Having had all my short stories rejected by a number of 'literary' journals and periodicals, I can never seem to understand what the industry criteria is for acceptance and publication.
I say this because the stories I've read that have been accepted by the above don't impress me much at all either in terms of content or style. None that I've seen and read break new ground or have any kind of novel or interesting 'edge' yet such stories win contests, receive accolades.....Why? Is it because the authors already have a 'reputation' or respected position in society? Almost always, if I read the blurb in italics at the end of successful submissions (the little paragraphs that give some information about the authors in question), they almost always describe them as MFA's with majors or minors in Creative Writing. Does that automatically qualify them for publication?
Recently I was at the library reading a collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway and most of them were, in a word, terrible with bland writing and mundane subject matter (fishing in a stream, hiking through the woods etc.) but were still considered literary 'classics'. Even 'Catch-22' was 'Catch Zero' for me it was so badly written. I bet if I put an excerpt up here and pretended it was something new that I wrote, AW reviewers would tear it to shreds - not knowing who actually wrote it. I'd also bet that if you strip away the blurbs about an author's 'credentials' or their MFA designations and re-submit their work somewhere else, it would surely end up right in the wastebasket (along with stories by people like me).
I think the question many in my position ask is 'Why is my writing considered crap if I don't have a 'reputation' or the letters MFA after my name? Why should these credentials even matter at all? And, when all is said and done, shouldn't the actual story be what really counts?'
I say this because the stories I've read that have been accepted by the above don't impress me much at all either in terms of content or style. None that I've seen and read break new ground or have any kind of novel or interesting 'edge' yet such stories win contests, receive accolades.....Why? Is it because the authors already have a 'reputation' or respected position in society? Almost always, if I read the blurb in italics at the end of successful submissions (the little paragraphs that give some information about the authors in question), they almost always describe them as MFA's with majors or minors in Creative Writing. Does that automatically qualify them for publication?
Recently I was at the library reading a collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway and most of them were, in a word, terrible with bland writing and mundane subject matter (fishing in a stream, hiking through the woods etc.) but were still considered literary 'classics'. Even 'Catch-22' was 'Catch Zero' for me it was so badly written. I bet if I put an excerpt up here and pretended it was something new that I wrote, AW reviewers would tear it to shreds - not knowing who actually wrote it. I'd also bet that if you strip away the blurbs about an author's 'credentials' or their MFA designations and re-submit their work somewhere else, it would surely end up right in the wastebasket (along with stories by people like me).
I think the question many in my position ask is 'Why is my writing considered crap if I don't have a 'reputation' or the letters MFA after my name? Why should these credentials even matter at all? And, when all is said and done, shouldn't the actual story be what really counts?'
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