As close to a costume as I’m going to get.
In scary news, some folks are still trying to take the credit of Frankenstein away from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and give it to her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley. This has been going on since 1818 and continues today…
* I have been working a lot lately. Most of my time is spent on my computer typing. Maybe it’s that the weather has finally (!) turned to legitimate fall or something, but it makes me want to hide and drink hot beverages and type. It is strange to feel so boring and passionate at the same time.
* I tried to make a Martha Stewart pumpkin, but it turned out kind of space-age looking. I sort of like it, though.
* I am reading Shakespeare again. I learned a new word–Keech. It means a lump of animal fat. Go ahead, call your boss a keech. I dare you.
Submitting to literary journals is a little insane. You have to wait for 6-8 months to hear back about your submission, sometimes they don’t want you to submit anywhere else while they look at your work, their websites are uninformative and were made in 1996, etc.
I can put up with all that because literary journals are labors of love for writers and editors alike. What I find offensive is that some lit journals are charging writers “reading fees” for the privilege of submitting their work. Several supposedly reputable journals, like Massachusetts Review or Narrative, charge these fees. I suppose they get so many submissions that they feel justified in making a few bucks off writers, but I think it’s reprehensible. It demeans the whole process of publishing, turning writing and submitting short stories into little more than vanity publishing. Worse! At least with vanity publishing, you are guaranteed to see your name in print.
Twenty years ago, any journal that tried to do this would be considered a scam. Now as more journals charge fees, it’s starting to seem like the norm in publishing. Let me remind you, writers: they are supposed to pay us. If they ask you for money to read your work, they are a scam, pure and simple. You wouldn’t use an agent who wants you to pay for the privilege of looking at your work, would you? No. So why would you pay a literary journal for the same thing?
I repeat: journals that charge fees cross the line from reputable publications to scams. Take Narrative–sometime, back before they started charging writers $20 to read a short story (!!!!!!!!), I gave them my e-mail address. BIG mistake. I get spam from these people practically every day. You know why? Because they are a scam, and scam=spam in your e-mail box. Narrative can claim to be “nonprofit” all they want, but if it looks like duck and acts like a duck, it’s a duck. Or scam, in this case.
Now I read that Massachusetts Review is charging people $3 to submit. While $3 is not $20, it’s the principle that’s at stake here. In fact, MR’s fee is even more outrageous because the journal is connected to a good college, University of Massachusetts. So why don’t they go to the University if they need funding? Or hey, ever heard of advertisers?
Everyone knows that lit journals are inundated with submissions. I do sympathize with how difficult it must be to sift through them all, and I can see how it would cost money and time to do so. I can also see how some business-oriented English major (?) thought to make money off of us poor saps by requiring us to pay to submit. Since far fewer people would pay, the editor’s workload would drop and there would be more money for the journal.
But I would hope the quality of submissions would also drop. I would hope that good writers wouldn’t be so desperate for clips that they would actually pay money to be read. I would hope we would all have enough pride in what we are doing to expect to be considered with respect and equal time. And I would certainly hope that we would never consent to pay an editor for that time.
UPDATE: Before ranting on here, I told the Massachusetts Review what I thought charging reading fees. They replied as follows:
Dear Joy,
Thank you very much for your email. The $3 fee is only for our online submission manager; we don’t actually charge a “reading fee”. Writers are more than welcome to submit via hard copy (at no charge); the online submission manager is merely an alternative for convenience, for which the $3 fee covers costs incurred by both writer and us for providing the alternative.
All the best,
Aaron Hellem
Managing Editor
I guess it’s good that there is a way you can still submit to them for free. However, I still don’t like that they are charging any fees at all.
For some reason, Literary Rejections on Display got me thinking about the worst rejection I’ve ever received. Most editors have been polite to me and I’ve never had my work overtly insulted. But one day, I received back a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope that I sent as part of a submission to an agent. Inside there was nothing but a ripped up piece of paper. Pulling it out, I realized it was part of the cover letter I had sent with my submission. The agent had torn a scrap off the bottom of my cover letter and written in blunt pencil: I understand, Joy. But no thanks.
I guess it was a kind of recycling?
Every now and again, a creative wave I was riding bottoms out and I end up stranded on a shore somewhere waiting for a new wave to come along. It seems to be how creativity works for me—I am filled up 80% of the time and 20% of the time I’m empty. The problem is, I need to be producing work 100% of the time because, uh, I need to pay my bills.
