Kendall Dunkelberg

Why I Signed a Book Contract

Last week, I posted announcements on social media about my new book deal with Fernwood Press to publish Tree Fall with Birdsong in May of 2025. Today, I wanted to revisit that process, especially in light of my post from several years ago, “Why I Bailed on a Book Deal.” That was four and a half years ago, and though a lot has changed including the title, the order, and a whole new section of poems, this is essentially the same manuscript. So you might ask, whether I am glad that I waited.

Naturally, I had hoped to find a publisher sooner than I did, and I had several near misses: publishers who wrote encouraging rejections but whose lists were too backed up to take on another project or who felt my manuscript wasn’t quite the right fit for them. I understood that, and especially after COVID, I knew there was a significant backlog in publishing. So I wasn’t surprised that it was taking awhile to find a home for the manuscript, and I am very pleased with the home that it did find. More on that in a moment, but first, let me recap why I didn’t take that initial offer.

It all had to do with what I learned about the contract that publisher was willing to give. Their policies on royalties seemed off to me, and they required a high number of pre-sales before they would go to press, which was a concern. I also had trouble finding their books at stores other than Amazon or their own website, and it seemed like they relied on the author to do most of the selling without giving the author a commensurate proportion of the revenue. There were enough questions and issues that I decided to say no, feeling I could do better somewhere else, and I am glad I did.

Fernwood is very clear that they offer a traditional book contract, they do not require presales (which is not to say that I won’t try to get as many as I can; I just don’t want publication to be delayed until I reach a certain threshold), and they pay royalties based on the retail price of the book. I don’t expect my royalty income to be huge, but I do like an arrangement where the publisher is making an investment in the author and in book sales.

More than any of that, though, I had a good feeling about Fernwood from the beginning. We had good initial email correspondence, then when their self-imposed deadline for responding had passed, they responded to my query by setting up an appointment to discuss the book. I did have to wait a couple of months for that appointment to arrive — I don’t know why, and I didn’t ask — as I told them at the time, the timing worked out well for me, too.

When we talked, I got the sense that they understood my collection and respected what I’m trying to do in it. We had a fairly wide-ranging discussion and got into some of the practical realities of publishing it. Then they sent a contract, which they were willing to negotiate. I had done some research at the Authors Guild and had a few suggestions about language to include, including some language about AI use for subsidiary rights and a clause about what would happen if the company went bankrupt. They didn’t accept all of my suggestions, but they did answer my questions, and we arrived at a contract that meets my needs. They even said that they may use it as a model for new contracts going forward.

My takeaways from this experience are that it is worth it to wait. Finding a publisher you will be happy working with, one that is receptive to your work and willing to work with you, is much more important than publishing sooner. You never know, things might have turned out okay if I had taken that first contract, but I also might have been disappointed. Now I feel confident that I am working with a press who will get behind me, and that makes all the difference.

Rejection Letters: A Blast from the Past

This morning, I did a little unanticipated research, looking back through some files searching for some documents. This led me to a musty manila folder containing rejection letters from the publishers I sent Landscapes and Architectures, my first book manuscript to This was back in the days before most publishers had an internet presence. There was email by then, but not everyone used it, and my initial queries, including full manuscripts, were sent by USPS. I saved most of the responses I received, and there was one that stood out as I flipped through the folder.

It was handwritten on a full sheet of typing paper in beautiful flowing script, from Janet Pellam, former editor at Pine Press. In the letter, she kindly explained why she was no longer at the press and that she had moved to Montana with a new husband. She opened a window into their lives in the mountains, and she said she enjoyed my poems and made some comparisons to poets I love. It wasn’t completely clear whether she was comparing her own poems or mine to these more famous poets of a previous generation, but did that really matter? She had left the life of editing behind, but was still writing, and she wanted to know where she was still listed as editor of the press. After such a lovely, almost chatty, letter, I hope that I did reply and tell her where I got her contact information: probably from Poet’s Marketplace or the Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses, since they were my bibles in those days.

