerely, Joe Shmoe"

If you don't want to go with that short short version, feel free to use my cover letter template. Here are a few general pointers: 

1. Address the editor by name if you can find out from the masthead who it is. If you're sending nonfiction, try to find out who the nonfiction editor is. I once heard an editor say that it's nice to know that you know who they are and that you've done that extra bit of work to find out and are not just mass mailing them. But if the editor's name isn't clear from the masthead, don't waste time on this. Just say "Dear Nonfiction Editor."
2. Don't explain what your piece is about. It should speak for itself. This is not a query letter trying to sell a book, or pitching a magazine article.
3. Give a few details about yourself. This is really the only purpose of this cover letter. The editors might like to know who you are as writer. If you have publishing credits, mention a few, your most recent, preferably. Don't give a whole list of every place you've been published. That comes across as pompous.
4. Don't worry if you don't have publishing credits. Just say how long you've been writing, and what you've been writing, or what topics you're particularly interested in. Editors love discovering new talent, that's one of the highlights of running a literary magazine.

Feel free to use my template for cover letters. And do let me know if you have any other questions regarding cover letters!

Photo Essay: The Spoils of Travel or What Do You Bring Home from a Trip?

A month has passed since we returned from our road trip to the Southwest, and only today have I unpacked the last suitcase: mine. It always works like that: I take out what I need, such as toiletries and everyday clothes, and the rest lingers until I find a few hours to savor the trip one more time by sifting and sorting through the spoils from the trip. The things I hope to display, the items I hope to use in a scrapbook.

The pine cone and juniper branch from the Spring Mountains in Nevada where we saw the wild horses did not have to be unpacked. They had traveled on the dashboard (much to my husband's annoyance), and quickly found their spot on the living room window sill when we got home.

My assorted postcards - I always get some of views I couldn't possibly take myself. I love those with the WPA commissioned illustrations of National Parks (lower and upper right corners).

Osage Oranges from the Homestead National Monument in Nebraska - I was beyond thrilled when we found them on the trail there because I love their citrusy scent and like display a few of these green knobby orbs. My hands got all sticky from their sap carrying them back to the car, but that didn't discourage me.

Brochures, books, cool paper bags, magnets, ticket stubs, and one beer coaster, all arranged on a bandana that served as a napkin at the beer garden in Bluff, Utah.

What says "trip" more than a map? We lived by those (no GPS yet).

Green earth from Arches National Park and a salt crystal from Death Valley grace another window sill. I'm discovering a trend here: I have to bring nature home.

Submissions: Follow the Guidelines

It might be obvious to follow the submission guidelines of each literary magazine you submit to, but I've been tripped up myself because I wasn't diligent enough, or thought I knew when I didn't, and I've been teaching long enough to understand that following instructions isn't that easy, or even self-understood. I wouldn't say success depends on following the instructions, but failure certainly often comes from not following them.

So, my rather obvious point today is: Follow the guidelines.

• Check each literary magazine's website before you go to the trouble of sending your work. They do update them (Well, most do. If I see one that hasn't been updated since 2008, I worry.) Before I published my list of the best literary magazines that don't accept simultaneous submissions, I went to all those websites, and guess what, some who'd been on my list were now saying they do accept simultaneous submissions. The Kenyon Review was one of them (their reading period starts today!), and was rather happy to see that because that is one of the most acclaimed literary magazines in the U.S.
• Double check their reading period (they often change), and don't send when they don't read. Duh, I know, but I had to say it. Online submissions thankfully usually prohibit you from committing that faux pas but with snail mail submissions, you're in control. Apropos those, sometimes they want you to send to a genre editor, or indicate the genre on the envelope.
• Watch out how they want you to prepare your manuscript. Some require you to take off your name, something I tend to slip up on. I'm no saint here, I've gotten notes back from editors to please resend without my name.
• Heed the word limit, particularly for online magazines who feel readers are not going to read on the screen what would amount to a 20-page essay. There have been a few places I really wanted to submit a particular piece to but couldn't because of the word limit.
• Mind the theme issues. These are tricky because often it means you can't send them anything because you have nothing that fits their current theme, but take note of upcoming ones, perhaps you have a piece that fits.

Should you feel bogged down now with all these administrative details after reading this, you have every right. Submitting is an administrative chore and in no way related to the creative pursuit of writing. But if you want to be published, you have to deal with it.

