I Screamed Into The Void...
...and the Void said nothing.
This is me venting. From 1988 to 2025 I have had 28 fictive forms (short stories, flash fiction, hybrid something-somethings), 6 poems, 2 novellas and 2 novels published in the university and independent press. I have been on 2 podcasts and have been interviewed 4 times. I don’t have a massive following but those I do have are loyal and have been gracious enough to contact me from time to time. And I am grateful for everything this has gotten me (enough money to buy groceries for a couple of months). The money isn’t the thing. I was warned years ago my stuff isn’t “commercial” so I learned to expect it. And I’m proud of the record, as any writer would be.
But lately my batting average is 0 for 2026. I currently have 23 submissions on my Submittable listing, and so many email and website-form queries and submissions I can’t rightly count them anymore. Well, I could, but I’m too lazy. Let it suffice to say that the total number of things I have “out” for reviews totals well over 50 venues. Maybe close to 70. It’s what you have to do when you aren’t Stephen King.
But what I’ve noticed is an increasing number of publishers who aren’t taking submissions anymore. Some have been closed up for years. And places I submitted to last year are joining that list at an alarming rate.
The closest I’ve come to anything worth mentioning is that my novella “Secrets of the Younger Brother,” was a finalist in the Fugere Book Prize contest. $1000, publication, and copies. But I didn’t make it. I’ve had an aversion to contests but I did it anyway, if nothing else, to see where I’d fall if I did it. So there is a little juice to enjoy in that it made the final cut. I consider that a win, but the piece has also been rejected about a half dozen times in the past 18 months. So I dunno…
The funny thing about that piece, for those who’ve read my stuff, is that “Secrets…” is as straight a fiction as I could write. No poetics, stream of consciousness, experiments with punctuation, no invented words… you know… RW’s usual screedlike behavior. No sex, no gratuitous violence, just a fable, clean and simple. I’ve had so many people tell me I should write it straight, but my history says my weird stuff will find a home eventually. So despite the modicum of success (if you can count being a finalist as success at all) “Secrets…” has enjoyed, the advice I’ve been given just doesn’t seem to want to wash.
But now - it’s the silence that’s getting to me. I have submissions on my Submittable list going back to last November. Another one from December. They’ve been “In-Progress” all that while. Not to mention the one that was “In-Progress” since August of last year where the publisher had to send me an apology for not finalizing the “Decline” on the board and letting me know it wasn’t accepted.
I’m getting kind of pissed off at publishers who want contact only via email or through a form on their website. In just about every case the communication just sits there, never answered. I know the usual rule is “if you don’t hear from us we’re not interested,” and having run a small publishing house I understand all the reasons. But it’s starting to feel like the no-reply thing is their “out.” It’s to the point where an actual response from that direction, even though a reject, is welcomed. Because I’m in a desert lately. Nobody is fucking talking out there!
And it plays with your head. It plays with your head so much that this morning, as I submitted yet another orphan, my cover letter was something like twenty words. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t a good idea, but what the hell. I’m screaming into the void and the void stays quiet.
/rant.
I know most of you don’t bother to comment, but I keep trying to entice you readers to engage. Feel free to spew your own particular rant below. Because if you guys are quiet about it I’ll probably take that extra whisky before dinner tonite, scrunch myself up in my official writer’s bulky sweater, and curl up in a ball. For God’s sake somebody say SOMETHING!
Doesn't the nature of a void imply that no reply will be forthcoming? And I'm not trying to be snarky. It's just that there is so much competition for people's attention these days that editors probably burn out quicker during reading periods, if they even bother having them at all. I've submitted to places that fold after the first issue. I rarely bother submitting anywhere anymore. I'm not even reading these mags, so why should I send them work? And even if a piece gets published, what are the chances it will actually be read by more than a few people? For those of us writing unconventional work, there are even fewer chances. From what I've seen in the one corner of the small press scene I'm more likely to pay attention to, it seems like it's mostly just a core group of people publishing each other's work. Kind of like a political echo chamber.
Also, perhaps not directly related, but Bookstagram has contributed to the fetishization of books and grossly heightened a trend in performative reading that started with Goodreads et al. I reckon there's a significant percentage of users on there who aren't doing much actual reading. How would they have the time? Most people don't actually write about the book--they post a photo of it next to a cup of coffee or a beer, with no caption, and the post gets 300 likes. More directly to your point, people aren't going to post about an unknown book unless maybe there's something in it for them. This is the cynicism of late-late capitalism. It's hard to innoculate against.
I understand how you feel and it reaches all the way down into the earth beneath my toes. I’m at the point now that I’m just going to put myself out there on my own and let the chips fall. I don’t have the time and energy to play any elaborate games, or actually that’d be any games, with publication. I continue to write. I no longer submit. I know it makes no sense but at least the void is familiar to me? It does feel like there’s a hidden curriculum in publishing, and I don’t have my secret decoder ring handy.
I’ll market myself a little when I have a collection together, or when I finally get one of these novels out of edit - but yeah. As above with the decoder ring, a coal mine metaphor is apt here, but I left my canary topside.