I also glanced through a folder of acceptance letters from magazines, including one equally nice, full page letter from Bitter Oleander, accepting some translations. There were many like this, from a time when editors had time to actually engage in correspondence and exchange news of their lives, not just the practical realities of putting a journal together. And I still have a file of form letters with handwritten responses, however brief, to give me hope, as well as another with just the form letters, though I remember I stopped adding to that one after awhile. It would be much thicker if I hadn’t done that.

It is a good reminder, though, as I put together Issue 15 of Poetry South and as I get ready to announce some more good news: both that I’ve been at this for quite awhile (over 30 years) and that no matter how much things change, some aspects always stay the same. I’ve been having some more good correspondence with writers and publishers lately, now over email and not on paper. It feels more ephemeral that way, but the communication is the same, while the time it takes to send has decreased phenomenally.

More soon, when my news is final…

Homemade Pizza Crust

My niece wrote to ask for my pizza crust recipe and I thought I would point her to my blog, but then I noticed I’ve written about pizza, but I haven’t really written about the crust. The basic recipe came from my mom, who probably saw it in a magazine somewhere in the 1970’s. I’ve adapted it over the years, but it’s essentially so easy that it’s hardly a recipe.

The basic recipe for 1 large pizza started with 1 cup of water. I’ve adjusted that over the years depending on how many people I need to serve and how big our appetites or pizza stones are. Roughly speaking, start with 1 cup of water and about a table spoon of yeast for the basic recipe. That called for sugar, but I started leaving it out when I learned the original Italian pizza probably didn’t have any.

Dissolve the yeast a bit, then add a little flour, enough to make a wet mixture the consistency of mud. Essentially, you just want some flour in the water to buffer the yeast when you add salt. Stir the flour a bit to mix well, then add a dash or two of salt and a tablespoon or so of oil (more or less depending on how many people you need to serve). Many pizza crust recipes have quite a bit of oil, so there’s nothing wrong with being a little liberal with it at this stage, but a tablespoon or so for one cup of water is probably about right. Add more flour until you get a soft dough. Pizza dough is very forgiving, so don’t worry if you get a little too much flour when you first start making it. Next time you might try for less. You just don’t want the dough to be so wet it’s sticky, but you don’t need to get it too firm either.

When adding flour, I usually start with white flour and then add whole wheat so that the mixture is about half and half. If I want a low-carb pizza crust, then I’ll use all whole wheat, which is surprising good. You just want to keep the dough pretty wet, since the whole wheat flour will soak up the moisture as it rises. It makes a thin, hearty crust. All white flour works well, too, and I’ve done that if I don’t have whole wheat, but we prefer a heartier pizza crust with at least some whole wheat flour. Bread flour is fine, as is pastry flour. I’ve even used Grano Arso (burnt grain flour) when our son gave me some as a present, and that was quite tasty and very dark. But a basic white and whole wheat blend is our go-to pizza crust.

Knead the flour for a bit on the counter once it holds together when mixing it in the bowl. Scrape out your bowl and knead in all the scrapings along with a little additional flour to get the consistency you want. Then pour a little more olive oil in the bowl, just a teaspoon or so, and roll the ball of dough around in the bowl to coat it.

Let the dough rise at least half an hour. Many recipes call for a longer rise, so it’s okay to let it sit for a few hours, even over night in the refrigerator. I often let it rise for an hour to an hour and a half. If I’m going to let it rise longer than that, I will cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a wet towel, though I don’t bother with that anymore if it will be a short rise.

That’s it. When you’re ready to put the dough on your pan or stone, just sprinkle a little corn meal on the surface and then press the dough out to cover. Before I put it on the stone I usually spread the dough out a bit by holding one edge and letting the dough dangle in the air, then moving around the dough ball until it’s more like a frisbee. I don’t toss the dough and spin it the way the do in some pizza restaurants, but it’s basically the same principle. It helps to have it somewhat disk shaped before spreading on the pan by pressing on the dough and moving the edges further out. Press from the center out until the center gets pretty thin, then work on getting the edges to the edge of the stone or pan. That’s hard to explain, but you’ll get the hang of it by trial and error. We have round pizza stones, but if you don’t have that, it’s fine to press it out on a rectangular baking sheet. It takes a little work to get the dough into the corners, but that just takes patience.