Alright, I'm done with being "Captain Obvious," as my son would say, but please share if there are any obvious pointers I missed.

Photo Essay: Indiana Beach

Who wouldn't fall in love with sights like these quirky saucers

pouring into each other?

Amusement parks are closing as the season ends, and so I'm thinking, wistfully, of our trip to Indiana Beach Amusement Park in late August. I'm not one for amusement parks in general. I don't like the crowds, nor the fakey entertainment, nor the ridiculous prices. I only manage our annual trip to Six Flags Great America because a dear friend comes along, and we spend hours chatting on a bench while our boys ride together.

How about having the boardwalk to ourselves?

But last year we went to Indiana Beach for the first time, courtesy of my younger son who'd put that on his wish list as a reward for finishing an extra workbook, and I fell in love with its old-fashioned boardwalk charm. So we went again this year. Both times we went off season, i.e. just before the park was going to close, and most schools were back in session (luckily, not ours). A two hour drive from Chicago, and hidden in the middle of the cornfields of Northwest Indiana, Indiana Beach is an unassuming place. With its cluster of vacation cottages, it has retained a 1950s charm of summers spent lakeside.

We went on a Walgreens Wednesday, which meant two for the price of one. Refreshments at Indiana Beach cost about a third of what they do at Six Flags. Rides aren't as outlandish but if you go off season, you never wait in line and can ride over and over again, which my kids did, of course.

 I can still hear those carts rattle.

These cars make me wish my kids were smaller and would

still think these are cool to ride.

View from the ferris wheel.

Spinning over the waters of Lake Shafer in seats with creaking safety
locks and sunbaked umbrella roofs.

The Skyride ambles high above the boardwalk.

My favorite ride last year has sadly been moved off the water.

How's that for droopy? Spinning over asphalt just ain't the same.

Flying through the air is the ultimate summer feeling for me -

which is why I used this photo for my post on having a summer.

More than anything, though, I am in love with the shapes and

forms of Indiana Beach, like this dome of the gift shop.

9/11 Tribute: Portraits of Grief

Remember the "Portraits of Grief" the New York Times published in the months after 9/11? The little stories about the individuals who perished that day that the NYT staffers put together after interviewing family members? For me, there is no better tribute to 9/11 than reading those brief portraits, collected in the big coffee table book Portraits: 9/11/01. We don't have a coffee table, but for years that book graced the top of the mantle in our living room until it found a permanent home in the middle of our big wall of books. Every anniversary of 9/11, I take down that book, open it randomly, and read a few portraits:

Shannon Fava - She Dances in His Heart
Ronald C. Fazio - Still a Family Man
Francis J. Feely - Friend of "The Far Side"

Today it struck me that long before the rise of Twitter, the NYT writers endeavoured to come up with a short line to capture each person's character. It is sad to have a life reduced to a sentence that is not even complete, and to 300 words in a big book. But at least that is there: The book, and the few minutes every year to remember those whom I did not know, who had their lives cut short in a tragedy none of us would have ever imagined.

There is a Yiddish saying: He who saves a life, saves the world. Consequently, those who destroy a life, destroy the world. Thousands of worlds were destroyed on 9/11. Portraits 9/11/01 is a small tribute to those worlds.

Submissions: The Beauty of Snail Mail Submissions

Don't get me wrong: I love online submissions. But this morning, after submitting a few manuscripts online in a manner of minutes, I came across a literary journal that is not set up for online submissions. First I hesitated: Why bother?

But, methodical as I am, I wanted to complete my submissions list, and so I hit the print button, modified the cover letter, found a manila envelope, addressed a SASE, figured out the right postage, and while I was doing all that, I realized that there is a certain sense of satisfaction in doing this the old fashioned snail mail way. More effort goes into it, and thus there is a greater sense of accomplishment, especially when I will drop this brown envelope into the mailbox on my way to work and hear that satisfying plop of the mailbox lid. There ain't anything else like it to give you a sense of completion.

Submissions: Best Literary Magazines for Nonfiction that Don't Accept Simultaneous Submissions

In my opinion, a literary journal that does not accept simultaneous submissions is the bane of a writer's existence (to use a cliché) because this means a journal is arrogant enough to say you can only send your work to them, and then wait around for weeks, often months, to hear back, and during that time you can't send it to any other journal for consideration. Your text is thus tied up for the duration, and given that the chance of being accepted typically lies between 1-5% for any journal, the process of having your work published virtually grinds to a halt.

