As Mehdi noted, the reading period is closed, and our spring content has been decided. All the acceptance letters and rejection slips have been sent, so now we're in the process of laying out and copy editing the magazine. I think the issue will be out around early July, and the reading period will open again August 1 with a nearly new staff.

I think we've got our finalists for the Wabash prize sent off to Richard Bausch, so the next deadline is March 31, the end of our reading period. I'm not sure how things are going with the poetry and nonfiction, but because of the fiction prize and the strength of our fiction slush pile, we should have all our fiction acceptances in the first week of April, which means that any submissions coming in after this week will most likely be returned unread. If you submitted before mid-February and haven't heard from us yet (and are sure you included a SASE), your story is in the strong maybe pile, and we'll get back to you in the next two or three weeks.

I finally made it back to the office and am starting to tackle the tall stack of fiction submissions that have come in over the past few weeks. I and the editorial assistants will be reading stories constantly for the next three months in the order that they came in. If you're considering submitting a story for issue 20.2, our guidelines are here. Additional suggestions for fiction submissions are here.

The Wabash Prize Fiction Contest is now open. We'll be accepting submissions between now and March 15, and you can read about guidelines here. I would encourage any submitters to strongly consider the contest because what I'm learning as fiction editor is that for really good stories (and we get a lot of them), it's almost a lottery as to who is going to buy what (based on personal taste and general magazine aesthetic). For really good stories, then, contests are the way to go because they pay off big. The Wabash Prize pays $1000 to the winner in addition to publication, and usually one or more honorable mentions will also be accepted for publication. Finally, while we do charge a reading fee for each entry, you can submit as many stories to the contest as you want (for regular submissions, we ask that you send only one story at a time).

We've slowed down our blogging lately partly because we're graduate students in the thick of finals and partly because we've been working to get issue 20.1 together. We're in the process of copy editing the issue, so all fiction submissions are now being considered for issue 20.2. I'm going to be traveling for the holidays, so if you haven't heard from me in the next week, your story is on my desk ready to be read first thing in the beginning of January. In general, stories submitted in November have gone through the editorial assistants and are on my desk for this week. Stories submitted so far in December are logged and ready to go to the assistants in early January.

Issue 20.1 has come together nicely and should be available in time for the AWP conference at the end of January. As Mehdi noted, Richard Bausch has agreed to judge our fiction contest in the spring. Guidelines are posted on the "Wabash Prizes" link to the right, so we are accepting submissions between now and March 15. Entry fees are $10, and the prize is $1000. All contest submissions are considered for issue 20.2.

As a side note, I think it'd be an interesting study of magazines with contests what the odds are of publication compared to general submissions. We tend to get more general submissions than contest entries, and for issue 20.1 I think we accepted less than 1% of stories, but I don't know what percentage of contest entries we generally publish. Also, to muddle it up, you'd have to consider that since contestants are paying to have their stories read, those stories on the whole might be more polished than the average general submission.

I'm sure this symptom is the same for most journals, but it is a little depressing to open the spreadsheet and see you have more writers submitting than readers subscribing.  On one hand, it has to be that way.  If you have a few stories to shop around, and you simultaneously submit to three or four places at a clip, you need a list of thirty or so magazines, more than you have time to read and more than you can afford.  But on the other hand, it seems a little selfish to expect something from thirty journals without reading a few, so I usually try to keep a subscription to three or four places, rotating each year.

Holidays are approaching, and subscriptions to literary magazines make great gift ideas.  If you're a writer, you're probably hard to shop for.  You might not have time for the latest electronic doohicky or space for any more clutter.  All you really want is books and money, but, really, books are out because you need to be in charge of your own reading, and most of your friends and relatives won't be satisfied just giving you money.  Asking for literary journals is perfect because they're affordable, and you can read them in short bursts, can tell your parents, "Yeah, I just read this great essay here or poem there," and you won't have to feel guilty because you still haven't made time for Middlemarch or The Executioner's Song or whatever monster they gave you eleven months ago.

Sycamore Review is neat and trim and affordable.  Subscriptions are $14 a year, which is less than the cost of most CDs, less than a steak dinner at Applebee's, and you'll have great literature on your shelf forever.  Our winter issue is coming together, and I can assure you that something in it will interest you.  So when your cousin Sue or your uncle Harry asks you what you'd like for the holidays, point them our way.

