In our continuing mission to demystify the literary journal reading process, I bring you Part 2: What Am I Crazy or Something? Last time I began to explain that sheer brilliance alone is not enought to get you into the issue, and I want to elaborate on that.

First of all, it's important that you know that when we send you our slick little rejection slip wishing you the best of luck placing your story elsewhere, we probably mean it. We simply can't publish all the good stuff we get, and the longer it takes for you to hear from us, the longer it took us to make the final decision not to include your piece. If we take the time to write you a note, we probably would like to see more from you.

So, what do I look for as a fiction editor, once a story makes it throught the editorial assistants? Well, the first think I do is check to see if the E.A.'s had any notes. Generally this is just a "Hey, this one is good" post-it. Other times the note is more detailed, for instance: "Hey, Mark. Please ignore the fact that this person is obviously mentally unbalanced and has no idea how to punctuate. It's a good story." That one would probably doom a story, but that's why God invented fake examples.

Eventually, after reading through the thirty or so stand-out submissions, I'll have a couple of favorites, and if fate has been merciful, there is one in particular that I feel we "need" to publish. But rememeber these are not merely the "best." Maybe there could be some objective criteria, but I got my degree in English, and we frown on that sort of thing.

So I have to consider 1.) What kind of tone are we setting for the magazine, and this issue in particular. We are not nearly as popular or well-known as a Ploughshares or Paris Review, so generally we are looking for things that those magazines would not publish, maybe quirkier stories, maybe stories with more unusual subject matter. Which is not to say we wouldn't publish a killer story that we snagged before the Ploughshares people got their paws on it, just that overall, we are trying to strike a different tone.

2.) This is also a tone thing: How will this story work with the other pieces in this particular issue? Believe it or not, we think about consistency and overall design. The new issue (18.1) has a piece of strong, genre-bending metafiction, a quirky, funny second-person narrative, and two short-shorts, one a faux book review, and the other a beautiful piece of hallucination by Susannah Breslin. It all, in my mind, works together, and that is by design.

3.) Space. Yeah, this should probably be number one. Space is a big consideration. We get our estimates from the printer before-hand, and we know in advance how many pages we have to fill. Your brilliant, heart-breaking epic is 70 pages long? Sorry, sir or madam, best of luck placing your monstrosity elsewhere. Here at the Syc, and at a lot of other university journals, we can't go over budget because there is virtually no budget to speak of. What I am charged with then, is providing a range of stories to EIC Silverman, who will talk more on the blog about how she puts the final product together.

If, at any point in the process, your wonderful story didn't make the cut, you will probably get the same rejection slip as everybody else. Hopefully you understand a little bit about how the process works, and have already mailed your story to several different places.

That's why we take simultaneous submissions: we are writers as well, and understand what having your work out in the world means, and what a hassle it can be to wait for journals to get back to you. If we liked your story a lot, we'll try to let you know, but there isn't always that kind of spare time, particularly as we approach the print deadline.

So, this should shed some light on things for you. Stay tuned for EIC Silverman to take over and go through her thoughts on putting the final magazine together. It's interesting from a design standpoint, as well as a literary one.

Signing off.