(Note: This post is about the submission process. If you were expecting an entirely different subject matter based on the title, I apologize profusely, and would like to offer you a complete refund.)

(Further note: Judas Priest video vaguely thematically related, but otherwise fairly gratuitous.)

I’ve been fascinated by an article by Theodore Ross with the attention-grabbing byline: “Cheat! It’s the only way to get published!” that a reading/writing friend of mine recently re-posted. Ross’ thesis seems more or less to be that following the submission rules is for suckers, and a writer ought to seek to bypass them, and peddled influence wherever possible. There’s also a dash of- Nothing is ever accepted off of the “slush pile”, and anything coming from there is treated with derision by all readers.

There was a lively comment string following this posting, in which several writers and editors I know pointed out that this is mostly bull-puckey. In the particular case I’m most familiar with, Mud Season Review, where I’m a co-editor for Poetry, these things definitely are not true. While we will occasionally solicit submissions from someone we admire (and even then, the submission gets reviewed by the editorial panel, there’s no automatic “fix”), almost all of our submissions come through Submittable via our general submissions call. I.e., it’s all one big virtual slush pile. Every submission is read by Readers, who pass it on (or not) to Assistant Editors, who pass it on (or not) to the Genre and Managing Editors. And in the process of sending out the rejections, the Genre/Managing editors also take a quick look at what was passed up by earlier readers, so even the first-level rejections get at least 1.5 reads.

We do not, as Ross seems to think might be widespread, have pizza parties where we chortle at all the fools who decide to submit. I don’t doubt that what he says he did can work. And of course, as in any professional field, it doesn’t hurt to mention connections. I certainly, for example, put in the fact that I’m an editor at a literary journal in my cover letter in my submissions, on the chance that it may increase the likelihood I’ll get a second look. Ditto with mentioning if the journals editors’ and I know someone in common who brought them to my attention. And I don’t doubt that there are journals out there that solicit a larger percentage of their work, and deliberately lead toward name-recognition. Based on the number of journals out there though, and the people I know who work on them, that is in no way a majority.

Getting back to Mud Season as an example, if someone does contact us directly to send something in, we either re-direct them to Submittable, or, if it’s a personal connection and we’re feeling generous, might post it there ourselves. Either way, it ends up going through the same round of editorial reviews as it would if it were directly submitted. The only difference I’ve seen is that we tend to send a more personal response for rejected material if there is some kind of direct connection.

Also, I’m a *bit* skeptical, given that he himself notes he’s not kept records, about how much extra oomph he really got from this methodology. Did it double his acceptance rate? Increase it by 10x? And is the increase worth the string of vaguely annoyed editors who will re-direct you to their preferred submission method, and the ones who will zap things that don’t follow their guidelines sight unseen? I’d like to see some data! In the mean time, I’m not convinced that we should all be cheating.

Fellow readers, writers and editors, what do you think?

I’m on two weeks now of feeling sick and low energy. But this does not matter. What matters is the Blog. Well, writing more generally, but at this moment, the Blog more specifically. What happened in 2010 and through most of 2011 cannot be allowed to continue. Even when there seems to be nothing to say, the Blog must go on.

That is all.

 A quick one here, holiday week and all. I’ve been looking for appropriate sites to display some of my blog content on. Accordingly, I posted my recent blog on Newt Gingrich’s polling rise to the 2012 elections board on Reddit.com.

Reddit is a pretty groovy place in terms of aggregating news and content from a variety of sites in a user-moderated environment. The Newt piece got some decent traffic, so I decided to post my recent America’s Stonehenge column in their paranormal section.

The results? The Newt Gingrich post has generated 130 pageviews. America’s Stonehenge? 978! Does this say something about the relative online audience for news of the Paranormal versus Presidential elections?

P.S.- Over 1,100 page views between them, and still only one comment on either blog. What’s a brother got to do to get some reader interaction going?!?