I've explained my approach to submissions and to ranking literary magazines in previous posts and even though I clearly don't appreciate not being able to send my work to more than one magazine at a time, unfortunately some of the best literary magazines in the U.S. still do not accept simultaneous submissions. So, as previously promised, if you are willing to wait it out, here is my list of literary magazines that do not accept simultaneous submissions but are still worthwhile because of their reputation. Please keep in mind that this ranking is based on my own criteria of how often a magazine has received either a Pushcart for nonfiction or been included in Best American Essays over the last three years.

Journals are listed in alphabetical order:

Top Tier:

Conjunctions
Georgia Review
The Threepenny Review

Second Tier:

Hudson Review
Raritan
Sewanee Review
Southwest Review
The Sun

Third Tier:

Antioch Review
Epoch
Hotel Amerika
North American Review
Northwest Review
Prairie Schooner
Toasted Cheese

Writing Exercise: Color List - Red

September is the month of lushness - all the fruits and vegetables are ripe and deep in color. So this month's color is the most forceful of colors: red.

For the uninitiated, the idea here is to come up with ways to evoke red without mentioning the color itself because one of the challenges in writing effective descriptions is getting the color just right. Each month on this blog we work on one color, so far we’ve done green, pink, blue, and yellow. So help me here to come up with nouns and adjectives that bring red to mind. There should be a plethora but I can't think of them all:

beet

blood

burgundy
candy apple
cherry
cranberry
fire engine
garnet
merlot
pomegranate
ruby
strawberry
tomato

Having a Summer

Labor Day marks the "official" end of summer, and thus it's time to ask whether one has made the most of the season of heat, beach and long, supposedly lazy days.

When I first moved to the U.S. and people started asking me whether I was having a nice summer, or, in late August or early September, whether I had had a nice summer, I was puzzled by the question. How do you have a summer? And why was I supposed to have a summer as opposed to any other season? I was a working adult, and often didn't even take a vacation in the summer, so why would summer be any different? Why weren't people asking, come November, whether I'd had a nice fall?

These days I ask the question myself, especially as my kids return to school and I connect with other parents. And that's also how I initially came to understand it: Summer is still associated with massive amounts of free time that apparently many Americans have over their almost three month break from school over the summer. So even if you're not in school or college or university anymore, you're still supposed to have a summer.

Before I even understood the question in its cultural context (and please enlighten me further!), I understood it as a check-in to see whether you were capable of taking advantage of the nice weather, whether you were able to live in the moment and savor the season of late daylight. So I made a list for myself of all the things that signify summer for me and that I want to make sure I don't forget about. Checking off many of them would ensure I'd had a good summer:

• Make lemonade
• Ride a boat on Lake Michigan
• Go to 57th Street Beach
• Go blueberry picking
• Visit farmers' market
• Make popsicles
• Eat fresh corn on the cob
• Grill our own hamburgers
• Lie down flat in the grass and look up at the sky
• Bicycle along the lakefront

That list is still on the fridge, yellowed and a big dog-eared, and my daughter is slightly bemused by it, as popsicles are, for example, something for little kids. And yet, what says summer like a home-made popsicle?

Submissions: All You Need to Know About Submitting to Literary Magazines

I haven't written about submissions to literary magazines for a while because many of them are published by universities and thus adhere to the academic calendar of taking the summer off. Conversely, many of them open their reading periods today, September 1, so it's time again to think about getting your work out there. I will focus the next few Thursdays on the process of submitting to literary journals, and to kick that off I'm offering a summary of my related blog posts:

Rules of the Process:

1. Develop a System

2. Edit your Manuscript

3. Don't Give Up

Rankings of Literary Magazines for Nonfiction:

Best Literary Magazines for Nonfiction

Best Online Magazines for Nonfiction

Second and Third Best Magazines for Nonfiction

If you write fiction, check out Perpetual Folly's Literary Magazine Rankings based on the Pushcart Prize.

Click on the Submissions label at left to find more tips, call for submissions, etc. If you have any particular questions on the subject of submitting your work to literary magazines, please let me know. I certainly don't have all the answers but since I've been at it for a while, I probably have an opinion.