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Need tips on getting published in literary #magazines ?

By 19/01/2016June 15th, 2022Featured, Fiction, novel, writing
Literary magazine of the Fiction Forge

Publication in literary magazines tend to be a bit of a hit and miss. It takes months of submissions to find some stories a home. others, like my piece at Smokelong, land  the first time they are sent out. Publication is tough, and submissions a gamble, but it is also a full-time job. You need to write publishable-quality stories, and then you need to shop them ad nauseam. To do this, you need the right approach, and good advice from someone like John Haggerty, an author I admire, and one of the founding editors of the Forge Literary Magazine.

As part of my ongoing guest post series from the publication industry in this blog, a few weeks ago we heard from Maria Vicente, Associate Agent with the P.S. Literary Agency. Today, it is my pleasure to welcome John, an author and editor, but most importantly, a generous mentor. He’s given very useful, practical advice for those starting on the writing life, and publication in literary magazines. I’ve highlighted some of it for you in blue.

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  1. What led you to write fiction? What are your preoccupations as a writer?

I was one of those geeky kids who liked reading better than sports. The more I read, the more amazing the act of writing seemed to me to be—that writers were able to invent entire worlds, filled with people that nobody else had ever met. So of course I wanted to be a writer. For the longest time I had terminal writer’s block. But now, finally, here I am.

As far as my preoccupations go, I seem to keep coming back to the ideas of power and delusion. Power is such an interesting thing—not so much in its more obvious manifestations like politics and money, but in the smaller, subtler ways it manifests in our daily lives. The use of power damages us in ways that are often very difficult to perceive—power is as dangerous to the person who wields it as the one who is subject to it. Delusion is equally interesting. Having watched my mind for a while now, I have an enormous respect for my ability to lie to myself—to paint my motives as completely pure when they rarely are, to see circumstances as simple and certain when they are anything but. It seems to me that we walk around in a fog of alternating self-congratulation and self-condemnation all the time, and rarely, if ever, see things as they truly are. The good news, I guess, is that it gives me plenty of things to write about.

2. What books/ stories have you recently read that you would recommend to the readers of Daily (w)rite, and why?

Bad Behavior – Mary Gaitskill: She is so good at getting to really uncomfortable places in human interactions, the awkward, the disturbing, the frightening—she renders these situations with such deftness and grace.

Laidlaw – William McIlvanney:   McIlvanney was one of those really psychologically acute writers who can lay open the complexities of a character without seeming overbearing or didactic. Sort of like Dostoyevsky meets Ross MacDonald in Scotland.

Stoner – John Williams: I am not the most subtle of writers. I enjoy big plots, big writing and, of course, jokes. So I really like reading authors who can do more with less. The basic outlines of Stoner—an English professor who struggles with his career and an unhappy marriage—sounds as though it could be tremendously dull, but I found it riveting and ultimately very moving. Williams can do so much with small, quiet scenes.

3. Tell us about your journey to find an agent for your novel.

I guess the short story is that it wasn’t easy. I was pretty naïve going into the process. I had a reasonably good publishing resume, and I flattered myself that my book, Calamity Springs, wasn’t terrible. But the publishing industry is a difficult place these days. Readership is decreasing, and and the big publishers are retrenching and taking long, hard looks at every title they consider buying.

My single piece of advice about it would be that personal connections seem much more effective than cold queries. The majority of my full manuscript requests came from agents with whom I had some previous connection. This means going to conferences, socializing and schmoozing, all of the things that we writers tend not to be very good at. It’s not impossible to get an agent with a cold query, but it is harder.

4. Your stories have seen wide publication, been shortlisted for, and won various awards. To an aspiring writer submitting to magazines, what would be your advice?

Whenever people ask me for inspirational writing quotes, I trot out Virginia Woolf: “The world is indifferent to your art.” People often find this deflating, but I think it’s perversely inspirational, if only because of its painful truth. Let’s face it—nobody would really care if I quit writing tomorrow. In fact, my wife might even be relieved.So if you are writing to become rich or famous or to make people love you, it is extremely likely that you will end up bitter and disappointed. If you are writing for vague, fictional audiences in your head—editors, agents, publishers, the hungry public—your work will be shallow and self-conscious. I find that if I start with an assumption of my insignificance and I still want to write, things work out much better, both artistically and, uh, spiritually, for want of a better word.

For more concrete advice on how to get published, submitting, and submitting a lot, is the only answer. After a story exceeds a certain level of quality, getting accepted is basically a random process. Good stories get rejected all the time for reasons that have nothing to do with their quality—they are too long or short, they didn’t fit thematically with other stories in the issue, the slush pile reader was hungover and in a bad mood that day—the whole process feels like playing roulette a lot of the time. And when we are faced with a random process, the only solution is to repeat it until we get the results we want.