I put myself on a new schedule of posting twice a week. I figured that, if I make it a regular assignment for myself, just like a column I might write for someone else, the chances of it getting done go way up. So now “update blog” sits on my Google calendar at a set time every Tuesday and Saturday.

This is my third week doing it, I actually didn’t want to have any fanfare and announcement (for what, all three readers?) and then not follow through. Especially after how little I was able to blog the last year and a half as life just seemed to swamp writing. This regular schedule is actually part of a counterattack on the problem, the essence of which is weekly dedicated time: 4 hours a week for my screenplay, plus an hour for editing my poetry collection, and then two Blogs a week.

So why am I mentioning it now? Because tonight, dear reader, I can’t find anything my brain is collected enough to want to write about. This may be a side effect of the heat having been out for the past five days- blood has porobably been pulled out of my brain, and devoted to more important activities. Whatever the cause, here I am, content lite. But, DAGNABIT TO HELL, two blog posts a week, rain or shine.

So here you go. You’d best behave, or I’ll do it again.  

This week’s announcement that all our troops will be home from Iraq by the end of the year got me thinking. We’ve certainly heard the obligatory Neo-Con voices saying that this a mistake, harms our security, harms the region, etc. I haven’t heard as many Progressive voices crowing, but I suspect that’s because they are so weary from the long years of misguided war that they’re just glad it’s finally over. That, and a sprinkle of sense and tact enough to know that this is a solemn occasion, suffused with a lot of loss for everyone involved.

But at the heart of this development lies a great irony: the Administration tried for what the Neo-Cons wanted, an extended ongoing presence after direct combat was ended. It failed to secure Iraqi cooperation with that goal, and it is this failure that has resulted in the end result Progressives have wanted for years, a complete end to the war, with all troops home.

This seems symptomatic to me of a frustration I’ve had with this Administration, the fact that it more often than rarely delivers, or tries to deliver outcomes that match the Conservative policy agenda. This, of course is done in the quite reasonable name of trying to work with the opposing side and achieve compromise. This after all, is actually a key trait of the Progressive worldview, the idea that even those who don’t agree with you may have some valid views, and that it’s important to find common ground.

Here’s the thing: Finding common ground is not a value the Conservative movement shares. They operate in the land of ideas like “we’re right, you’re wrong” and “if you’re not with us, you’re against”. And they’ve gotten where they have, electorally, by sticking to their guns (quite literally in some cases!) even when those guns are unpopular.

Wouldn’t it be something to see Progressives in power be equally unapologetic?

So here’s the deal: I’ve only had one blog entry so far in 2010. While in previous years I never quite met my goal of having an entry a week, I was strongly into double-digits for 2008 and 2009. Not so much this year.

I understand how it happened. I started the year out of town, visiting Abbey’s friends and family in New York for Christmas and New Year’s. Which was delightful, but did get me out of my regular routine. I then jumped feet-first into Ave Maria, the short film I’m writing, directing and producing. In case you’ve never done it, let me save you the trouble and tell you NEVER to both direct and produce something. One or the other is fine, but both simultaneously will suck out your soul and leave you a hollow-shattered shell of a person. And so it was.

Simultaneous with this, my back went out in a spectacular (usually anxiety-provoked) fashion that it tends to do every few years. Credit clean living that I hadn’t had one of these since December 2006, but this one got me out sick from work for several days, and doing chiro and pilates for a month (shout outs to the fantastic Drs. Randall and James at Embrace Health in the Marina!) before I was functional again. And speaking of work, my quiet stable little non-profit job became unaccountably busy this year. Apparently doing an annual budget, long-range projections, finalizing financing for relocation and implementing a new financial software at the same time is a bad idea. This is why I left the for-profit sector!