I bake my pizza at 425 degrees for 20 minutes or until done. Some recipes call for an even hotter oven. Some people use a pizza peel to put the crust on a heated stone, but I’ve found it works as well and is easier to start with a room temperature stone and put the pizza dough directly on it, then put the toppings on the pizza and put it all in the oven. Maybe that’s because I don’t have a peel and I always want to use every inch of pizza stone, so getting the fully made pizza on a hot stone just seems too complicated to me. I still end up with a light and crispy crust, depending on how much dough I make and how thick it ends up.

Returning to the Statement of Purpose

Over the years, I’ve written quite a bit about how to write your statement of purpose for a low-res MFA program. That advice is still valid, but I felt it was time to return to it again and to update it somewhat. I’m curious about the things most applicants leave out of their statement, and maybe I’m thinking about it especially in the post-pandemic reality.

I see letters that describe the writer’s style fairly well, and ones that name authors they’ve read or that they admire. I even see letters that discuss prior publications or writing workshops or retreats that the applicant has gone to. All those are great. And even though I see a lot of letters that begin with how much the applicant loves writing (I assume you do if you’re applying to a program), I usually forgive that, at least as long as it sounds authentic and reveals something specific about the applicant that is at least a little intriguing.

The main thing that I look for in a letter and rarely find, though, is a discussion of how the applicant is going to make it work to be in a low-residency program and afford to put food on their table and pay for tuition.

This has always been a concern, but it’s an even greater one now. We see more applicants apply to our program, get accepted, and then get cold feet. I get it, times are still hard for many, or maybe you got a better job but now have to spend more time at work and don’t feel you have time for school. We work with people and suggest ways they can make it work, even offering a deferment for up to a year. That has helped several students out, but it doesn’t always solve the main issues.

I want to know that an applicant is committed to our program (not just to writing, though that’s good, too) and I want to know that you’re realistic about what it will take to complete a degree. I want to know more than how much you want that MFA degree and why, but also that you are willing to do the hard work to improve your writing, while also doing the hard work of staying alive and managing your other obligations. I don’t need to know everything about your personal life in your letter, but it does help to shed some light on that as you persuade me that you’re someone worth taking a risk on because you will do what it takes to complete the program. That won’t be the main point to your statement, but if you can slip it in, I will notice.

High Fees for Authors (and Justices)?

This post is in response to the flurry of supposed controversy surrounding Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s book appearances and sales according to the Associated Press. Or as Margaret McMullen questioned in the Washington Post, was it a bribe to invite a justice to the Mississippi Book Festival to speak, when she refused payment and gave a great presentation being very present for all the children who came to hear her? Was it a bribe if the justice engaged with the kids in the room and earnestly asked them questions?

All questions of the ethics Supreme Court Justices earning outside income aside, the AP article is rather quaint in its understanding of how celebrity authors on book tour operate. Justice Sotomayor sounds positively wonderful to work with, though her story does illuminate a problem in the book industry. The AP article bristles at the fact that an author on book tour might suggest (almost require) that a venue make a large book order for their appearance. The reality is that this is far too common for celebrity authors.

By celebrity authors, I mean both excellent writers who have won major awards for their books and have therefore reached the highest echelons of literary stardom and writers who are politicians or celebrities in their own right and whose fame grants them a similar status. Much of the outrage in the AP article should not be directed at the Justice, but at an industry that not only allows this star system, but promotes it.

As someone who organizes a literary event, the Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium, I have long known that there are two types of authors: those I can afford and those who are completely out of my league. In recent years, the divide between these two types of authors has grown ever wider. Recently, I reached out to a relatively well-known writer to see which group he would fall in. I had some grant money, so I thought it might be possible to bring him to campus, though I expected it to be a long shot. I was not surprised when the initial response to my invitation was that the famous author’s usual speaking fee was at least $30,000 — they might be willing to come down a bit if I could guarantee a bulk book order. I was working with a local group, so I was able to suggest a sizable number of books we could buy. Judging from the AP article and the fact that this author ultimately turned us down, that number wasn’t high enough.

