Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 8 Comments

The Grinder

Some of you (if not all of you)  have at one point or another submitted a story to a magazine. Those more experienced may have suggested to you a site called Duotrope. So was I. I’m not a member there, though it’s easy to see how well-built the site is. It’s been a while now since Duotrope started charging money for its service. I’m here to let you know of an alternative submission tracker/magazine database.

I use a submission tracker called the “The Grinder” (you can find it here) . The site is still in beta and it has been on beta since I first used it, almost two years ago. It may look very simple,  if you are used to Duotrope, but it delivers exactly what it advertises. Did I mention it’s free? The owners have been working to maintain it and keep it up to date with as many fiction literary magazines or at least as many as users submit to them. It’s not an easy task, considering the amount of literary magazines out there. Not to mention the ones that come and go. Currently,  the Grinder lists magazines for fiction only, but they are trying to start listing magazines for non-fiction and poetry. It’s still unclear when they will have made such listings available. When I talked to them about it, they said they were working on it. Oh,  yes,  did I mention their support is very helpful? I often suggest magazines to them, and they get back to me within the day with a comment, a redirect (if they had already listed said magazine), or a simple thanks.

How does it work? Simple. Register with a valid email address and start exploring for a suitable magazine. There are two ways to search for a suitable home for your story.
You can either search directly by name (if you know the name of the magazine you’re interested in) or you can make an advanced search. For the latter,  you can set the parameters according to what kind of magazine you’re trying to find (genre, style, type of story, length in thousands of words,  response time, market qualifications, etc). You can also exclude certain magazines,  which is very helpful if one of your stories is already under consideration by a magazine which refuses to read more than one story per writer at any time. Once you click on search, you will get a list of magazines that matches your criteria. Click on the listing you like or think it’s suitable for you and you’ll be taken to a more detailed view. There you will find information about the payment the magazine offers (though that is something you may or may not have set as a parameter for your search),  about the minimum and maximum response time, the percentage of acceptance said magazine has, and a brief note taken directly from each magazine about what they want to read. At the lower half of the page,  a chart will display the amount of acceptances/rejections vs time (in days). The red bars show rejections, their height represents their amount, whereas the green bars indicate acceptances. If you submit something to said magazine, you will see it as a purple dot on the chart, but only after you have listed your submission to the Grinder. Which means you can track your submissions with it. There are links to the magazine’s page, as well as their submission guidelines.

Once you submit a piece to a magazine, make sure to click on Log Submission. If you have already added a story, you can choose it from the drop down menu (“Please select a piece”). If not, you can enter it then (title,  word count etc). That way the statistical information about the magazine will be more accurate for the rest of us 🙂

At the top of every page in the Grinder to the right, there’s a link that reads My Dashboard. There you can track your submissions, your profile, and your stories. Just click on Manage Pieces, then Add Piece, and you will be asked to enter some information about the story (title, word count, etc). Click Add Piece,  and that’s it.

Obviously I haven’t gone through every available option at the Grinder. I will probably get back on this at a later point with more information and perhaps some images. Perhaps I could contact the moderators and they can provide me with more information about it. I do hope it helps you with your submissions, especially if you’re looking for an alternative to Duotrope (and a free one). If you know any other similar sites, please let me know. I’m thinking of starting a separate page here with resources for writers, and the more submissions trackers or any other kind of resources and tools we have in one place, the better it will be for the readers.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 3 Comments

Inspirational prompt 13

I like black and white images. I don’t know why, but they have a certain appeal to me. Somehow, they seem more authentic. Perhaps it’s because they allow me to recreate a story in my mind of a time I never knew, where things were different, and yet not so different from today. Bottom line is, my imagination gets to run wild. Maybe I’m a person who would have liked to live in the past. Maybe my mind is stuck in the past.

What if the guy sitting at the end of the bar was a mobster? Do you see the look on the employee’s face? What if the employee is looking at the door, at someone who just stepped in? Perhaps your POV character, perhaps a regular, or another mobster. The first guy has his back turned to the entrance. Do you smell a gunfight?

What if the supposedly mobster is in fact a shy guy, a good fellow, who just performed a good deed, perhaps prevented someone important from doing something bad, perhaps saved someone from a mob boss? What if he thought he found the only place where reporters wouldn’t find him and stopped to get a coffee? What if whoever stepped in, is a reporter and if he takes his picture, the gangsters will find him?

What else do you see?

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 3 Comments

The importance of literary magazines

Ten or so days ago, I submitted a sci-fi cyberpunk short story (damn, that phrase has a lot of S sounds in it) to a professional magazine named Sci Phi Journal. I’ll be honest with you, I really like this story. I like all my stories, they’re like my babies, but this one had something that really clicked with me. Perhaps because of the philosophical implications that most dystopian/post apocalyptic stories have on me. For the record (and this is the hook of the story), it’s the story of a small time crook, who tries to survive in any way possible, in a world where time is the only available commodity and everyone lives to work. Basically, each person is implanted with a timer that shows how much time they have left. Once it goes to zero…

Anyway, at the bottom of said magazine’s submission guidelines, the publisher requests potential contributors to talk about the magazine. The reason for that is there’s no way for the magazine to continue exist and pay professional rates, unless people know the magazine and buy it. And that’s true for every magazine. So, it got me thinking.