The upshot of all of this: 39 entries in all of 2009. 1 in the first 4 months of 2010. UNACCEPTABLE. Forthwith, my pledge to you is that I’m going to post at least one entry a week for the rest of the year, even if someone has to die. Maybe me, maybe you. So be careful. I’m just saying…

I’ve just finished a one week Facecation. I got the idea (and the term) from my friend Roz, who did her own Facecation recently. I don’t know what her exact motivation was, but in my case, I thought that Facebook and I needed a little time apart to get our relationship back in balance. The form of our relationship was roughly this:

Chris- Checking it first thing in the morning, struggling to keep up with friend’s postings, continually trying to think of witty things to post for my status or in response to others postings, struggling to clear out the constant stream of alerts in my inbox, continually clicking on Facebook throughout the day to refresh a brief feeling of excited contact with the rest of the world, being unable to get to bed at night because I needed to check Facebook one more time in case anything new had happened.

Facebook- Accepting all my attention while otherwise practicing complete disinterest toward me.

You can see what the problem was.

I’m no stranger to compulsive behavior and online addiction, so I could see it too. I also had the feeling that I was increasingly getting cut by the other edge of the double-edged sword that is social networking: it can make you feel connected to a lot of people, but it also prompts shallow and fleeting connections that masquerade as real intimacy. So I decided on a one week break, just to let the dust settle. From midnight Wednesday last week through midnight yesterday, I did not visit Facebook, deleted all e-mail alerts from it unread and even, when I was fast enough to zap them, tried to delete the messages without even looking at their titles.

What can I tell you about that experience? Well, for starters, like most any break from something compulsive, it was pretty much an immediate relief. The withdrawal was fairly light, too. I did have the weird lurching feeling of continually composing status updates in my head about things I saw or felt, and then realizing that if I had thoughts I wanted to express, I had to find a real live person to express them too. That seemed unreasonable! But that went away after a few days, and I had very little of the “what do I do with spare moments?” feeling that I thought I might have. Instead I almost immediately felt more alert and appreciated the free time and free head-space. I also appreciated seeing people at various points throughout my week more, since I couldn’t “cyber-see” them in-between. The other thing I noticed is that, after a day or two, the daily 20+ e-mail alerts I was receiving dwindled down to one or two. When you don’t constantly feed the beast, it doesn’t spontaneously come looking for you too often.

There were a few things I genuinely missed. When I finish reading a book, as I did with a behemoth 515 page tome this past week, I like posting the review. I also use Facebook to pimp my writing, so when I had new things come out here and there, it was a little frustrating to not be able to make use of this practical tool to let people know. And I missed the ability to send quick messages to people following up on things we’d done together over the weekend, which is not profound but is something that online networking lends itself well too. I also found myself with an ongoing strange yearning, when I got a real e-mail from someone, to go to their profile and see their pictures. Maybe not so strange- visual contact is very important to human socializing.

And now that I’m back? I am decidedly ambivalent. It’s nice to “see” everyone again and to have the often convenient tools for staying in touch that Facebook provides. But I liked the peace and quiet, the increased time and energy, and the added impetus to make real contact with people that my break provided me. What I think I’m going to do is turn off all e-mail alerts (except maybe for events and pictures, because events need timely response and pictures are fun!), so that I’ll only see stuff from the site if and when I go to the site. And I’m going to put myself on an every other day regimen for visiting Facebook. Maybe this will reintroduce a little balance into the relationship, and make my contact with it a more deliberate and conscious.

And so I return…

Come check them out! They’re on both Picasa and Flickr, so whether you’re a Yahoo! Or Google partisan, you can go wherever your brand loyalty leads you:

http://picasaweb.google.com/chris.west.writer.in.san.francisco/PeruAugust2008/photo#s5239087431241706178

http://www.flickr.com/photos/27093518@N04/sets/72157606985908164/show/

I’m glad to be able to share them!