I tell this story not to shame this author who will remain unnamed, but to point out that asking for a large book buy is not at all uncommon, especially when the speaker is willing to come for a smaller fee (or in the case of Justice Sotomayor, possibly none). Her publisher wants to sell books. Her publicist and/or speaker’s bureau wants to sell books. Yes, the Justice earns royalties on those books, though only if they sell enough copies to earn back the advance. And large universities or other organizations with large enough coffers are willing to pay out large honoraria and/or purchase large quantities of books in order to bring in a celebrity.

There remain the questions of whether a Justice’s staff should be involved in this side-business and whether a justice or other office-holder should be able to make money on the side this way. Those questions may be legitimate, though they are not nearly as scandalous as the questions about other justices who have received lavish gifts from billionaires that have gone unreported.

The fact of the matter is that the way celebrity authors operate may be outrageous. The fact that Justice Sotomayor participates in that business is hardly surprising, though. Book publishers, publicists, speaker’s bureaus, all profit from book sales and/or their cut of an author’s speaking fees. There is pressure on authors to sell as many books as possible and to earn money for their agents. Usually the author isn’t part of those negotiations, but only signs off on a lucrative contract that the publicist or speaker’s bureau has arranged. You can’t really blame a writer for taking advantage of a system and profiting from the fame they’ve finally achieved.

Nonetheless, I am more sympathetic to the 90% of authors (maybe more) who labor in the trenches, whose books sell modest amounts, and who are very glad to come to my event for what I consider a generous honorarium to speak for forty minutes and be entertained for the rest of the weekend. These authors are entirely gracious. They engage with the audience and with each other, and there is not such a great divide between the top draws and the lesser-known writers with a debut novel or poetry collection. As a general rule, I’m happy to leave the celebrity authors to their world of glitz and exorbitant fees. That may be sour grapes, but I’ll take a writer who is willing to appear for a reasonable honorarium over a prima donna any day. That includes the vast majority of writers, so I have no dearth of excellent books to choose from.

Fun Again With ATT

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve written a post about my router woes — I guess that says ATT is getting better! And today’s issue was resolved relatively quickly, leaving me a fairly happy camper, but I thought I’d tell you about it anyway. This is for those who like to follow that saga or who get help from my experience.

Let’s start at the beginning. This weekend, our ATT UVerse Broadband modem decided to flake out. Somehow, it reverted to factory settings all on its own. I woke up on Sunday, unable to connect to anything and unable to get on wifi with our main network. I was able to login on our extended network, but it couldn’t get online, so I knew something was up. Checking my wifi networks revealed that our main network wasn’t listed, but there was a similar ATT network that had four bars. A quick check of the router itself revealed that all was as I suspected, the router listed this new network, but the installer had used the name of our previous network when we got this replacement a few years back.

That was a quick fix. I just had to login to the new router with the new network and its default password, then change all of our devices over to that network, including the extender, and update the name and password on all devices for the extended network. It took awhile, but wasn’t stressful at all.

At the time, I noticed that the Phone light on the router wasn’t lit, but that didn’t bother me much. I figured it would resolve on its own, and I was too busy changing passwords and logging all my devices onto the new network. All was fine until today, when I needed to make a phone call. (Yes, I could have just used my cell phone, but I hate to do that, and I hate to know that something’s broken and not try to fix it, so I dove down the rabbit hole.)

My first step was to try to restart the phone line, since I’ve done that. I went to the status address for my router (usually printed on the router, but I have it bookmarked: 192.168.1.254). There I could see that the Voice service had an error, and I attempted a restart. Of course, the Access Code had changed when the modem reset to factory settings, so I had to look that up on the back of the modem, too. It’s a long and complicated string of letters and symbols, so it’s not easy to copy down, but I did. I attempted to restart the Voice service with no luck, then restarted the modem, also with no luck, and eventually went online to try ATT Support.

If you’ve ever tried ATT’s Support chat, you know how frustrating it can be. Very frustrating. But it’s still a hundred times better than the hell it used to be, so I didn’t lose patience. I attempted to answer its questions about my problem, even though they didn’t make sense in terms of what I was experiencing. I kept getting answers that weren’t helpful. Finally, I typed “operator” and that got me to a live person and not an automated chatbot. The first person had to transfer me to the right department, and then I got connected with “Jeniffer,” who was able to help me out.

