I’ve had conversations with people enough times to know a bit better how to respond to the question as well. So here’s my attempt.

There is only one thing I would have done differently: picked a different school.

Trust me, I am not denigrating the fine institution, instructors or students that I spent two years of Tuesday and Thursday nights with. I encountered some great people there, including a few instructors and fellow students who are making great contributions to writing and the teaching of writing.

But there is one thing I regret most of all, and that’s not focusing on teaching.

I am miserable in the corporate world. Always have been. Always will be. It puts food on the table but with every paycheck comes the price of a few ounces of my soul. I’ve been a professional writer and editor for about 15 years (including the horrendous years of being an assistant editor wherein I did nearly no editing and a crap-ton of assisting) — throughout these years I’ve never wanted to do something more than ditch the profit-driven corporate world and teach writing full-time.

So why did I go to a program that didn’t have an integrated teaching component to it? Convenience.

I was working full-time, raising two kids, my program was close by  (I could walk to it from my apartment), and held classes in the evenings. I also liked the fact that the program could be completed in two years.

If I had to do things differently, I think I would go back and find ways to make my MFA experience a little less convenient and a little more conducive to my long-term goals. It’s not that the experience was easy. Far from it. The two years I was in grad school were a couple of the most difficult I’ve had in my life — with the extreme highs and extreme lows of birth and death enveloping constant day-to-day struggles to just get shit done. In fact, if things had been any less convenient, I probably would have given up on the whole affair. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that I ultimately didn’t accomplish something I had hoped to gain from the experience. If I had a time machine I’d go back and fix that one thing.

Before you embark on your MFA journey, understand clearly what your goals are and what you’ll have to give up in order to get them. As in all things creative, convenience and shortcuts don’t often bear out the results we really want.

On submitting

What follows are suggestions for submitting your stories and/or excerpts to small literary journals.

Build an extensive list

I have a list of just over 100 literary and electronic journals that I submit to, and that’s a fairly small list. One guy I met told me that he had a list of 240 (where he found the other 140 journals—I don’t know).

The least number of times that I have submitted a short story before it was accepted was about 12 times. The most was about 65, so I’m of the opinion that you will have to submit a short story—even a well written one—to many journals before it will find a home.

If you don’t have a list you can start with mine (see ‘THE LIST’ below) and edit as needed.

About the list

This list is a little bit of a mess (and highly personalized—I tried to take out my personal comments, but I might have missed some, so if you see some notes that don’t make sense, just ignore them).

Tiers

Entries are divided into 5 tiers according to my (and other folks’) sense of the importance, relevance, circulation, and payscale of the journals. In addition to five tiers, there is a sixth tier for contests. I usually submit to contests between the times I submit to Tier One and Tier Two.

My advice is to start submitting to literary journals at Tier One, then go on to contests (if you are so inclined) then work your way down to Tier Five.

By dividing the literary journals and e-journals into tiers, I don’t mean to insult anyone. There just has to be some way to account for the fact that I would rather have my story rejected first by the New Yorker, then rejected by Bat City Review before finally being rejected by threecandles.org You gotta have publishing priorities.

Word Count

Throughout my list you will see things that look like this: 2,000-8,000 words. Other times I might just write this: 10,000 words. These are all indicators of the word count that the journal will accept. This is pretty straight forward. If you just see one number like 6,000 words, that means the journal will accept stories of up to 6,000 words. Any length means that the journal appears to have no limit on the word count. Any length could also mean that I was unable to find out whether the journal had a word count.

When you can submit (reading periods)

As many journals are published from colleges and universities, they often have schedules that correlate with academic semesters. Many small journals will not accept submissions sent outside their reading periods, so (unless you like wasting postage) it’s important to know when they are open for submissions.

Again, these notations are fairly obvious. I have attempted to note inclusive date ranges like Sep-May. Year round either means that the journal is open for submissions year round or that I was unable to find information as to when they accepted work. Year round? (with a question mark) means that I guessed that they accept work year round, but in truth, I have no idea.

To contest or not to contest

It is my impression that people are divided about whether you should enter contests or not. This is because—many of you probably know this—most contests hosted by literary journals involve some sort of fee. Some writers believe that contests are a good way to strut your stuff and have editors take a closer look than they might have under other circumstances. Other people just think they are a big rip off. In the end you have to decide whether contests are right for you. For many years, I refused to enter my stories in contests—mostly on principal. Last year, however, I changed my mind. I have come to view contests as a chance to have my stuff taken a little more seriously than when I send unsolicited submissions. And I’ve done okay for myself in that area. So a few years ago, I regarded contests as a waste and now I’m sending them $20 checks. Go figure.

