Respondez Vous

At the beginning of the new year, I sent out six queries. A month later, only one agent has responded. After previous incarnations of the query fell flat, I revised the letter and hoped to get a few answers back to gauge the quality of my humble request. With only one rejection coming back, I can't tell if the letter is no good, or good enough to be put aside for a second read, or not worth pursuing at all, even if a SASE was enclosed.

Then there are the literary journals, not noted for speed when it comes to accepting short fiction. The Carolina Quarterly asks for four to six months, which is a long, long time to wait. Yet here I am, waiting on the novel excerpt that I sent to them in September. Crab Orchard Review is another slow one, with a response time running three to five months. It's been over five months for me, so does that really mean, as they suggest, that the piece is being seriously considered? Or did it just get lost in the mail? Same thing with the Missouri Review, which offers a turn around time of 10 - 12 weeks. Thirteen and counting for me...again, serious consideration or lost in the mail?

Writers of literary fiction are in particular need of publication credits, since everyone need a platform. The time has come to take a break from the querying, and to wait patiently for the responses from the literary journals that must surely be coming soon. Maybe, just maybe, I'll garner a couple of credits to put into a bio paragraph that proves someone thought my prose was worth printing. In the meantime, I've got another manuscript to work on, the sixth one I've begun. Sooner or later, I'm bound to figure this business out.