A dear friend of mine who works as an editorial assistant at a small press has some things she wants you to know:

1. The title “Editorial Assistant” does not mean that this unfortunate person is *your* personal assistant. He/She will most likely be dealing with upwards of 60 different projects in various stages of publication. Depending on his/her seniority, he/she may be essentially doing three different jobs while being paid generally less than your average janitor. Please attempt to understand this state of affairs, and frame your questions/concerns/panic attacks and/or neuroses accordingly.

2. Do not assume that your Editorial Assistant (or even in some cases your Editor) has actually *read* your manuscript. We do not have time. Provide helpful summaries where requested, and do not be offended if he/she is confused and/or impatient when you launch into a description of why it is necessary that your manuscript be 50,000 words over its contracted length to fully delve into the theory behind the argument. We don’t care. We care about explaining to marketing why we have a 500 page book that we have to price at $150 in order to make any sort of profit.

3. 500 page books priced at $150 do not sell. Frame the length and breadth of your project accordingly.

4. If you and your Editor agree on a due date of August 10, 2005, do not turn in your manuscript on December 31, 2005, and then complain that your book did not make the Fall 2006 season. We give you due dates for a reason. Yours is not the only project on which we are working. Understand that delays on your end result in delays on our end. Either meet your deadlines, or accept that your project will be delayed.

5. When in doubt, read the directions. When not in doubt, *read the directions.* Publishers have a style sheet or other such instruction document for a reason. Please use it. If you are incapable of following instructions, perhaps you should not be writing a book.

6. If you are not capable of mastering the basic functions of Microsoft Word, hire someone responsible to do it for you.

7. Do not attempt to make your manuscript look pretty. We employ people to do that. They are called “designers.” They are better at it than you are.

8. Do not send 50 images without labeling which image is which. You may know each cast of a Victorian engravings by sight, and be able to match them with their captions accordingly. We do not.

9. Sending in your final manuscript means, in essence, that your manuscript is *final.* Do not attempt to make “just one more small change” three or four times in the following weeks. Each “small change” results in between 20 minutes to an hour of work on the other end.

10. If you are kind to your Editorial Assistant, he/she will be kind to you. Your project may move more quickly. He/she may be willing to help you with seeking permissions. In the end, everyone will be happier. Conversely, if you are dismissive, rude, or overly demanding, he/she may unfortunately misplace or forget about your manuscript, or discover another project with a nicer author that suddenly has a higher priority.

1. Does anyone want to share a table with us at AWP? If so, hit us up at awesome@pankmagazine.com.

2. If you’re near Atlantic City, you do not want to miss this:

When we first started this blog, we didn’t really have a plan. We thought it might be fun to have a conversation with ten or twenty folks each week and get news out there about our work.  Since that first, tentative post last September, this has always been a collaborative effort.

Our initial posts were mostly about announcing new issues and sharing links of interest and whatnot. We’ve evolved in ways we didn’t really expect. Now we’re sharing opinions and interviewing folks. We have no idea what we’ll try next.

We have been very pleasantly surprised that you all seem to enjoy reading the blog as much as we enjoy writing for it. Today we’re listing some of our favorite blog posts from the past ten months. It’s like the very special recap episode of your favorite show, only better!

Matt gets analog.

We randomly, psychotically rant about why cats and literature rarely go well together.

We go to AWP. Day 1 is promising. Day 2 we hold a minor, fading hope. Day 3, some (ALL) of us are hung over.

We get an awesome rejection response from an angry poet.

We feel old and crotchety and fret about some things.

We answer some FAQs.

We write a love letter to cover letters.

We examine some definitions of PANK.

We talk about stories that stay with us, for better or worse.

We offer some thoughts about sustaining a successful literary magazine, maintaining an aesthetic, and how to be a considerate writers. We then proceed to ignore all our suggestions.

We get a random, awesome Polaroid in the mail.

We explain why your submission may have been rejected.

We advocate for honest arrogance among writers.

We share an awesome spam message and then the real life   subject (who had nothing to do with the spam) responds!

Admin note: If you won a copy of the Short Story Month book from Dzanc, you will get your copy. They didn’t arrive before I went out of town. They’ll be sent out on August 15, so hang tight!   And despite our editorial wanderings, we do remain open for business in all other ways. God bless the Internet. Amen.

Corey Mesler, author of “Rock Paste” from Cezanne’s Carrot:

I became a reader late in life, around 18 or so, after public schools spit me out onto the sidewalks of a hot Southern city, leaving me there to fend for myself, to beg bookishness, to beg knowledge, to beg literary coin of the realm, from kind passersby. I wanted to educate myself about books, assuming there was more to them than what I had been fed in high school. After I graduated I visited a small branch library and stood in front of the fiction wall and said, “Teach me.” The three books I plucked from that wall, like plums from a pie, were Kafka”â„¢s The Metamorphosis, Vonnegut”â„¢s Cat”â„¢s Cradle, and Camus”â„¢ The Stranger. What recondite power led me to these three books, which still, here 35 years later, resonate within me like a plucked harp string? It”â„¢s a mystery.

As I taught myself books, as I read, hither and yon, here and there, helter and skelter, Heckle and Jeckle, Jekyll and Hyde, I discovered something important about myself. I loved experimentation; I loved the experimental writers. I loved the guys and gals who were taking language apart and putting it back together with their own spit. Joyce, of course, Woolf, of course, but also David Markson, Raymond Queneau, James Tate, Donald Barthelme, Flann O”â„¢Brien, John Barth, and on and on. These writers spoke to me in secret code, in a private tropology. I didn”â„¢t always understand but I followed anyway.

Hence, as we say, experimentation became my badge, became my shield. And I was reminded of my childhood desire to be an inventor. When I was in my room or my backyard, mixing things, dreaming of discoveries previously hidden from the eyes of Man, I was really laying the groundwork for a different kind of experimentation, one having to do with words, with novels and poems that reached for the metaphorical stars, from their own jerry-built Towers of Babble. Rock paste became a shorthand phrase for that kind of foolhardy bluster, that kind of rodomontade, that kind of, say it with me, freedom.

Find links to what other writers have to say about their work here.