In the past two weeks I have flown over the desert in a light plane doing steep banks and turns, taken long distance buses on routes prone to plunging mountain cliffs and occassional robbery, and gone hiking through jungles known to house giant spiders and poisionous snakes. At no point was I as concerned for my safety as I was in taxis navigating the traffic of Lima today. Its really wild- it reminds me of visiting Shanghai when I was working in Hong Kong in 98/99, when it was all out of control boom and vehicles seemed to echolocate by constant honking.

That being said, and despite the fact that it was foggy and overcast for the entire day, I had a lovely time today. I started off at the Museo Larco Herrera, which has an outstanding collection of pre-Colombian artifacts. While the whole collection is impressive, the most popular part of the museum is the erotic art gallery that features pottery and sculpture capturing various and sundry sexual scenes. I learned that in ancient times men and women in Peru had sex. Who knew? Gods also apparently had sex with women, people had sex with skeletons and skeletons masturbated. Turns out skeletons are surprisingly well-endowed.

After that I went to the Monasterio de San Francisco, a Franciscan church with extensive catcombs beneath it. Something like 25,000 to 75,000 people are believed to be interred there. And then to Huaca Pucllana, an adobe pyramid smack-dab in the middel of the city that was expanded by successive cultures starting in 200 AD. That was my favorite activity for the day, among other things just for the sheer incongruity of being in an archealogical site and then looking up and seeing city all around.

Huaca Pucllana was on the edge of Miraflores, a well-off coastal neighborhood of Lima, so I took the opportunity to walk through there, ending up at the ocean. Lima, in its urban snarl, is not at all typical of the rest of Peru. Miraflores, in its comfortable affluence, is not at all representative of Lima. Im glad I apporached both at the end of my trip, it would have been very misleading and disorienting to see them at the beginning.

I finished with a very nice dinner on a cliff-side restaraunt in which I finally had the defintive Peruvian specialty dish, ceviche, seafood that is marinated and de facto cooked in lemon juice.

Sitting there looking out over a foogy ocean certainly got me nostalgic for home. Tomorrow morning Im going to the central cathedral, where Pizzaro is buried, and then have an afternoon flight home arriving in San Francisco around midnight. I look forward to returning to you all!

Im back in Lima now after four days in the Amazon basin. I could say so many things about those four days that I think Im going to have to stick with highlights like:

– Taking an hour long bus ride from Puerto Maldonado to the port of Infierno (great name, isnt it?) and then going another hour upstream to get to the Explorers Inn Lodge.

– A room with mosquito nets, light only from candles, and a cold shower, which wasnt bad considering that it was around 85 degrees and humid even at midnight.

– Awakening every morning to the sound of Howler Monkeys.

– Getting up for a 10K hike through the jungle that started at 5:30 AM.

– Taking part in a Shamanistic ceremony in a jungle hut.

– Boat cruises at night to spot caiman (think crocodile, only slightly smaller) on the riverbanks.

– Complete darkness and jungle sounds every night.

– Sighting (and sounding) frogs, lizards, tarantulas, butterflies, several species of monkey and more tropical birds than you can name.

– Waking up in the jungle, taking the one hour boat ride and one hour bus ride in reverse, flying to two miles high in the Andes (we had a layover in Cuzco) and then being here by evening in a coastal city of 8 million- how is that even possible?

Speaking of here, 60 degrees and foggy, just like when I left 12 days ago! I guess it is a good way to get reacclimated for a return to San Francisco. I did my first ever proper Lima activity this evening, since on the way in I arrived and then took the the bus out the next morning without seeing anything. Said activity being visiting Chinatown. Which was a lot like any Chinatown anywhere in that it was bustling, had great food and was pervaded with stores crammed full of nick-knacks. One of my favorites was the silicone butt pad, for those looking for a more ample rear. Another highly idiosyncratic feature of this Chinatown was that some of the hottest selling items there, judging by how many stores they appeared in, are Bollywood movies and esoteric books on Yoga, Tarot, magic and the like.

Tomorrow Im going to spend the whole day looking around Lima, and then Im on a flight back on Sunday. So one more update, then Im home!