Having said that, there are a lot of stories kicking around out there that are flawed in some way. The trick is to know the difference between a story that needs work and one that just needs to find the right venue. If you send it out 20 times and get only first-tier form rejections, it might be an indication that the piece needs more work. If you are getting the encouraging “submit again” rejections and personal rejections, odds are greater that you will be able to place it somewhere eventually.

5. Tell us more about the publication of Forge Literary Magazine. What inspired you to set it up?

It was my wife’s idea originally, and to be honest, I couldn’t believe she suggested it. In fact, when she said that we ought to start a literary journal, my exact words were, “Are you insane?” But after she explained her thought process on the publication, it started to make a lot of sense. We belong to an amazing online writers group, the Fiction Forge. We mentioned the idea to some of the other Forgers, and they were really enthusiastic. So here we are.

There are so many talented writers in the world, and I thought if we could just get a few more of them noticed, it would really be a wonderful thing. We also want  to pay writers, because writing is hard work. Of course, we’re all writers too, so we don’t have a whole lot of money to spare, but we pay what we can. We’ve successfully solicited and published established authors like Janice Galloway and Nona Caspers, and stories to come are from names like Kevin Barry. Our hope is to match that quality by reading anonymous submissions from the slush.

6. Are you more comfortable with writing short fiction or a novel? In your opinion, how are the two different?

In spite of the fact that I have worked mostly in short fiction, I think I am more naturally drawn to the novel. A novel gives you the space to stretch out and expand on things in a way that short fiction doesn’t–the characters can be deeper, the themes more nuanced. That said, really great short fiction is miraculous. The ways in which, say, Raymond Carver or Flannery O’Connor could bring moments to such crystalline, vivid life in only a few thousand words, it’s an amazing thing. I still write short stories and flashes—it’s nice to take a break from a novel every once in a while—but I see myself concentrating more on longer stuff in the future for publication.

7. You have a truly gifted comic voice. What makes good comedy—a good comic short story, novel, or play?

Thank you. This is always such a difficult question. Humor is one of those things that doesn’t bear a lot of inspection. Nothing kills a joke faster than poking at it too much. I think the old formula is that the best jokes are truths expressed in an unexpected way, and I guess that’s as good a starting point as anything else. These days, I’m trying to add compassion in as well. Everybody has something about themselves that they don’t want the world to look at too hard, and it can be terribly tempting to ferret out people’s little flaws and foibles and wave them around for the derisive amusement of the audience. But those kinds of jokes are cheap and cruel, and I’m trying to stay away from that sort of thing these days. Then again, if I see some pompous, narcissistic bully out there (and we certainly have no shortage of them these days), or a ridiculous idea accepted as fact, I feel it’s my duty as a writer to mock them. OK, I’m not giving up the cheap shots completely, just trying to be more judicious in where they are deployed.

8. Tell us about the Forge Fiction Anthology. What can a reader expect to find?

One of the things we do at the Fiction Forge is to stage periodic writing exercises, weekends where we try to write as many flashes as possible, or my personal favorite, something we call Team Intrepid, in which we post twenty random writing prompts and then try to write a story in an hour using every one of the prompts in the order given. It’s crazy stuff, but it’s amazing how often the germ of something good comes of these things, and how often those pieces go on to publication. The Fiction Forge is chock full of really accomplished writers. The members have a really wide array of styles, from gritty realism to surrealism, beautiful poetic language and spare, punchy prose.The stories in the anthology reflect this. There is tremendous variety in the publication, and every single piece is excellent. I’m very excited about it.


Author picture John Haggerty

John Haggertys work found publication most recently in Hobart, Monkeybicycle, Nimrod, Salon, and The Pinch. He is a member of the online writers’ collective The Fiction Forge, and one of the founding editors of  Forge Literary Magazine.

Do you have questions for John ? Are you querying a book, or submitting to literary mags? Are you considering submitting to the Forge Literary magazine? Any other burning questions about the writing life, submitting and publication of stories? Have at it in the comments–John would be answering questions!

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Damyanti Biswas

Damyanti Biswas is the author of You Beneath Your Skin and numerous short stories that have been published in magazines and anthologies in the US, the UK, and Asia. She has been shortlisted for Best Small Fictions and Bath Novel Awards and is co-editor of the Forge Literary Magazine. Her literary crime thriller series, the Blue Mumbai, is represented by Lucienne Diver from The Knight Agency. Both The Blue Bar and The Blue Monsoon were published in 2023.

I appreciate comments, and I always visit back. If you're having trouble commenting, let me know via the contact form, or tweet me up @damyantig !

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29 Comments

  • Sonia Dogra says:

    Loved this so much Damyanti. Some of that advice resonated, felt so personal.

  • The Virginia Woolf quote he shares as inspiration is such a great way of approaching the process of writing–of reminding yourself why you write and to keep up the good fight.