I explained what had been happening, and in the process, I realized that Phone 1 said “Not Subscribed,” the same as it said for Phone 2. We only have one line, so Phone 1 should have shown our phone number. I told her this, went through a few more troubleshooting steps like telling her about the lights on the router, and eventually she was able to correct the issue remotely. My phone got a dial tone, and I was able to make a call.

When I asked what had happened, she only said that my phone service hadn’t been syncing properly, and she had corrected the issue. She had no explanation for why the modem reverted to factory settings or why that might cause the voice line syncing issues, which I assume it did. Oh well, at least it is working for now, and if I have problems again, I’ll be sure to type “operator” sooner if I end up on ATT Support chat!

What are your rights? (FNASR)

Over the weekend, I had an interesting email from a reader, Bill Harrison, who had a question about whether to consider a work published if the magazine it was published in had gone belly up. He said he was in that situation and wondered what to do. I replied, but then I thought I might expand on that answer and post about it here, since it’s a very good question.

Here’s what I told Bill: Strictly speaking, if the magazine did publish your piece but has now gone defunct, then you should not submit that piece to magazines that request first serial rights. There are quite a few magazines that consider reprints, though, so I would consider sending there and indicating where the piece was first published. Anthologies are also a good bet for reprints, and of course, a collection that you publish will usually contain a number of pieces that have been published elsewhere, so there is still life for the piece in question. You could also publish it on your own website or blog.

If the magazine accepted your work but did not publish it, then you should feel free to submit it as an unpublished piece to any magazine. It is probably best to verify the publication’s status before submitting elsewhere, just to be on the safe side.

Once I had a poem published at an online journal that ceased publication after a year or so (as I recall). For a while, the website was just gone, then someone put up an archive of the magazine that included some poems, but only a listing of mine. Now that seems to be gone again, but I still consider the poem published. (I decided to post it on Instagram since I couldn’t publish it elsewhere.) Another poem was published in a magazine that soon stopped publishing, yet the website it was on remained online for several years. Eventually that went away, but by that point, I had published the poem in my second book (with an acknowledgement of the original publication). Poems published in print journals are also not very accessible after the initial publication, but they are still published. I consider journal publication to be fleeting and book publication to be more permanent, though even books go out of print.

The longer answer: Why I say that my work (and Bill’s work if it actually made it to publication) should still be viewed as published comes down to the rights you sell (maybe for a sample copy) when you publish with a journal. Those are called First North American Serial Rights or sometimes just First Serial Rights. Poets and Writers has a good explanation of the basic kinds of rights authors work with. Most print journals will request First North American Serial Rights (FNASR) when they publish your work because they want to be the first place to publish the work in their market, which is North America (unless you’re publishing in Europe, Asia, Africa, or South America, of course). First Serial Rights is a broader term, and is more typical of online journals whose market is global.

Once you publish one place for even one day, legally, you can no longer offer anyone else First Serial Rights. You could publish a piece in Europe that had only been published in North America, but you can’t publish for the first time in North America (or anywhere, in the case of First Serial Rights) again. That may be sad when a publisher no longer exists, but it is what it is.

One tricky question is about self-publishing your work online. If you post your work to your blog or to social media, especially if the site is public, then most magazines will consider it published. You’ve essentially used your First Serial Rights yourself. True, it hasn’t been published by someone else and they haven’t marketed it or generated readership for you, but your work has been made publicly available by you, so the value of that work is reduced compared to First Serial publication. This is why you usually hear the advice not to post your work publicly if you want to publish it in journals. Some journals have said they will still accept work as unpublished if it was posted to a personal website and then taken down before it is submitted to a magazine. Other journals discourage that, though realistically, it would be hard to check. In many ways, we are on our honor to faithfully report prior publication of any kind.

Also, First Serial Rights or First North American Serial Rights generally disallow to prior publication to a wide audience — North America or the world — so exceptions are usually allowed for small, private publications like a print college magazine or a club newsletter where circulation is limited (such as to an organization) and the work has not been made more publicly available (such as online). Some magazines do specify that college magazines are considered prior publication; if they don’t and if the audience was truly limited, then you are pretty safe in still calling your work unpublished for the purposes of FSR or FNASR.

