Watch what you say...

I have been running down everything on 

www.placesforwriters.com/calls

much as I had in previous posts, I just haven't been blogging about it, partially because the information is already on placesforwriters, and partially due to the following issues:

Doing this blog immediately and conclusively taught me one thing: Some publishers read nearly everything said about their publication (particularly anything that links to it) so even without a real readership, it's probably wise to watch what I say for this little project, where I am liable to say things like "I have not read any of this magazine, but they pay for submissions, so I chucked some stuff their way." or "I tried reading this magazine, and it made me want to punish them rather than participate, so I sent them an essay I had saved on my computer from a high school writing assignment."

But allow me to reflect upon the morality of that last, very rhetorical statement.

Certainly I should be reading from publications where I submit work, so I have to give the rhetorical second speaker there some points.

Recently Matrix magazine sent me a very kind rejection letter informing me that they enjoyed my work but couldn't fit in in this most recent issue. They encouraged me to submit to their upcoming issue on terror and the terrifying (www.matrixmagazine.org/submissions.html)

which is both encouraging and discouraging. To take them at their word (I believe it isn't a copy pasted message due to the spelling errors, zing Matrix!) I am making good work, (which is encouraging) but I would have needed to be the best around (darn.) Obviously, I can take this on with a dual strategy, aiming for getting  better, and getting lucky, but getting back to that other publisher, there is another strategy that comes to mind: submitting somewhere with low standards and high aspirations where I can submit what might be the best they could publish, without actually having to get better. Places that describe themselves as evolved but are composed mostly of generic, semi-literate bile in formats that just don't work, and poetry that appears to have been edited not so much for potency and flow as for spelling errors.

Yes, I was looking for places to send my work and I read such a publication, one that didn't make me hope that they would publish what I would submit, rather the idea that they might made me shudder. 

Then I thought of a piece of excessively negative writing that I had never been able (or bothered trying) to write any perspective or hope into. It was something counter-productive and feel-bad, and I submitted, yes I submitted writing just this once not for money or for glory, but for revenge.

Check out the many calls with deadlines this month at places for writers, read their publications (with caution) and write something special, just for them.