This is where the To Do List comes in handy. I make a list, do everything on it (even things like voting and finding a pencil to vote) and then I’m done for the day. This takes the stress out of being creatively empty. I’m not flailing around going, “What should I do next? I can’t think of anything interesting. Oh no, I will never write again!” I am busily doing the things my list tells me to while I’m waiting for something to inspire me. This is comforting.
One dog barks everytime I go into my backyard. Another howls all day about its owner being gone. You would think the dog would get used to it since the owner leaves it alone every day, but apparently not. I don’t have a lot to say about writing these days except that I am doing it a lot, and that the dogs are bugging me. But why bother when Billy Collins says it so much better?
Another Reason I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House by Billy Collins
The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.
The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,
and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.
When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton
while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.
One year ago today, Kyle and I bought a house. I was not sure I wanted to be a home owner. I wasn’t in love with this house, although I thought it was a good fit for us. To make matters worse, we decided to go on a cross-country vacation while in escrow. So we would be in the middle of, say, Texas, arguing with a mortgage broker on a cellphone. Finally on October 10, we closed the deal. We didn’t get the keys to the house until two days later.
In the last year, we have put in new floors, sheetrocked the living room, painted all the rooms, put in a tankless water heater, a dish washer, a garden, and countless other things. The house is far from being done. We still have to remodel both bathrooms, paint the outside, fix up the garage, landscape the front and backyards, and completely re-do the kitchen. However, the house has already appreciated because of our work, and that’s a good feeling. The more it changes, the more I start to love the place I live in.
Looking back, Kyle and I bought at the right time. Housing prices had dropped, but people were still putting homes on the market. If we had waited, we probably couldn’t have gotten a loan. Even a year later, I feel confident we got a good deal. There were several components to that:
a. We used one of the best real estate agents in Petaluma, Peg King, who earned every penny of her commission.
b. We picked a fixer-upper on a big lot in a good neighborhood, insuring that our house would appreciate over time.
c. We pitched two mortgage brokers against each other during escrow. I highly recommend doing this. By using two mortgage brokers, we had negotiating power that we never would have had otherwise. We were able to remove over $5,000 in fees, negotiated a lower interest rate, and we did not have to pay a point.
A year later, I’m glad we bought a house. I like feeling that my money is going to something valuable every time I pay my mortgage. Remodeling still isn’t fun for me, and I’m often frustrated because stores never seem to have what I want. (Oh the curse of a vivid imagination.) I keep telling myself that someday my house will be pretty and I won’t have to explain the 1970s wallpaper anymore.
The biggest thing I learned from buying a house is that banks are jerks. I was shocked at how skillfully we were fleeced by the banks with their tricky language and fees. I’m happy I married someone who is good at math because I had trouble keeping all the rates and “insurance” and fees straight.
Having gone through it, I can see how people ended up with bad mortgages. I’m not saying they aren’t responsible for their actions, but the banks are more responsible because they have set up a system that is deliberately obtuse and deceitful. Or as I wrote on here a year ago:
I don’t have one iota of sympathy that the banks are losing their shirts right now from foreclosures. They gave loans to people who couldn’t afford a house and therefore had no business getting a loan for one in the first place. The banks did this knowingly and what’s more, they told people lies about how they would be able to afford the loans in the future, or at the very least, refinance if things get tough. …
So now that this has all come to a natural end, and people have ruined their credit and lost their homes, the banks are complaining that they are losing money. Well you know what? You bet on a horse with a broken leg, banks, so don’t whine. Maybe if you weren’t so greedy and slimy, you wouldn’t forget basic tenets of finance, like that people should make enough money to afford the product that they are buying–otherwise, they will not be able to pay for it. You should be held accountable for your actions, not given money to bail you out, but because you are so big and powerful and affect everyone else, you’ll get your way in the end. So cheer up, there are new people to cheat all the time. Why, here comes Kyle and me right now! Maybe you can charge us a $300 printing fee. Go ahead. See if we’ll go for it.
Take that, banks!
Happy anniversary, house!
Oprah had a show on saving money yesterday. It had advice like, do not spend more money than you earn. If you lose your job, cut back on your bills. Buy food from the grocery store that is on sale. Do not spend $700 a month at the mall when you don’t have $700 extra a month.
