My MFA was fully funded with a modest stipend. And I sure hope this isn't going nowhere. I did my undergrad in journalism and had a career as a journalist. My graduate degree is in fiction. What I do now is art to me. I am an artist. I think people should study what they really want to do. It gives you a better shot at doing what you want than if you didn't study it. An MFA took my writing to a level I'm not sure I would have reached otherwise.
Mmm, MFA certainly saved you the disgrace of arsebores united urging you to omit the 'I feel,' 'saw,' and 'sensed' from your prose, and never developed a public & shaming adverb habit - not on the web anyway. Also rhyming couplets, although I, myself still suffer episodes.. My old pal with the mental health is doing a Masters in CW. Although funny - I tracked him down last week, he was up and swimming, busy, like our roles had reversed in the five years under the bridge. He was like 'how's showbusiness, Matty? Last time I heard you were being paid £25 for your short story, wowza.' 'So right Boris, I am living the dream.' I had to protect him from the truth of my exile, my blanket lifestyle. Probably this pain is producing some of my most profound late period writes. [As a sidenote - I [ego] replied to that Yale University study enquiry, don't think I'm being scammed...can they scam you with 1000 words of your prose? It's yale.edu, so seems kosher.]
At least you submitted inside Granta's window - what is it, one week? I entered a contest yesterday - a semi-quango kind of thing - £3000 prize AnD sent something inappropriate to an Irish lit mag. And did a crit on a pal, was rather harsh, feel very mean.
Well, you do have to be careful on the net these days, so much phishing going on. As you say, yale.edu seems ok but if there are ways to check it out then do as much as you can, just in case.
I try to squeeze in when they are open for submissions. Since I submit at least somewhere every week, I tend to know when things open and close. I will send you a message to remind you when they open again if you would like. Good luck with the contest. Even if you have it in you to be harsh and mean, it probably just means you're hungry. Have a sandwich, my friend.
A 100-day form rejection from Ninth Letter. I think I might need to get a hundred or two hundred rejections to get an acceptance. The odds are never in my favor.
I think I will put a collection together at some point, but I probably need to sell a few more stories individually before I can really start to think of a collection. It's kind of hard to think about what to include and how to put it all together. And then to find a publisher... I don't know. I've got my novel in the works, and I hope that will be my first book. And I think if I publish enough short stories, the idea of a collection might sort of form on it's own. But thanks for the suggestion. Have you thought about doing a collection?
Competitions/grants/calls where they ask for 'collections...' ...'Board of Kentucky Authors Annual Bursary Award...' type
The grants I apply for never ask for a writing sample of that length. And the competitions I've seen for collections are pretty much a joke if you ask me. You have to pay to enter and then if you win, it's not much more money than selling one story on its own. I think a collection works best after someone has a bit more of a publishing history than I do at the moment.
Aw, shit. Seriously a moment - I found one comp, an EU-type - Institute of Mutual Friendship - kind of thing, £3000 + flights to the award - would be okay. That one's so precious to me I'm not even sharing it.
Well, if you've looked into it and feel good about it, go for it! Will they publish your collection if you win? Are they buying your work outright or will you receive royalties from this as well? Honestly, I would probably enter for the free trip. I don't really know too much about competitions, only that I spend way too much entering them. Grants and fellowships seem to be there for what you will write more than what you have written, maybe? And a lot of those don't have these crazy entrance fees.
I wouldn't dream of standing in your way but thanks. Are competitions more prestigious to literary writers then or is it all just grist to the mill?
Finally got a response on that submission (a personal rejection) from way back in October. I think it mostly came down to editorial personal preference. One of the reviewers didn't like similes. One wanted more subversion of the premise. One wanted elaboration on throwaway references that were only there to give the world some flavor. Overall, though, the story still got high marks. Between that and the fact that it was a reprint submission, I'm not as down as I might be otherwise.
A 100-day from rejection from Ninth Letter. I started to get my hopes up a little because they were taking so long. Silly me.
A 65-day form rejection from The Rumpus. Shoot! I really wanted to get the piece I sent them in there. Thought it was a really good fit. I'm really trying to hone in on my submission skills, but even the markets I read regularly and feel like I know reject my best work.