• photo of redhead hugging roses
• porno tube tall mother with long legs
• read sad stories
• roommate uncircumcised
• rose mexican snoball pants
• sex tubes that show men jerking off in front of womem
• she liked his dick
• sister tries to stop boys pulling down her shorts & panties after school
• the dish ran away with the spoon ceramic plate
• there are 7 incarnations necessary to becoming an artist: explorer (courage) 2. surveyor (vision) 3. miner (strength) 4. refiner (patience) 5. designer (intelligence) 6. maker (experience) 7. artist
• trapped and shrunk by a giantess then eaten alive
• tip for cab driver who returns lost phone
• trapped and shrunk by a giantess then eaten alive
• william shatner she stripped in front of him and asked him he liked what he saw
• mouth and nose throbs after i eat
• male potency pill amsterdam
• i am sitting on my father lap my father slowly plasing hand on my stomach
• he’s not my boyfriend, but i love his smile, his hugs, the way he looks at me
• he dreamed he was wearing nylon stockings
• everything i know about sex, my aunt taught me while i was still unexperienced boy
• can the umbilical cord be mistaken for a penis?
• after they had gone to bed i stayed up taking to b . i put my hand on her thigh

This list is by no means comprehensive or prescriptive.

1. The writing simply wasn’t good, where good quantifies a subjective combination of the ability to garner the reader’s interest and the ability to tell some kind of story in a way we have not yet seen. It is okay to tell a story that has been told before, but if it isn’t being done in a way that is interesting, your submission likely won’t work for us.

2. There were an excessive amount of typographical errors. We are human, we will overlook one or two but when we can’t get through a sentence without tripping over mechanical flaws, there will be trouble.

3. Some element of your writing touched upon some personal quirk we might have. For me, it is cats. Weird, I know, but excessive literary treatments of cats are simply too much for me. All four of us have little quirks so it’s not really your fault if you step into this minefield. Just try again.

4. Your story was good, but not good enough. In a conversation with another writer over the weekend, he said to know the difference between your major and minor works. I think that is excellent advice for all writers. We want your major works.

5. Writing overly informed by current events. We’re in a recession. We know. We got the memo and everything. We’re also aware of the war in Iraq, the recent election, etc etc etc.

6. Writing that clearly demonstrates a lack of familiarity with the work we publish. Sometimes we get really wonderful writing that would be more appropriate for a more traditional market. While we enjoy and publish all manner of writing, there are some styles we prefer over others.

7. Form-based writing where the form is just there to be there, but doesn’t significantly contribute to the narrative. In other words, if the story (or poem or whatever) can exist without the form, then there’s no need to have the form (ie. a list or   similar conceit).

8. Writing about dreams where the creative work is clearly more about the writer letting the world know about his or her dream than anything else. A personal blog is a more appropriate venue for that sort of thing.

9. We really enjoy experimental work but there’s a difference between experimental writing and nonsense. Your writing has to have a purpose. We may not see it at first but we would like you to get us to a place where it somehow comes together.   You can’t just string some words together in a nonsensical manner and think that you’re part of the literary avant garde. Experimental writing is, in many ways, an art. Be an artist.

10. Stories about marriages are tricky because there are so many out there. If you’re going to choose this trope, tread carefully. Stories where the husband is dissatisfied or the housewife is desperate, we’ve read those. We’ve also read divorce stories. Your characters feel trapped. Their lives are over. They hate their children. They love their children. They want children. They had children. That’s all well and good, but show us something we don’t already know about these couples.

11. Excessive gore. We don’t have any guidelines about content because we never want to close ourselves to potential but if you’re going to use gore, as with form, it needs to have a purpose and it needs to propel the creative work toward something grander. If you want to write about a serial killer, fine, but the bar is set at the level of say, Showtime’s Dexter. He’s a pretty interesting serial killer.

12. An overdependence on song lyrics. When there are more lyrics than prose or poetics, you’re letting someone else do your work for you.

13. You have a great story but we can’t find it because your writing isn’t well-organized. Know where your story begins and where it ends.