I didn’t realize that people needed to be explained the basics of budgeting. Now that I realize the extent of the problem, I want to do my patriotic duty and help. So here it is, my fellow Americans.
The Joy Lanzendorfer Guide to Surviving the Money Crisis:
I hope that helps. Maybe I can go on Oprah now. Do you think?
I just have to brag a little. I bought this bowl for $3 at a thrift store (which I mentioned in this post).
I just noticed it for sale on this site for $68.
Mushrooms of all shapes and sizes grace this lovely 1960’s enamel bowl. Although not marked (most likely worn off over time), this bowl design is made famous by Arabia of Finland. Highly collectible, this is a truly amazing and beautifully crafted piece that makes a wonderful decorative element in any modern kitchen. Measures approximately 5.5″h and 8.25″ in diameter. Bowl is in moderate vintage condition with some chipping along the outer edge of the rim in a few places and some light scratching inside and out - very common wear for this type of item.
Even better, my bowl has a mark and no chipping on the rim. Or at least it didn’t when I bought it. I am kind of hard on things.
Dear Marcia,
When I got to the conference, the organizers recognized me–California to Kentuckians is like saying you are from Morocco or something–and I realized how small the conference was. It made me self-conscious and I hid behind a column in the library for awhile. After I got over that, I sat through several talks. One was by Ginger Strand, who wrote this travel/memoir/history book on Niagara Falls. Her writing reminded me of my own, which was encouraging. I also listened to the winners of the prize the conference gives out. Most of it was pretty good, but for some reason, they had a slam poet there. She was a cross between Alix Olson, Annie the Orphan, and the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz. Imagine, if you would, this monstrosity performing slam poetry to a boardroom full of polite Kentucky ladies. I hate slam poetry.
That night, Joyce Carol Oates gave the keynote speech. She is extremely well spoken, brilliant, funny, and seems to know everything about literature. She read a short story about this couple who buys an Emily Dickinson robot that has been imbued with Dickinson’s essence. It was strange and hilarious and oddly touching. The next day, I went to a Q&A with Oates. On top of all my other opinions of her, I also think she is adorable. When they were gushing over her, the way they do at these things, she got embarrassed and looked down at the table. Then the moderator complimented this shiny pink blouse she was wearing (circa 1989 or so) and there was this strange emotion on her face I couldn’t quite interpret. Later, someone asked her the question: How do you, Joyce Carol Oates, manage to produce so much? She said, “I really can’t answer that question. I mean, we all have the same 24 hours in a day.” Then she talked about how her work output is more visible because she publishes and how her mother worked so hard and no one noticed. “Actually, I’m wearing a blouse my mother made me,” Oates said, referring to the pink shiny blouse. “So I was really touched that you” –the commentator – “mentioned it.”
After that, I stuck around to hear this first-time novelist tell people that the way to publish a book is to make friends with people you can use to get ahead and to steal ideas. She even advocated lying on her taxes. I walked out of her talk. There are a lot of slimeballs in publishing.
~ Joy
Dear Marcia,
I am in the Houston airport. I have a two-hour layover here. I was a little nervous coming here because of Hurricane Ike–which, by the way, went through Louisville yesterday. By then it was just winds, but it tore up the trees in my mother-in-law’s apartment complex. It knocked one tree over by the roots:
and split one tree in half:
Because of this, the power went out. I was frustrated because I was trying to finish up my article and send it out, but the battery on my laptop kept dying. Finally, we went to Panera Bread and found a place to plug in my laptop so I could finish my work. It’s so hard to write on vacation.
Last night, we hung out with Jeremy and his girlfriend Rachelle. They took us to this seriously cool restaurant called Proof. It is attached to 21c, a hotel with an art gallery in it. They had an exhibit by Kara Walker, the artist who does stereotypical silhouettes of African American slaves. I have been wanting to see her work for a long time.
There was also this projector that dropped letters from the alphabet on you. Your shadow was projected on the wall and you could stop the letters as they dropped on you. It was one of the best things we saw on the trip. I was trying to figure out how I could get one for my house.
(Me with Kyle behind me. Jeremy and Rachelle are on the right.)
(Kyle and me)
(me)
I hope the airline can manage to fly us home without any hassle. I miss my cats. See you tomorrow.
~ Joy