When he was fiction editor, Mark Leahy wrote a lot about where a story goes when it arrives in the office (here and here), and I'd like to add some observations of my own, now that we're approaching the wire for our next issue and I'm sending out more rejections than I care to think about. I haven't discussed this with our nonfiction and poetry editors, but here's the life of a typical fiction submission: a story takes a few days for the postal service to deliver it to our office. Then it takes maybe a week to get logged before it arrives on my desk. I read all the cover letters and the first page or two of everything, pulling out the fifty pagers we obviously don't have space for, then I farm everything off to unpaid assistants, many of whom read through as many stories as I can give them, adding their silent but astute yea or nay suggestion for a story. That process usually takes two or three weeks before it comes to my desk once again, a new pile this time. I usually take a week to sort through all the stories incoming from my assistants, and from there the story goes into a to-be-rejected pile or a maybe pile for my colleagues to read, for me to reread. At any given time, there are probably around ten maybes, some of which get moved to the rejection pile as new ones come in.

When the rejection pile is several feet high, I'll send out notes in batches of fifty or a hundred. We'll probably end up with five hundred fiction submissions for this issue, and 99% will be rejected. Many of these stories are very good, and will no doubt be picked up by someone soon. Many of these could use a revision. And many are probably destined for a drawer. I try to write a note of thanks or encouragement on some of the form letters if the work seems especially in tune with our needs, but I probably only scribble thanks on 10% of the rejections, certainly not all of the good ones. It takes several hours to stuff, seal, and log a hundred rejections without taking the time to write notes. I'm finding this process takes me about eight weeks, maybe longer for some stories, shorter for others. My assistants have stories from late October, I'm reading work from mid-October, and I'm rejecting work from the middle to end of September. In general, if I've hung onto a story longer than around eight weeks, it's in the strong maybe pile.

All of this is why we accept simultaneous submissions. I imagine these numbers are similar for most literary journals (Ploughshares and The Southern Review might get several thousand submissions per issue rather than several hundred, but that's why they're Ploughshares and The Southern Review). There are more good stories floating around than the market can support (which is good news for readers, bad news for writers), so for a good story, it really seems like publication is as much a lottery as anything else, finding the right editor at the right time.

The reading period has begun, and submissions are already trickling in. Keep checking the website for special requests for our 20th anniversary edition. For now, we’re simply looking for the best writing out there. Here are a few guidelines for fiction submissions:

1. Format: we have a lot of information about the publishing business here, and guidelines for submissions are here. We need some way to contact you, so be sure to double check that you’ve included a SASE with your submission. An email address is also helpful so we can quickly secure your story for publication.
2. Length: we don’t advertise specific length requirements, but our magazine is trim and readable and has consistently been under 150 pages. A lot of great stories are long (stories by Alice Munro and Edward P. Jones are proof ), but a very long submission means the writer is asking us to dedicate a lot of our space to his or her work. Submissions over 25 pages (roughly 7500 words) have a much slimmer chance of acceptance. On the other end, very short stories are nice because it means we can publish more writers, as long as their brevity isn’t a gimmick.
3. In his essay, “On Writing,” Raymond Carver advertises, “No Tricks. Period.” Sound advice, I’d say. I also think everything a fiction writer needs to know is in Flannery O’Connor’s collection of essays, Mysteries and Manners. In it, she disparages formulaic technique and praises vision: "In fact, so many people can now write competent stories that the short story as a medium is in danger of dying of competence...What is needed is the vision to go with it..."
   
4. The best way to figure out what makes “good writing” is to read, both Sycamore Review for our specific tastes as well as other reputable journals. Personally, I identify with stories whose tension is closely linked to a character’s obsession, especially if that obsession is related to a sense of place or a conflict over one’s home. I read a lot of southern writers, and would recommend the annual New Stories from the South collection. However, this tension is not limited to a particular region: writers such as Stuart Dybek, Cathy Day, Sherman Alexie, and Sandra Cisneros all deal interestingly with place and home.
5. Our number one goal for the magazine, however, is quality regardless of subject matter.

I must confess.  I’m twenty-six years old and this is my first blog.  Given their popularity, this does feel like an inadequacy.   It’s not that I have nothing to say, because believe me, I have my opinions, often voiced too loudly (I come from a family of shouters and excessive gesticulators).  I can only explain my hesitation with the fact that although I love to write, it’s not an easy process for me.  Maybe this is because I learned English as a second language, or because I self-edit too much, whatever the reason, enough is enough.  I announce my arrival on the blogging scene!  (Insert cheers and hyper-applause here).

