So Long, And Thanks for All The Raccoons
Lesson 12 of 12: Sorry For The Inconvenience — A Submitter's Guide To Lit Mags
Thank you all for participating in this course. It took me about a year to put together after ten years of slamming my head against the wall while submitting to lit mags.
I think lit mags have a bright future — I really do. In a world soon to be overrun by all of the infinite AI monkeys with all of their infinite AI typewriters, we're going to need our little havens guarded by battle-worn lit nerds.
If you’re curious where the title of this course came from, it is a subtle nod to Douglas Adams, who, in his book “So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish,” writes God’s last message to man: We apologize for the inconvenience. And if you’re curious where the raccoon thing came from, there is no clever reference—it just happened to crawl up from that junk pile in my brain where I keep things like how to count to ten in Chinese, the capital of Oregon, and my niece’s birthday.
This course will always remain free. You can revisit lessons as needed, steal any tool or resource I've created, and make them your own. Here are links to each lesson:
And, so you don’t always have to keep returning to this page, I've gone ahead and created a spreadsheet to take with you that includes:
direct links to each lesson
all of the tools and resources provided in every lesson
any external resources I mentioned
further readings I’ve found interesting
→ Download Your Take Home Spreadsheet Here ←
If you enjoyed this course and believe in our Forever Workshop project, please consider signing up:
All funds raised from my course go directly to the project to help us grow it into a place where all writers can find an affordable and accessible education. Being rich in friends, we have Courtney Kocak, Elle Nash, Shannan Mann, Andrea Firth, Karan Kapoor, and Alex Baia all locked in to teach courses for us this year. All will come, as this one did, directly to your inbox.
And, if you enjoy my weird combination of chattiness and caveat-laced info-bricks, you can sign up for our Sub Club Newsletter, where friends and I scrounge up 2 to 3 lists of submission opportunities per week.
→ Check out The Sub Club Newsletter ←
I wanted to leave you with—what?
No, I'm not done. Hold on.
I wanted to leave you with something else. No, not raccoons.1 No, I want to try to inject a bit of kindness into the community where I can. There is a lot of talk about creating blacklists or where to find warnings, and that's important. But there is also so much above-and-beyond goodness behind the scenes at lit mags.
So, I’ve created The Lit Mag Happy Place. It is only a spreadsheet for now, but once we have enough, we can start folding them into our database so folks can know where to find the gems, and editors going above and beyond can get some recognition. It is a place for writers to share their unsung good experiences with editors and teams at different lit mags.
I have created a very simple form that you can fill out here to share your experiences.
→ Contribute to The Lit Mag Happy Place ←
Here is a spreadsheet where I will put the results until the website can handle the addition. Also, spreadsheets are my happy place.
→ Explore The Lit Mag Happy Place ←
*I’ll update it every week until it goes live elsewhere.
I am doing it this way, rather than in a comment thread, because A. it’s easier to convert a spreadsheet to line up with our database. And B. I know how things go. Someone says something nice, then another says, “YES, BUT I SAW THEM EAT A BABY ONCE!” And yeah, babies are cool I guess. But that isn’t the point. Loads of people are trying to create blacklists out there. So, let’s try something different.
Here are some examples from my own experiences to get you started:
Rhonda Schlumpberger, the editor-in-chief of Intrepidus Ink, writes some of the kindest acceptance letters. She also works hard to get your work out there and interviews published writers on Twitter. - my own experiences
Cease, Cows (my first publication over ten years ago) helped work with me on a story they liked to get it to the point where they published it. I still remember ten years later. - my own experiences
Barcelona Review accepted a story of mine last year. The magazine was free to submit to and the response time was reasonable. But what really stood out for me was the level of editorial engagement. Editor Jill Adams was excited about the story but also wanted to see some changes. She included notes from two other editors about the story’s ending. I then went back and forth with her several times, each time showing her wildly different versions of the ending. I have a tendency to get a little panicky and bananas when I revise, throwing zillions of strands of spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Jill was wonderfully calm and patient with each version I sent her. I’ve never gone back and forth that many times with an editor. It was such a privilege. In the end, I’m pleased with how the story turned out. And they published it alongside archived work from Russell Banks and Javier Marias, which was pretty much a dream come true for me. - Becky Tuch
Add yours by filling out the form. I know it’s not as fun or rewarding as playing games of gotcha with assholes2 (one of my favorite things). But it is important to recognize the good when we find it, especially when it happens behind the scenes.
And, yes, if you are a paid subscriber to Forever Workshop, I am happy to send you some personalized lit mag recommendations based on what you write and your goals. I have to keep this to paid-subscribers-only simply because I have an absolute bullshit amount of work to catch up on.
→ Request personalized lit mag recommendations. ←
Gosh, anyone who visits this page and hasn’t taken the course will be confused.
oo-la-la
May Allah bless you ❤️✨
Loved everything about this course, thank you! A TON of effort on your part and you nailed it!
FYI, I clicked on a couple of links in this lesson (the Contribute and Request links) and got an error message: "You need permission, etc."