What is publication, then? In Bill’s case, if his piece was accepted by the magazine, but the magazine never went to press or even if the magazine was printed but never distributed, then he would have a good case to make that his work had not been published. If it was posted online, then his piece has been published. If the magazine had been printed and sent to subscribers, then his piece has been published, but only in North America and he could still offer First Serial Rights in other continents potentially.

Book publication is different than serial (magazine or journal) publication, but legally, it supersedes it. That means that you can publish something in a book that has been published in a magazine, but once it’s been published in a book or anthology, you can no longer offer First Serial Rights because those imply first publication of any kind.

Generally, publication refers to publication in print — an audio version of the same piece would not be considered published, nor would a video recording of a reading in which you read the piece in question. The publication of a fragment of a piece would not be considered prior publication of the whole piece. So you see, there are some gray areas, even though in general the answer to whether a piece has been published is pretty clear.

Fortunately, for Bill and for others in his situation, there are magazines and other publications such as anthologies that ask for Reprint Rights. In that case, you are more than welcome to send them work that has been published elsewhere already. And book publication of a collection usually involves several pieces that have been published elsewhere—look at the Acknowledgements section, where the first publications ought to be listed.

There is life after first publication for any work you write. It is best to know what rights you are selling (or giving away) when you publish, and what that might mean for the life of your work in the future. Most book publishers want to see some prior publication of works in the book for a collection or of other works for books like novels or memoirs. It is best to be up front and honest about your publication history. Don’t hide publications that might be less impressive than you’d like, and don’t embellish the publications that you have. Use your knowledge of the copyright system of rights to find the best publishing opportunities for you and your work, whether that is for the first publication or reprint publications.

How Long for Submissions?

This weekend, Becky Tuch posted a question on her LitMag News Substack looking for comments on what it means when a submission is out at a magazine for a longer period of time. I responded with my experience as editor of Poetry South and as a long-time submitter to magazines. I don’t want to reiterate that comement here, but the upshot of the comments seems to be that there’s no way to tell what it means if your submission has been at a magazine for a long, long time. It might be good news (they like it and are still considering it) or it might be bad news (they don’t love it but haven’t sent submissions back yet). No one likes being in limbo, but that’s the reality of submitting to literary magazines.

What we can gather from the comments seems to be that there are so many different magazines, each with their own review process, that no general rules apply to a case like this. Some magazines respond quickly, and some don’t. Writers can consult sites like Duotrope, ChillSubs, or The Submission Grinder to get some insights on the practices of individual magazines, but even then, the sample this data relies on is limited to the users of each platform who actually report their submissions (and the accuracy of those reports). There’s still a lot of guesswork.

Writers can also rely on magazines to tell them, via their websites, what their typical reading period looks like, so they have a more realistic idea of response times. At Poetry South, for instance, we try to indicate that from July through January our response time will likely be very slow. We’re happy to let you submit, but we are busy with production. So a response in six months or even more is not uncommon. But in January, we try to catch up, bringing our response time closer to 1-3 months. If you submit in July, we will try to respond in 1-2 months.

But when are your odds better? When we read that big batch of submissions, starting in January, we are actively looking for good work to fill the magazine. We are selective, since we know we’ll have six more months of submissions, but we also are excited about the good work we find that we know we want to use. We usually accept quite a few pieces right away, mark quite a few more as “maybes,” and keep reading. After working through a month or two of submissions, we’ll likely go back through those “maybes” and accept some more. We’ll also probably return some of them that don’t generate quite as much excitement the second or third time around. And we may save a few for the next round of selections, as we continue to read in the next month’s submissions, etc. We don’t wait until the bitter end to make final decisions, but we also don’t make all decisions on a first read.

If you know our reading habits, then you can know that if you submitted in July and it took six months for a response, this is likely because we didn’t start reading right away. If you submit in January and it takes more than three months, we held onto your work, and someone liked it. Once we get caught up, our typical response time is 1-2 months. If we held onto it longer than that, we like what we see, but we may need to weigh it against other poems that we also like and take a little more time with our decision.