Perhaps I should introduce myself for those of you who have made it past the first paragraph.  My name is Mehdi Okasi, and I will be taking over for the venerable Rebekah Silverman as editor-in-chief of the Sycamore Review this summer.  One of Rebekah’s many great ideas was the Sycamore Blog, and since Rebekah will be leaving Purdue this summer to take over the world with her poetry, I figured this would be a good time to introduce myself and begin blogging.

I’m still in the process of thinking up a cool name for the blog, something at once witty and discerning (I’m hoping that it’ll just come to me over a dirty Bombay Safire martini).  As for content, I envision a blog that charts the trials and tribulations of a writer in apprenticeship.  Before I started my MFA program here at Purdue this past fall, I did my homework about MFA programs in general.  I was curious about the life of an aspiring writer who opted for the harbor of university instead of the “real world.”  Do they actually make you a better writer?  What’s the lifestyle of an aspiring writer?  How does one change after arriving at an MFA program?  How much writing do you actually get accomplished?  How helpful are the writers you work with?  What does it take to get published?   Those of you interested in the writing life probably can think of a hundred other similar questions.  This, then, will become a place to bring to the foreground issues of an aspiring writer.  Who knows?  If things go well, maybe we’ll get our own reality T.V. show: Joyce Carol Oats as the literary Simon Cowell.  Wow, I just gave myself the shivers.  

I hope to get this blog up and running and eventually have other voices in the program contribute to it, that way, we’ll have a plethora  (I just like the word) of perspectives, and you, our dear reader, will keep coming back for more juicy stories.  Therefore, I envision this blog working partly as a running diary of a writer’s life (and literary gossip is certainly applicable here), but also as a forum to discuss issues of craft. 

There, I did it!  I’ve actually written my first blog!  Now I take over the world.

--Mehdi Okasi, EIC-Elect 

First of all, I should say that I think simultaneous submissions are a good idea.  I applaud anyone who undertakes the time consuming and (all too frequently) discouraging experience of sending work into the world.  I wish you every advantage! 

That said, it is rather disappointing when we find a poem we like, contact the poet, and hear back that it’s just been snapped up by another journal.  I picked up the latest copy of Green Mountains Review today and came across one such poem that we were oh-so-close to having in issue 19.1 of Sycamore.  The whole experience was like asking someone to the prom, having them say “I’d love to come but so-and-so already asked me,” and then seeing your crush look lovely with someone else.  The fact that I really like Green Mountains Review doesn’t make me feel better.  My one consolation: all the fantastic poems that did end up in Sycamore, including Ellen Bryant Voigt’s picks for our Wabash competition.

--Laura Donnelly, Poetry Editor 

First off, be forewarned. In the next few weeks there's going to be a bit of reorganization around here: new bloggers, etc. Get excited: we're sending out our Lewis-and-Clarks to bring back news of the far reaches of the internet.

Secondly, the issue's at the printers, but since I still haven't gotten our proofs back yet, my guess is that the January 15th publishing date is unfortunately optimistic. But--Sycamore Review will be out in full force at AWP in February, and you'll be able to get your issue then, for sure!

And thirdly, the 2007 Wabash Prize for Fiction is set to go! Dan Chaon will judge. Check out the contest link over in the sidebar.

One of the things we get asked about a lot as editors is cover letters for journal submissions. What should go in a cover letter, and do you really need one? Believe it or not, cover letters are helpful to us.

I'll say this right off the bat, though: a weak cover letter (or lack thereof) will not keep a strong submission out of the magazine, and a strong cover letter will not get a weak submission in, no matter how many top-notch publications the author lists or who they name check. So stop freaking out.

There are still good reasons for including a cover letter, and as editors there are things we look for in the cover letters when making decisions about what to print. So, what are we looking for in your cover letters?

As when you are applying for college or (heaven forbid) a real job, the cover letter is a way to quickly introduce yourself to the people making the decisions (Hi, my name is Mark, and I make decisions). We like to know who you are, what your background as a writer is, and where you are at in your career. If we like your work, we'll probably be corresponding with you, and besides giving us an address (electronic or otherwise) to reach you, a cover letter gives a sense of who we'll be working with.

