If I ever feel that my story is perfect and the editor's comments are stupid, I'll know I have arrived at the worst-case scenario. It has never happened to me, but I have found myself in situations that were almost as stressful. In the best-case scenario, the editor catches mistakes [...]
Considering long turn-around times at literary journals, and my life expectancy of 80.2 years, I've taken to simultaneous submissions as a reasonable response to unreasonable delays. It's true that elite athletes will have to wait four years for the next Olympics, but there aren't many other situations where waiting for [...]
Payment for "Tickles the Clown" was $250.00. That works out to about seven cents a word, or $8.33 an hour, based on thirty hours of work. Those figures are surprisingly respectable. I was hoping my money made/time spent ratio was going to be dramatically more pathetic, but it looks like I'm [...]
The daughter of Russian Mennonite immigrants, Elsie K. Neufeld has written two non-fiction books: Dancing in the Dark: A Sister Grieves (Herald Press, 1990) and The Past Inside the Present (1996). She has taught life-writing classes in various venues with the guiding principle that "the ordinary is the extraordinary." As editor, [...]
Today I received three contributor's copies of Grain Vol. 43.3, the issue in which my latest story appears. The story was submitted to Grain on January 27, 2016, and accepted on May 27, 2016. This may be the shortest turn around time I have ever experienced. Well done, Elizabeth Philips! [...]
Once upon a time, most of an editorial board rejected one of my stories because it was "too dark" for their readers. The lone holdout, my champion, was overruled. If it had been a conversation, I might have said that if they thought that story was dark, they'd be permanently [...]
A few years ago, an editor at a literary journal wanted me to change the way I indicated direct speech. I like to comply with most suggestions if I can, and it might have seemed like a small ask to her, but I dreaded the conversion of all my em [...]
With response times varying from two months to a year, and averaging three or four months, efficient submission of stories to literary journals takes some planning. The delays often seem excessive, but I'm working within the system we have, not the one I think is ideal. Once a story is [...]
Patricia Webb is a writer, poet, and artist, who lives in Port Moody with her husband, artist Peter Hilborne. She has one chapbook, the bungled dance, and has been published in small and literary magazines. In 2011, she graduated from SFU's Writer's Studio program. Her nonfiction piece, "Second Time Around", [...]
Sajeeta Saroop is a creative and strategic communications leader with over twenty years experience working with companies such as TransLink, BCAA, Canadian Cancer Society and BC Hydro. OM: Quite cluelessly, I assume a company’s brand is the public’s general perception of that company. If the public perception does not match [...]
Photo credit: Stephen Brockwell I'll let Cameron Anstee's excellent blog post serve as a bio. Note the lengthy interview at the end, which covers rob's activities since the beginning. rob is a publisher, editor, blogger, reading series and small press book fair organizer, fiction/non-fiction writer and poet, who's [...]
The other sad little cheque I receive every year (other than Public Lending Right) comes from Access Copyright. Payment varies, but in 2015 I received $120.04. In 2013, I made much less, but I received a detailed report that indicated that someone had made 444 copies of “Killers are Useful”, [...]
