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Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Inspirational Quotational


To get you through the week:
  • “Never give up, never give up, never; never; never; never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give up except to convictions of honor and good sense.” --Winston Churchill
  • "Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently." --Henry Ford
  • "A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else." --John Burroughs 
Admit it: Life just seems easier from inside a smart, stuffy quote.  

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

How often are you to keep submit for one magazine with rejections?

How often of form letters before you decide this magazine will never have you?

If you persist, will this change?

If you improve and persist, will the magazine write encouragement, or just continued form?

Will there be anger with continued submission every moment after rejection, or is this path of writer?

Anonymous said...

Okay, is Ianko's comment for real? The syntax is crazy yet strangely poetic. Yet crazy.

Anonymous said...

I betcha Ianko's being given nothing but form letters from the "journals," that's fer sure. (Coming from me that's a good thing, Iank)

Anonymous said...

I haven't found a consensus on how many times a magazine has to say no before you should give up on them. I know one writer who will never send another piece if a journal says no and I know writers who will just keep trying. I'm somewhere in the middle.

Grimus said...

ianko is learning english by viewing blogs, i believe.

Anonymous said...

Call me corny, but I think it's important to read inspirational quotes all the time.

However.

I see a big difference in the big magazines and the journals that take stories. If you are persistent with a big magazine, an editor will cut you a break. You'll get feedback. They'll take the time to comment on your query or your submission.

Not so with journals. They just give form letters. They never tell you why, no matter how many times you send submissions. In fact many of them now will "cap" an author's number of submissions to just a few per year. That is madness. They obviously are not open to new work. They obviously are not running a professional operation. But they are apparently the only game going, for short stories. Or, I guess, for poetry. And, like anything, like any business, they're more apt to use their friends or people who could help them ... so if you're not a uni prof, you're really, really, out of luck and that's just the simple facts.

So what the heck do you do? Just give up on it and submit to 'zines like they were saying below? Become a teacher and play the game yourself? Try to start your own commercial magazine? Start picketing the media? Make a petition? Launch a blog? Write letters to the Times? Keep writing, letting it all pile up? Self-publish all your books on LuLu? Scream to anyone who'll listen? Try to make a cultural revolution? Or give up, stop writing, bury the keyboard, forget you ever had a thing to say ...

Which way do you go, what to do. What are the options. What is going to change this status quo that we've got going. Who wants to do what. That's what I would like to know.

Anonymous said...

consider becoming a farmhand or a dentist.

Anonymous said...

more lol catz plz!!!!!!1!!!!11