I'm a little embarrassed by this next part: it kind of impresses us when your letter is addressed to the appropriate editor. At a magazine like ours, with a rotating staff, it's hard for submitters to know from year to year who a particular genre editor is, but we notice when you've taken a little time to research our particular magazine. I know it sounds conceited, but it signals you as someone who's done their homework.

Consider this fake example:

Dear So-and-So,

Please consider my story "Strong Bad and the Search for the Yello-Dello" for publication in your magazine. I may submit this story to other journals, but I will inform you immediately if it is accepted elswhere.

Telling us the name of the work helps us keep track of the submission. Generally we log all submissions and staple cover letters to their stories, but if something goes wrong, it's nice to have a hard copy of who submitted what.

Informing us that this is a simultaneous submission is one of the most important things a cover letter can do. We have a very tight production schedule, and knowing that we have to move on a particluar submission to keep it out of someone else's magazine helps us figure out a timeline.

If you would like to tell us something about the work, explain a certain detail, or give us a brief introduction, go ahead. If your story or essay is about firefighters in Malaysia and you've been a firefighter in Malaysia, we like to know those things. If your doing something weird or metafictional, we'd like to know that the blank page 12 is supposed to be blank. We can figure it out on our own, but it's nice to hear it from the author.

One mistake young authors make is to try to argue for or talk up a work. Don't tell us how exciting or profound you think your work is. We're smart, we'll get that Janice is really a symbol for the plight of the small-town skydiver. We'll get that the ending is the perfect culmination of the various tensions and dangers in little Johnny's world, propelling the reader to the heights of epiphanic discovery. Let the work speak to these things. If they're there, we'll probably catch them.

Where'd you go to school, and where do you work now? I said in a previous post that it doesn't really matter if you have an MFA or not, or if you are curently teaching creative writing at some big program, but we do like to know who you are. And hey, maybe you're an alpaca farmer. Or maybe like a certain Mr. Abramson, you're a real-life lawyer. Oh, or an emu rancher. That's nice to know . I'd like to hear about that.

Lastly, a lot of people ask about listing prior publications. First of all, if you have previous publications, that's great, but if you don't, you shouldn't feel embarrassed saying that this will be your first publication, or saying nothing on the subject at all. We like finding new writers and giving them their first pub credit just as much as we like working with veterans of the lit journal scene (such as it is).

Don't lie about where you've been published. That just makes the editorial assistants feel dirty.

Generally, your three or four most recent publications will suffice. Beyond that, you are really just inundating us with journal names, most of which seem to be named after archaic musical instruments these days. It may also be effective to list names of journals that you think are comparable to our tastes. We talk about other journals we like, so if you've been in BWR, for instance, color us impressed. You could also just tell us the most well-known places your work has appeared. This will give us a sense of where you are at in your writing career, and whether you have experience with things like signing contracts and approving galleys.

Some writers include their bio blurb. This is helpful, but if the rest of the letter includes that information, it's unecessary to restate it in blurb form. We'll be in contact with you if we want to run your piece, and that's when we'll get your contributor info. We won't forget.

This is obviously not going to answer every question, so please, feel free to email us, or use the comments pages. We'd love to answer any question you migh have.

P.S. If you have special mailing instructions, if you're using an IRC coupon (sic) or if you'd like your manuscript returned, the cover letter is a good place to let us know that, as well.

This week on the CLMP listserv all the other magazine and journal editors have been talking about money. Seriously, sixty emails in one day, all about money. Specifically, about how to make more of it, what demographics these magazines can target for donations, etc. Someone suggested that magazines all band together - under one umbrella organization - and start standing up for themselves by asking regular submitters to send in a reading fee with their work.

Money is the perennial issue at most literary magazines, so this idea isn't as off the wall as it initially seems. There's absolutely never enough money to go around. If a lit mag is part of a university, you can be sure that it gets the shaft almost continuously, getting funding only after every other organization has gotten theirs. If the journal isn't part of an institution, it is constantly struggling to milk money out of various under-funded arts commissions and grant-making programs.

I completely understand the concept fo reading fees for literary contests. Our Wabash Prize for Fiction has a $10 reading fee, and this goes to the overhead necessary to run the contest. We have to pay postage and copy fees for advertising, we have to have lots and lots of man hours in order to deal with the influx of submissions. Reading them and determining finalists takes time, and then it's traditional to offer a "celebrity" judge a small honorarium for their time.