    Thanks for all the great tips and posts for writers. For more fun with literature, check out aliteralinterpretation.wordpress.com. I think you’ll like it.

  • Great interview. Very impressed. And I’m with him on Williams. I picked up a copy of “Stoner” just a few days ago and despite the fact that very little happens on the surface, it is rich, poignant and profound. Ultimately, it offers no redemption, but Williams is a master of knowing just how little it takes to communicate much. Shame you can’t interview him (as I believe he’s dead).

  • macjam47 says:

    Damyanti, and John, what a great interview. Very informative and an interesting read.

  • Great tips and thoughts!

  • equinoxio21 says:

    May the Forge be with you?
    😉

  • Miss Megan says:

    I am not a novel or fiction writer. I am more drawn to inspiration and life experience based writings. That said, I love this blog and I really enjoyed this article. Writing is writing, and through your voice and the voices of others you share with your audience, I find myself encouraged to forge ahead (pun intended). So, thank you for what you do.

  • emaginette says:

    Very helpful. Thanks for sharing. 🙂

  • patgarcia says:

    Hi,
    Thanks to you and to John. This post was informative. It helped me. I started resubmitting my short stories to magazines this month. In fact, I actually took a year off from submitting to revise my short stories because I saw that they weren’t ready. They were not the best I could write.

    I’ll be checking out the submission requirements as well as the membership requirements at Forge.

    Three questions to John:

    What kind of stories is Forge looking for?

    Can a unpublished writer become a member of Fiction Forge?

    Where can I buy the Anthology?

    Shalom,
    Patricia

    • Hi Patricia, thanks for reading.

      At the risk of being facile, The Forge is looking for great writing. Sorry, but it’s a little hard to pin down beyond that. We are using a rotating system of editors, so that all of the people involved in the magazine get a shot at selecting stories. The consequence of this is that the specifics of what we want might change month to month. Even so, we will probably always respond well to things like deft character development, nice sentence construction, a depth of emotion and the exploration of interesting themes.

      We do generally ask that prospective Fiction Forge members have at least one credible publication. It’s a small, focused group that’s working pretty well right now, and we want to maintain our current vibe as much as possible. It’s admittedly an arbitrary standard–there are plenty of good, unpublished writers out there–but it’s the one we’ve adopted.

      We are still putting the finishing touches on the anthology. When it is ready, which should be in the next couple of weeks, we will make it available on all of the major ebook venues.

  • Jim Noonan says:

    Great post. Thanks! I’ll have to see if I have anything that might fit at Forge!

  • Ankita says:

    Thank you so much for this wonderful post! I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. This was among the best posts I’ve read after a very long time on this topic.

  • FANNY BEA-CHADOULOS. says:

    THANKS FOR THOUGHTS SHARED!GREAT INTERVIEW TAKING YOU STEP BY STEP TO MEETING NEEDS!MORNING FROM GREECE!

  • I love that light-hearted response. Nothing diffuses tension faster than humor so I do try to include it in my writing. It’s a lot harder than it sounds when you’re not a natural. I’ll have to check out your stories, John.

  • whitec1971 says:

    Great post. As a writer I try to find other outlets for my work, such as blogging. I write for me, but I hope my writing can effect someone positively. I will look into the writing group. I would like to join a group like that. Thanks for sharing. You share such useful advice for writers.

  • I like the part about accepting one’s own insignificance, something I’ve been struggling with for a few years now. (Having been a writer for decades, I spent nearly all that time in denial.) But from my own experience and the trade press I read, I have the inescapable conviction that no novel will make it to publication with a mainstream house unless everyone who counts (the agent, the editor, her boss, and the house’s marketing department) believes that the book will or could be a best-seller. Since that’s not me, I’ve sworn all that off. But it’s not easy to let go.

  • cleemckenzie says:

    I love good magazine articles, so Forge sounds great to me.

  • Thanks for all the great information and tips. 🙂

  • Congratulations on starting Forge Magazine.
    Submitting to magazines can be the same as submitting to publishers. It helps to know someone.

  • Miriam says:

    Great interview with some interesting insights, thanks so much.

  • blondeusk says:

    Great post! What a fab read!

  • Almost Iowa says:

    As always, a great read. I am especially pleased to hear John’s thoughts on humor.

  • I was most interested in the question about submitting to magazines. I found that spot on. Random is fairly accurate as far as I can see. And yes, if I am not getting comments back on a story, it’s time to look at revision.

    The point about indifference made me laugh. I had never seen that quote, but had thought along those lines many times.

    Good Stuff!

  • hilarymb says:

    Hi Damyanti and John .. that was such an interesting read … and I’d love to have entries into magazines – at some stage I will definitely give it a try …

    Thanks for your ideas .. cheers Hilary