I may have made a mistake. A big one. Maybe.
This refers to the last post I made where I compared "The Shine Journal" and "Sorcerous Signals". First, I want to say why I said what I said. To me, the name of the name game is to get published. To get published you have to get noticed. You get noticed by getting into the big magazines. To get into the big magazines, you get into the small ones first. At least that's my battle plan. The purpose of this blog is to track my progress and leave an account of what I did or how I did it. However, in doing so, I may have seriously sabotaged my ambitions. I made... a 'boo-boo'.
What I wrote about "The Shine Journal" offended someone at... "The Shine Journal". The editor wrote back to me, cited some lines I had written that described said magazine as being unprofessional. She told me that I should not judge the credibility of a magazine based on how it responds to acceptances, and should have been grateful for the acceptance. She said that "The Shine Journal" has been online three years, won awards, and was putting together a "best of" anthology. She said she does not send out contracts because she does not want to waste paper. She closed by saying that I was blacklisted from ever submitting to "The Shine Journal" again.
Of course, I never expected said person to come to this site. I always wrote this blog as if no one was reading. And unless I've got my Google Analytics set up wrong, no one is. The site got only 26 visits last month. Total. And yet, this one entry found its way to the editor of "The Shine Journal". If I had published it a day later, maybe she never would have seen it. But it doesn't matter.
What I'm saying is--everything you write on the Internet is there for everyone to see. You must expect that everyone is reading it. And thus, you must be careful of what you say. Visit Lamebook for some real life examples. A writer's tool is his words and words can hurt. Perhaps using the word "legit" was incorrect. I did not mean to imply that "The Shine Journal" was a scam site. I'm sure it is not.
But words tell the truth, and I, as a fiction writer, have a duty to tell the truth. I never sought to besmirch "The Shine Journal". What I did was I make an opinion. I had to make a judgement call and I called it like I saw it. That "The Shine Journal" would read such an entry, not to mention take action on it, never entered my mind. And it shouldn't.
I thought a lot about it, whether or not I should reconsider what I post, my blogging style, in case someone doesn't what I have to say. Someone with power. But that would be a policy based on fear, not on knowledge. I don't believe I did anything wrong. I told the truth. I thought the way "The Shine Journal" handled my acceptance was not as professional as "Sorcerous Signals" did. I did not feel that they regarded me as an author, just as a contributor. I did not receive any form of contract or instruction on how I would be paid.
Think about it. If you have two job offers for the same position--one sends you a nice e-mail welcoming you to the company, here's the company website, here's a copy of our application policy, here's a map of the campus, you go here to sign in, there'll be a 2 hour tutorial before you meet your boss--and another e-mail that just says "you're hired, see you on Thursday". Which one sounds like the better job?
So I stand by what I said, although I've recast it here. You can disagree with it. You can take action on it. But you cannot and will not affect what I have to say. I find it ironic that the editor of a literary journal couldn't handle criticism. I believe I made the right decision, both in which magazine to go with, and how I conduct myself on my blog. I can't let the potential opposition stop me from saying what I want, as long as I'm honest and composed.
So what have we learned? Am I going to stop talking about my experiences with magazines and how they make me feel? Well... I don't know. I'm definitely going to think more carefully about how I word my criticism, not just for the sake of my own career, but because word selection is an important skill in a writer, and should not be taken lightly.Labels: blogs, complaints, criticism, editors, free speech, language, submissions