Always update your list

Whether you use my list or make one of your own in your trials to make those literary journal submissions, it’s important to remember that the literary journal scene is constantly changing. Journals move, shut down or change their submission periods. Additionally, there are new small journals cropping up from time to time. I try to add about 6-12 new journals to my list each year by checking Newpages.com, The Writers Chronicle, The Writer’s Market, and other sources. This helps balance out the small journals that have shut down over the years which I’ve had to remove from my list.

Another excellent tool for keeping track of changes in small journals are rejection notes. Rejection notes will often note changes in address or reading periods. For example, for the longest time, I thought that The Iowa Review’s reading period was from Sep-May. Last year however, I got a rejection notice saying that they only accepted work from Sep 15 to Dec 15 (short window). So I updated my list and resent the story after Sep 15. It was promptly rejected, but that’s beside the point.

Tarry no longer—here is the list [Ed. Note -- Armand’s list is so extensive, I have included it here as a PDF rather than posting it all online]: Armand’s List (PDF 164kb)

Now, I love short stories, and I spent about five years writing a short story collection, but the market for short fiction is extremely limited.

Consider the types of books you buy. Even writers are more likely to buy a novel or nonfiction over a short story collection. And (in what has become an endless refrain) short fiction journals are very fond of pointing out that more people submit to them than subscribe. (I’d like to smugly point out that in the last year I’ve subscribed to Western Humanities Review, The Missouri Review and One Story.)

I realize that the short story is a great format for workshopping. You can read an entire short story in one sitting and (unlike a novel) you can revise it over one school semester, so that’s handy. Still, should MFA programs also take into account the difficulty in getting these things published and (even if you do get published) how little it pays?

Questions:

Do MFA programs owe students any sort of assistance or explanation when it comes to marketing their work? Or are MFA programs here to make us better artists, market be damned?

Publishing for money: What are the odds of getting a screenplay published vs. a short story collection vs. creative nonfiction vs. novel? I have no idea, but I have a sense that the non-fiction market is the easiest to crack. If you want to make money, the most difficult form is poetry. Anyone know for sure?

Are my own thoughts on the short story too negative? Maybe the form will come back. In the 80′s everyone thought animation was dead- now we have the Simpsons and Family Guy and a hundred other animated shows. Maybe the short story will have a new Golden Age?

And maybe the novella will come back too!

Should MFA programs add a course to their programs in which you meet with an editor and agent and get to ask questions about marketing and submitting?

Should MFA programs be redesigned for longer courses (maybe workshops that last two years) so that people, can carry a novel the whole way through?

Should MFA programs clearly explain to fiction writers that they would be better off (from a marketing perspective) writing a novel?

Discuss please.

Thanks!

Armand (who often writes short stories)

In the 21st-century mashup of promotion and serendipitous discovery that seems to go so well with blogging, author Brendan Halpin is talking about his new book “Dear Catastrophe Waitress” in a virtual book tour of lit and writing blogs, mine included.

I’m honored to be a part of the experiment, since I don’t host my blog on TypePad, something the rest of the participating blogs share. But, I’m also honored to be included among an illustrious crew of good blogs, including:

Syntax of Things
Rarely Likable
Drive Like Hell

We’re all going to post a Q&A with Halpin. My turn is on Thursday, so please come pay a visit.

TypePad Featured Interviews: Brendan Halpin

Duotrope is primarily a database of journals and magazines for fiction and poetry. Only about 1,600 different publications. Along with the expected literary fiction, it also includes outlets for the relatively maligned (in MFA circles) genre fiction, like science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism. And there are intelligent ways to find markets that fit your interests, goals, and patience.

I feel saved by Duotrope’s online submission tracker — something I’ve been wishing for since I started trying to use Excel to track my many rejections, and hating the process.

But maybe best of all is Duotrope’s repository of statistics, showing how quickly and how often publications review and respond to submissions. To my mind this is powerful. But it’s also dependent on you and me to give them the data. If you write and submit, you should visit Duotrope and let them know about your rejections and successes.

Much love to the folks who put Duotrope to together. On the one hand BookFox calls for a boycott of the #1 slow-responder (which I fully support). But Duotrope also makes it easier to find, support, and frequently submit to the publications that swiftly go where many editors fear to fly.

All this has gotten me very fired up. Time to go through the trash bin of rejections and get recycling.

(Many thanks to Elaine in BookFox’s comments for linking to Duotrope. She made my day.)