14. Your poetry is overly maudlin or self-indulgent. That’s not enjoyable to read.

15. Sometimes, we read poetry where it seems that the writer has taken a paragraph of prose and arbitrarily created line breaks and stanzas. Poetic form is a complicated thing and can’t be taken on haphazardly.

16. Thinly veiled political rants. There are more appropriate venues for political essays. We respect your leanings but again, that type of writing is not what we’re likely to publish.

17. Trying too hard. Sometimes we get submissions where the writer has perhaps read our published works a bit too closely and then tries to imitate a given style or writer in the hopes that their work will catch our attention. We can generally see through that sort of thing. Imitation is the highest form of flattery but we prefer originality and are more interested in your voice than your imitation of another writer’s voice.

18. Discourteous behavior. You said something we didn’t appreciate in your cover letter and by that I mean something really rude and/or obnoxious. This happens rarely, but we’re pretty polite and we appreciate when that politesse is reciprocated.

19. Writing where the writer has yet to meet an adjective and/or adverb they don’t like. Description is nice but there such a thing as too much a good thing.

20. A lack of authenticity. We don’t believe in that   write what you know commandment that is constantly making the creative writing workshop rounds but we do believe that you should write what is real and if you don’t know what it will take to make your poem or story or whatever authentic, then write something else. Having said that, real doesn’t mean we’re only interested realism. We enjoy magical realism, surrealism, etc.

21. Something we can’t quite put our finger on. Sometimes, we get submissions that are competent but for whatever reason, they don’t sit well with us. There’s no rhyme nor reason to this. It is unfortunate but it happens.

22. The basics–no plot, silly plot, unrealistic plot, poorly drawn characters, over reliance on dialogue, insufficient dialogue, and so on.

23. And this goes without saying—your submission, in some egregious way, doesn’t adhere to our guidelines.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, submit!

Did we mention we’re having a contest?

The winning story of Blake Butler’s This is Not Not a Contest has been posted at Lamination Colony. It is interesting.

Storyglossia is accepting submissions for a music obsession themed issue in October.

PANK 4 is mostly full. We are primarily reading for the web right now. If we accept for print, it will be for PANK 5, which will be released in the second half of 2010 (pending funding) or in January 2011 if our status quo does not change.

McSweeney’s is looking for new columnists.

The June issue of Word Riot is up.

There is a new Memorious.

There’s new Necessary Fiction.

There’s a new online magazine called Electric Literature and they pay $1,000 a story. How they’re going to sustain that is certainly unclear, but we shall see. I read the first issue on my Kindle and it was pretty darn good.

This Musical Theatre Dictionary has little to do with PANK but it is simply awesome.

I had been hearing things about Dzanc Books Creative Writing Sessions. I was intrigued. Last week, I submitted a short story I’ve been working on, and chose Matt Bell as my mentor because I enjoy his writing. The process was painless. I e-mailed Dan Wickett my file, and he forwarded it to Matt, then Matt sent Dan his edits and comments, and Dan sent them back to me. It took less than a week. The go between part I found a bit strange BUT I understand privacy concerns. I also know writers, and I’m quite certain there are people out there that would send their mentors no fewer than 1,741 follow up e-mails. That just wouldn’t be good.

In the critique, there was a lengthy note discussing the larger editorial perspective, as well as line edits.

The critique I received was so thorough and thoughtful that I don’t even know how to talk about it without sounding like a blabbering idiot. There was no pandering or pretension. The critiques served the better interests of the story. Editorial suggestions included reorganizing the structure of the piece, getting rid of   subtitles throughout the piece, omitting two sections of the original, a question about the title and so on. Matt also asked some really pointed questions about whether or not certain elements were appropriate, really forcing me to think about what the story needed versus what I needed. He really addressed some of the weaker writerly things I tend to do like overexplaining things and writing self indulgent nonsense. And he did all of this firmly but kindly. There were also some very generous compliments. That’s always nice.   He also suggested some markets that would be good for the story

My two favorite lines from the critique:

Sorry, I can’t let you use the “if my life was a movie” line—You never, ever need it, and it’s in way too many stories already. You get the exact same effect without saying it.