Now, there are thousands of magazines out there, most of them short-lived. Which is sad. In fact, one of the magazines I got published is now permanently closed (although in their guidelines they say they are on a hiatus). Which saddened me even more. I couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty in some way. Maybe if I had advertised my work more, maybe if I had done this, if I had done the other, and so on. Bottomline, it’s just sad. I understand it’s how the market works, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

So, I was thinking, what would happen if all magazines were to go bust. In a few words as possible, there would be no more places for publication for us aspiring authors. That in turn means, that fewer people would have the chance to perfect their craft, which in turn could either lead to fewer people going after their dream, or that the big traditional book publishers will end up with a slush pile of lower quality. And that will lead to either fewer published books or of poorer quality (assuming they lower their standards to continue publishing a certain book number per year). For some of us (and I include myself in this category), these publishing credits may be the only ones we’ll ever get to see. Quite frankly, I like seeing the byline with my name, don’t you? It’s not a matter of vanity or cockiness. It’s a reward for our efforts on its own, even if we submit our work to a non paying market.

So, I believe it’s important to support magazines (the small ones more than the bigger ones), and through that, the aspiring authors.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

One year anniversary and Inspiration prompt 10

It’s been a year since I started this blog, and 150 of you have followed me and my weekly ramblings. Thank you all for the support and the advice you have offered!

For the past two years, when I decided to put pen to paper (or rather, fingers to keys), I feel like I’ve stepped through the threshold of another world. A nice world, not without difficulties and disappointments, but certainly with a lot of fun.

I think the following image relates to that. It reminded me a bit of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust. Wouldn’t it be fun if we could enter different realities or worlds by just opening doors and stepping through them?

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 6 Comments

The art of writing, is editing

For the past few weeks I’ve been editing my novel and three short stories. Though in the past I’ve always edited my short stories, only now that the stakes are high enough do I see how important, I mean REALLY important, editing is. In my mind there’s no doubt about it: writing is all about editing.

My editing process is somewhat… strange. Perhaps it’s because English isn’t my native language. Perhaps it’s just because my first drafts are in worst shape than the ones the well-known writers produce (yeah, I know I shouldn’t compare myself with them, but I can’t help it. I want to be traditionally published and to make it happen, I feel I have to be better than them. This is what I meant earlier when I said “the stakes are high”).

The first thing I do, is to restructure each sentence and each paragraph. I’m never satisfied with the way I write my sentences, even after several edits (language barrier and related linguistic insecurities apply here).

Once that’s done, I activate my macros. Yes, I use macros for specific mistakes I know I make, and yes, they’re more than one. I have one for filter words (which somehow still seem to make their way to my drafts) and another one for useless words (like “very”, “that”, “just”, “even”, “There was”, “there was”, “there were”, “There were”, “actually”, “practically”, “literally”, “suddenly”, “really”, “again”, “Again”).

The third step deals with how I use the word “as” in a sentence. That’s a tricky one to deal with. I often use it in a sentence when I shouldn’t. The following example is from http://blog.janicehardy.com/2010/04/re-write-wednesday-dont-tell-me-why.html (Bob ran for the cabin as the zombie swung at his head.) In this example the AS implies that both actions happen at the same time. The problem is that’s not the case. The second part of the sentence is the reason why the first part happens. The zombie attacks Bob and because of that, Bob runs away. Using AS here is wrong (though “wrong” sounds so strange when it comes to a creative art like writing, no?). Still, I not only overuse that word, I flood my MS with it. Hence, the need for yet another macro to evaluate each occurrence of that word.

The last editing step (for the first round of edits, mind you) is the worst of all; my incomplete macro for adverbs. I consider it an incomplete macro for two reasons: 1. some adverbs don’t have the -ly ending (https://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/adverbs-manner.htm), 2. That last step should include adjectives as well, but given the nature of the words (they don’t have a special ending), I can’t include them in a macro. Which means I have to go over the entire passage and highlight every single word that’s an adjective. Why is that bad? I’m a perfectionist when it comes to doing something that I love. What’s wrong with that, you ask? Humans make mistakes! I often miss them because I either fail to identify them (oh, language barrier, if only you had a face I could punch…) or because my brain has turned into mush and I fail to notice them.

Once these steps are done, and I’m ok-ish with the results (I tried using the word “satisfied” instead of “ok-ish”, but alas I couldn’t! Not even for this post!), then I turn to beta readers and critiquers (if such a word as critiquers exists). And then a new round of editing starts, which includes the above but also their suggestions. Grand total of edits? As I mentioned in a previous post, between 9-12 up to this point.

What happens after that to my MS? Well, then and only then can I say it’s no longer in its first draft status.
Is it ready, you ask? A few weeks ago I would have said yes. But these past few weeks I’ve been reading Self-Editing For Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King (http://www.bookdepository.com/Self-Editing-for-Fiction-Writers-Second-Edition-Renni-Browne/9780060545697  or if you prefer Amazon,  http://www.amazon.com/Self-Editing-Fiction-Writers-Second-Yourself/dp/0060545690/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421593167&sr=8-1&keywords=Self-Editing+For+Fiction+Writers

Now I cry every time I finish the steps I mentioned earlier, because I realise there’s SOOOO much more that I have missed.

I was about to send my cyberpunk short story out to a well-respected, VERY well-paying, professional magazine. Who was it that said that manuscripts are never perfect but simply abandoned, meaning the writer refuses to work on it any more and considers it ready for publication? Yeah, I’m not ready for that yet.

Back for another round of editing. Yay!

P.S. See how I knew I’d fail point #1 from this post? Will there ever be a time I won’t have to compare myself to those better than me?!