• Antioch Review
• The Atlantic Monthly (fiction issue): They used to have fiction in every issue, but no more!
• Esquire: They send nice rejection letters.
• Gettysburg Review
• Glimmer Train
• Granta UK: It’s actually hard to find IRC’s around Boston, making it hard to submit.
• Greensboro Review
• Harper’s: Did anybody read their serialized novel, “Happy Land”, last summer? It was great.
• Hudson Review
• Iowa Review: Iowa’s mojo is strong. They are king makers.
• Kenyon Review
• McSweeny’s Quarterly: So hip, it hurts.
• Missouri Review
• The New Yorker: The biggest of the big. Even Iowa must bow to New York.
• Paris Review: Not really from Paris.
• Ploughshares: Hey, this sounds familiar.
• Tin House: (sing it with me now) “She’s a Tin House. Mighty-mighty…” They run a great week-long fiction workshop.
• Zoetrope: Brought to you by Francis Ford Coppola himself.

Enjoy.

Armand

I’ll have a tiny journal like Apple Valley Review reject my short shorts in less than a week, while a heavy hitter like Columbia Journal still hasn’t responded to a story I mailed out in January 2006 (and neither have they responded to email queries, and my last short story I sent them took a year and a half to receive a reply).

Writers should rise up and stop submitting to journals that take over a year to respond. Who cares if they’re understaffed, backlogged, and occassionally underfunded? I think it’s fair to say that they have a responsibility to their submitters in addition to their readers. You can’t have a lit journal without writers.

I’d love to know why this sort of response time should be tolerated.

Keep in mind that I take the time in my own understaffed, backlogged, and underfunded life to empty out my email inbox at least once a week. Yes, I have things that are left undone, phone calls that I haven’t made, but I’m just me. And if I do take a while to return an email, I say “sorry.” I may be more prone than the average person to get aneurysms when organizations, companies, and other people don’t take the same pains to show enough respect to make timely replies.

Imagine if we could charge them late fees like banks and credit card companies….

BookFox’s post does not go so far as what I’m ranting about. But he does end by saying, “anything over eight months makes me extremely reluctant to send any more submissions.” And for that, I commend him. Fight the power.

Read all about it here: Literary Journals

Item of note with this Fiction Fest is they are accepting sci-fi along with literary fiction. Might be time to bust out my old Ray Bradbury ripoffs — homages, rather — and polish them up.

Here’s the scoop from Armand:

THE BOSTON FICTION FESTIVAL is accepting submissions for live reading at the second annual Festival in summer of 2007 and subsequent publication in our annual review. Submitting authors should expect to read at the Festival in order to receive payment. New England residents are strongly encouraged to submit, but all writers are welcome. Looking for lively, literary fiction. This year, we are also accepting Sci-Fi. Submissions should be 3-20 pages. Self-contained novel excerpts and multiple story subs are OK. Send submission, cover and SASE to: Attn: Armand Inezian, Faculty Building, Curry College 1071 Blue Hill Ave. Milton, MA 02186.For more info see: www.fictionfest.com

If you are from outside New England and do not expect to be attending the Festival, consider submitting to Hub, our new on-line journal. You can submit to Hub via email at: HubJournal@Gmail.com

Thanks, A.

The collection is called “A Stranger Among Us,” and will focus on “cross-cultural collisions/bonds, encompassing a wide variety of ethnicities, races and nationalities.”

Sounds good to me. If you’re interested in this, get that story to OV. I plan to. Cross your cross-cultural fingers…

More details here: OV Books Announces Its Third Title

Via Friend Jeff, via Felicia Sullivan.

Now that things are under way at After the MFA, it’s only fair to come clean about something.

Unless you count my high school literary journal — of which I happened to be editor-in-chief — I have never been published in a literary journal or magazine.

Wait. Before you drop your laptop on the ground and storm away in disgust, hear me out.

See, I was about to sit down and write a missive about, yes I haven’t been published but I couldn’t care less because most of what I’ve read in lit journals isn’t that good to tell the truth and I’m busy working on my novel so I can’t be bothered to submit to journals no one reads anyway.

Luckily, before I became publicly obnoxious, I revisited some links to journals online. And I saw again there are some good publications out there, outlets for fiction that are trying to do some things differently, and some trying to hold the ground on delivering good fiction. And there are good stories being published.

I also scanned through my Excel spreadsheet that I use to track my submissions (part of which is in the the pretty graphic above). Looks like I’ve sent stories out over 15 times over the past couple years. That is way more than I thought, given how adverse to the submission process I usually feel. It’s way less than a lot of other people, than succesful and published writers. But that’s okay.

What did I learn today (again)? When I don’t submit or when I get rejections: Well, I don’t want to be published anyway. When I take the time to research, and think about the stories I’ve written and the huge pool of outlets available for them to have a life beyond my hard drive, I guess I get inspired to keep going.

End result, I didn’t erase “get mailing envelopes” from my to-do list. And I thought of a story to submit to Pindeldyboz. Best of all, I’ve come clean to the whole wide world that I am an unpublished fiction writer.* Now is the time to do something about it.

*I have been published, I do admit. But that’s all nonfiction. Not the same.