108 fountains
01-04-2020, 01:33 AM
I’m curious to know what luck people here have had in trying to get their writing published. I’ve written 27 short stories and had one published (in the Birmingham Arts Journal). But that was more than three years ago, and I’ve been unsuccessful since then. I read a lot of literary journals (Missouri Review, Nimrod Journal, Boulevard, Bellingham Review, Virginia Review, Narrative Magazine, Ploughshares, Crazy Horse, New Letters, Nimrod, Boston Review, Cincinnati Review, and more), and my stuff is as good as, if not better than, much of what gets published there. (Yeah, yeah, I know – we all think that.)
What bugs me is that so much of the stuff I see that does get published is, in my opinion, pretty awful. Ninety-five percent of the short stories I see are all about dysfunctional families – the main characters are either alcoholic fathers, drug-addicted mothers, suicidal daughters, sons unable to cope with their homosexuality, or some combination of the above. There is rarely a discernable plot; most of the action takes place in the mind of whichever of the above is the protagonist of the story, feeling sorry for themselves and for the misery they inflict on other family members. Humor is non-existent in published stories – it appears to me that the more depressing and funereal a story is, the more likely it is to be published.
And the writing itself that I see in published stories is not that great. Half of the stories begin with pronouns – “he,” “she,” “they” – it’s not until the third or fourth paragraph that the reader figures out who the characters are. The settings are far too often academic, with the main character either a college professor or a student. Aren’t good writers supposed to go out and experience life outside of their classrooms? The writing styles, perhaps in an attempt to be contemporary, are much too informal, even sloppy, in my opinion. Did I mention that the concept of plot seems to be completely lacking? Most of the time, when I finish a story, my reaction is “Huh?”
At the back of these literary magazines usually can be found a three- or four-line biography of the author. It appears that they all have MFAs in Creative writing or some related field. Well, if this is the way writing is being taught these days, I prefer to go back to the days of Hardy and Dickens, O.Henry, Austen, Steinbeck and Cather.
Well, that’s it. I’d be curious to hear if any of you feel the same or if I have just become a bitter, ranting old man.
What bugs me is that so much of the stuff I see that does get published is, in my opinion, pretty awful. Ninety-five percent of the short stories I see are all about dysfunctional families – the main characters are either alcoholic fathers, drug-addicted mothers, suicidal daughters, sons unable to cope with their homosexuality, or some combination of the above. There is rarely a discernable plot; most of the action takes place in the mind of whichever of the above is the protagonist of the story, feeling sorry for themselves and for the misery they inflict on other family members. Humor is non-existent in published stories – it appears to me that the more depressing and funereal a story is, the more likely it is to be published.
And the writing itself that I see in published stories is not that great. Half of the stories begin with pronouns – “he,” “she,” “they” – it’s not until the third or fourth paragraph that the reader figures out who the characters are. The settings are far too often academic, with the main character either a college professor or a student. Aren’t good writers supposed to go out and experience life outside of their classrooms? The writing styles, perhaps in an attempt to be contemporary, are much too informal, even sloppy, in my opinion. Did I mention that the concept of plot seems to be completely lacking? Most of the time, when I finish a story, my reaction is “Huh?”
At the back of these literary magazines usually can be found a three- or four-line biography of the author. It appears that they all have MFAs in Creative writing or some related field. Well, if this is the way writing is being taught these days, I prefer to go back to the days of Hardy and Dickens, O.Henry, Austen, Steinbeck and Cather.
Well, that’s it. I’d be curious to hear if any of you feel the same or if I have just become a bitter, ranting old man.