According to their submission guidelines, The Threepenny Review needs three weeks to two months to think about your unsolicited manuscript. Was my short piece so pathetic that they could turn it down in a week? Did they look at it?
I expected to get rejected, since they pay $400 for a story, and that's the mark of prestige in the literary journal family. With a record turnaround time, I have to wonder if they even took the time to look at the piece.
When I peruse back issues of different rags, I see an enormous amount of first person POV, in direct contrast to what literary agents say is marketable. Truth be told, I don't much care for the POV, with all its navel gazing and heavy pondering of life's great dilemmas, and I don't write that way. Apparently, one glance at my piece failed to turn up a single 'I', and that was it. Reject pile on that one.
Too short? Too far out in writing style? Maybe it was a little too out there, what with a lack of punctuation for the very miniscule amount of dialogue. Just being creative, there, sorry. Shall I edit the piece, and change the character to 'I'? Would the editors be better able to relate then?
There's other submissions out there, still waiting. Those might be the ones I never hear back from, I guess. In the meantime, there's the Mississippi Review edition, where submissions close on June 15 and they print on July 1. If they are going to respond to my sub, they should let me know soon. If they are going to respond. Is the ubiquitous no answer going to hold true for literary journals as well?
Time will tell. Everything is a learning experience the first time around.
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