But a reading fee for regular submissions? I would condone it if authors got some kind of service in return for the fee - brief comments and criticisms, for example. But to ask for reading fees in order to boost income seems full of hubris. As a writer myself, I'm not looking for an editorial service, I'm looking to offer work to a magazine for possible publication. And as an editor, I see the submissions we recieve as an honor - it is our good fortune to be able to read the submissions we recieve and to put together a magazine of the best ones.

So, as I was writing the 'From the Inbox' post last week, I got an awesome email from Rich. Rich had submitted a bunch of poetry by email earlier, and was incensed by my fom letter back to him which pretty much just said "See our submission guidelines if you want to submit." Like I said last week, it's not that I hate technology. I'm writing this blog post, aren't I? It's just that emailed submissions are (surprisingly) more inconvenient than paper submissions.

But back to Rich. Rich's poems were all over the page, making use of lots of white space, looking really interesting. Another reason why emailed submissions might not be the best way to go: computer-language gobbledygook-formatting is pretty much a given.

But Rich didn't like my response to his email, and he fired off another email, brilliantly written, that with his permission I am sharing with you:

Thanks for the update on rules, regulations, procedures, red tape, orders, special requirements, and eccentricities.

 In the amount of time it takes to read all of your inane, ridiculous requirements  -  I could have emailed 20 editors.

 Keep arguing for the horse and buggy carriage -  I am certain you are correct.

 Have a nice typewriter-kind of life.

 Anything else about you that is becoming obsolete?

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.

Earlier this week (Monday, February 6), Mark Leahy outlined the first half or so of the reading process for submissions. But, before we start reading, the submissions have to get here…

If you click over to our submission guidelines, you’ll see they’re pretty typical: cover letter, SASE, stamps, postmarks, etc. You send us a submission, and months later, you get a response. Slow. Painstaking. But effective.

In the past couple of years, journals all over have seen a steep increase in the number of emailed submissions and queries about emailed submissions landing in their inboxes. There’s been discussions on the CLMP (Council of Literary Magazines and Small Presses) listserv about whether to accept email submissions. Some journals, such as Kenyon Review, have gone completely digital, but many, especially the smaller journals like Sycamore Review, have chosen to remain essentially paper operations.

There are lots of reasons why people want to send emailed submissions. People who send from non-US locations might want to avoid the annoyance of International Reply Coupons. Other writer’s argue that the whole sending-out process gets expensive and un-environmental, especially with the price of a #10 envelope going up to $0.39. Some writers just don’t like the wait time associated with sending out submissions, and hope that by emailing their submissions they’ll speed up the decision-making process. Finally, some writers just want literary journals to join the technology revolution.

I get this. Seriously. I really do. I’m the one who has to personally take the IRC SASEs to the post office, since Purdue’s campus mail won’t deal with them. I’m the one who cringes at the piles of paper I take to the recycling every week. I’d wave the flag for the technology revolution any day.

But, to quote past editor Sean Conrey, “We just can’t open that can of worms.” Our production staff is the size of the head of a pin. We work on an eensy-weensy budget, with volunteer staff, a dusty production office with not-quite-Stegasaurus computers, and schedules as full as [insert simile here]. I’m not complaining, but the fact is, that email submissions are more work than they’re worth.

The submissions would still be printed out (adding to printing costs and driving up overhead) so that the editorial assistants and genre editors could read them. (I know we could email them around to each other, but do we really want to read poetry on the computer? It’s not like we’re The Iowa Review Web or Born Magazine here, with the kind of awesome hypertext and animation that needs to be viewed on the web. In terms of medium, we’re traditionalists: ink on paper all the way, baby.)

Additionally, there’s something about having to actually print out submissions, write a cover letter, get stamps, and go to mailboxes that weeds out the dilettantes. With emailed submissions, every high school student whose creative writing teacher praises him would be sending submissions. (I’ve seen this happen, the hordes of emails not hardly worth reading…But I’m not knocking high school students, creative writing teachers, or you in any way.) You can’t just walk onto American Idol—they have a screening process. Similarly, you can’t just write your way into Sycamore Review—there’s a built-in screening process called “submitting” that allowing emailed submissions takes away.

Eventually, probably, we’ll be taking emailed submissions. But we’re not right now. So, when you get the brief response to your email with 50-page-story attachment in a format I can’t open, please don’t get mad.