One of my stories is a finalist for the Gotham Writers Musical Words contest. So I’ll be heading up to New York where, tomorrow (February 13), there’ll be a couple of events relating to the contest. The first is a chamber music concert at the Morgan Library from 7:30-9:30. Then, at Toledo, a nearby restaurant at 6 East 36th Street, there will be a reading starting at roughly 10 PM. Afterwards, the winners will be announced. It sounds like a great time, and I’m looking forward to catching up with a few people (including my brother, who I haven’t seen for too long) while I’m in the Big Apple. Thank you, Alex Steele (Gotham’s Director) for making this happen!
A while ago, I wrote about writing and coping with failure. It’s tough out there. Recently, Matt Bell posted some stats on Facebook about acceptance rates at Annals of Mathematics, one of the most respected academic journals in the field of mathematics. In 2013, the journal accepted for publication about 4% of all papers submitted for their consideration. As Matt said, “Those are probably better odds than at even the worst literary magazine.” So, yeah, there’s a lot of rejection out there for anyone who tries to write short stories.
I’m really looking forward to the Gotham Writers event because it’ll be an opportunity to break out of this little cave of my life and meet other writers and literary people. Plus I’m happy because the particular story that’s a finalist for this contest also happens to be the title piece for a manuscript collection of short stories I’ve started sending to a few small presses. I’m still working on the novel I thought I finished last year, as well as plot out the next one, but for the next couple of days, my mind will be on short stories.
What else?
On Monday, I received a letter from the Pushcart Prize inviting me to submit three of the stories I published last year for their consideration. So I just mailed them copies of “The Last American Tiger” (originally published in The Pinch), “Somewhere Around Then” (published in Five Chapters), and “What We Remember About the Great Loves of Our Life” (published in Cobalt’s 2014 Baseball Issue). Thank you, again, to the great editors at those publications helped make this possible!
A while ago, I wrote about writing and coping with failure. It’s tough out there. Recently, Matt Bell posted some stats on Facebook about acceptance rates at Annals of Mathematics, one of the most respected academic journals in the field of mathematics. In 2013, the journal accepted for publication about 4% of all papers submitted for their consideration. As Matt said, “Those are probably better odds than at even the worst literary magazine.” So, yeah, there’s a lot of rejection out there for anyone who tries to write short stories.
I’m really looking forward to the Gotham Writers event because it’ll be an opportunity to break out of this little cave of my life and meet other writers and literary people. Plus I’m happy because the particular story that’s a finalist for this contest also happens to be the title piece for a manuscript collection of short stories I’ve started sending to a few small presses. I’m still working on the novel I thought I finished last year, as well as plot out the next one, but for the next couple of days, my mind will be on short stories.
What else?
On Monday, I received a letter from the Pushcart Prize inviting me to submit three of the stories I published last year for their consideration. So I just mailed them copies of “The Last American Tiger” (originally published in The Pinch), “Somewhere Around Then” (published in Five Chapters), and “What We Remember About the Great Loves of Our Life” (published in Cobalt’s 2014 Baseball Issue). Thank you, again, to the great editors at those publications helped make this possible!
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