Does every magazine operate like that? Obviously not. But if you research a magazine to see what their typical response time is and what their reading schedule looks like, then you can have a better sense of how to interpret the response you ultimately get. In the end, your submission will either be accepted or it won’t be. The magazine will send you a response, and from that you can judge whether they were interested or whether they are simply behind in their submissions.

I’ve stopped sending to magazines who took forever (over a year) to reply and still returned my submission without a personal note. I’ve submitted again to others whose response indicated they had been very interested in my work. If I feel a magazine is disorganized and doesn’t communicate well about submissions, they may not be worth my time. If I feel a magazine is overwhelmed with more submissions than anyone could possibly handle, I am sympathetic, but I might still decide they’re not worth my time. If it’s a top-tier magazine, though, I might decide it’s worth it if I want to be in that world.

The advice to forget about pending submissions (as long as you keep good records) is probably wise. Tracking your submissions also means occasionally checking to see which have been under consideration for a long, long time. A query might be worthwhile, though Submittable and other platforms at least can show you if your submission is “In Progress.” I wait to query longer if I know the submission hasn’t been lost, and I rarely withdraw a submission unless it gets picked up somewhere else. Because you never know. But I’m not surprised or even too upset when those finally come back to me. As long as I can simultaneously submit the same piece elsehere, it doesn’t hurt me to let a magazine consider my work for as long as they need.

Want to know what that response letter means? You might look it up on the Rejection Wiki to see whether it was a form rejection letter or a more personalized one. Not all magazines are listed here, and not all form letters may be up to date, but it is a good place to start, if you really want to go down that rabbit hole.

My advice is not to dwell too much on returned submissions, but to pay attention when you get a personalized letter so you can submit again soon. Keep your work in circulation at a number of journals, and try to be patient until it comes back to you. Keep track of the magazines that take a long time or that have quick response times, and use that when deciding where and when to submit. But don’t take the response you get too personally. Almost all magazines get thousands of submissions that they can’t accept, and they return far more good work than they can use. That’s just the reality of submitting these days (and it wasn’t ever a lot better). The ease of submitting (and writers’ reliance on simultaneous submissions) means there are a lot more submissions in everyone’s slush pile. But that also means more writers have access to literary magazines, and there’s some really great work being published.

Wordle Strategy Upate

Some time ago, I wrote a post, just for fun, about My Wordle Strategy. At the time, my best streak was 45 in English, and I was doing a Dutch version, called Woordle, and Dordle, plus Quordle in English and Dutch. Today, my streak at the New York Times Wordle has reached 88, and I’ve topped 100 for my Dutch streak. Mostly, this means that I’m pretty consistent to play every day, but it also means I’ve developed some strategies.

It’s not rocket science, and I’m not claiming to be a genius at it or anything, but I do try to think ahead. Take today’s Wordle for instance. To avoid any spoilers, I won’t give away the words I used, but let’s just say that after three tries I had all but one letter correct and in the correct spot. That meant I had three more tries. I could have guessed the correct word on the next try, but after exaining all the letters I had left, I identified four possible words that used one of those letters in the blank spot. Obviously, I had three guesses left, so there was still a chance I could guess wrong each of those times.

So instead of trying to guess the word on the fourth try, I found a word that had three of the letters I had identified. Since I was looking for a consonant, I didn’t care whether the vowel in this word was even in the correct word (it wasn’t). I even allowed myself to use a double-letter combination (which I did) in order to make a valid word with three of the consonants I needed. One of those was in the correct word, but in the wrong place in my guess. But since I knew where that letter needed to go, I was able to guess the correct word on the fifth try. If none of the letters of my fourth try were in the correct word, I would have still had two more guesses — the fourth letter I had identified or possibly a word using a letter I hadn’t thought of.

Sometimes I intentionally guess wrong, just so I can use more letters that I think might be in the right answer. Sometimes I guess wrong so I can find a vowel or rule out letter combinations that might work. I try to think ahead and think in terms of letters, rather than just guessing words because often there are more good guesses than you have turns. It’s a good mental exercise, but ultimately, it’s just a game and it ought to be fun. Keeping a streak going is part of the challenge, but I know that eventually I won’t be able to play the game some day or I will mess up and break my streak, and then I can start all over again.