This is the end of the story. If you disagree, I’m willing to fight you for it.

Awesome, right? Literary Death Match is on.

I have no doubt that all of the mentors involved with this program are equally insightful and generous.

I enjoyed the experience so much that I think others should benefit from this program as well.

The first two people who leave a comment here will get two hours each with the mentor of their choice.   Ready, Steady, GO!
ETA: The sessions have been given away. The lucky winners are Molly Gaudry, Lauren Becker, and Shome Dasgupta.

Via Ashley.

Over at HTML Giant, Drew Toal has an interesting review of Harper Perennial’s Fifty Two Stories project, which pairs big names in literature with innovative and lesser known writers. Yay to those providing life support for the written word!

On Wednesday, we talked about things editors can do to sustain their publications. Today, let’s have a chat about the ways in which writers can do their part to keep the world a happy writing place.* Again, this is not rocket science but sometimes, important things bear repeating.

1. There are all kinds of writer’s guidelines out there. Some are long, some are short. Some are complicated and specific, while others are more ambiguous. However you may feel about a publication’s guidelines, follow them. Guidelines are not written just to blather on about administrative details. Guidelines are a set of rules that ultimately make   editors’ lives easier. You want to make lives easier. A properly submitted manuscript makes for a happy editor. A happy editor is more inclined to enjoy your work. That’s what we call math.

• Word Counts: You are not the exception to the rule. If a guideline states that a magazine doesn’t accept work longer than 5,000 words, you cannot submit a story with 5,001 words. You really really can’t. I will personally reject that sort of thing unread, not because I’m evil but because it is a slippery slope and soon you’re reading 8,000 word stories that might be brilliant but are largely unusable for your purposes.
• File formats. If an editor asks for a PDF, do not send a Word document and assume that it is okay. It isn’t. If a magazine has specified a preferred file format, they have a good reason for doing so. If you can’t, for whatever reason, accommodate their request, query first. They may be open to working with you. Having said that, it is 2009. If you are a writer, you can use Word or Open Office and save your work in any file format an editor could possible want. If you are using Word Perfect, stop. Once in a while, we get .wps files. We can’t open them. I repeat. It is 2009. The Word Perfect train has left the building. Take some time to mourn, then move forward.
• Fonts. It is indeed very exciting to have so many fonts at your disposal, but true power is knowing when to use it. Stick to a common serif font (Times New Roman, Georgia, etc), and for the love of all that is holy, please do not use Courier New. While it does give you the nostalgic simulation of writing with a typewriter, it is so very hard to read on a computer screen. Sometimes, I don’t even want to read a submission if I see it in Courier New. Yes, I could just change the font, but why make editors work that hard?
• Type size. 12 point. Not bigger, nor smaller. Make it just right, for the Goldilocks in us all.

2. If you are submitting to a print magazine and your work includes images, make sure that they are available or that you can make them available at 300 dpi or higher, or they will look like crap and that’s not good.

3. Cover letters are nice. We’ve already discussed how much we love them, but it bears repeating. Even if you just send a handy list of previous publications, at least acknowledge that you are interacting with other human beings. If you’ve been asked to submit, say by an editor at AWP, provide a little context like, “hey, we had a great time chatting at the AWP bookfair. I was the one who told you about my pet tiger.” When an editor sees that, they’ll remember you. If you’re vague, you may well be out of luck.

4. Unless you have been explicitly asked to do so, don’t submit to an editor personally. Use the e-mail address or submission manager as indicated in the guidelines. When you circumvent the chain of command, you may be wreaking havoc with tracking systems and reading procedures.

5. Patience is a virtue. Most editors are writers too. We understand the frustration of waiting to hear back from a magazine. There are any number of reasons why some magazines have long response times–small staffs, tenuous funding, a high volume of submissions, personal issues, etc etc etc. If you are going to query about a submission wait until the guidelines indicate that you should query. If you’re querying too early or too often, you’re simply adding to the length of time it is going to take for an editor to respond to your submission.

6. If your work is rejected, and your ego is bruised, it is not nice to say unkind things about that publication. They may well have overlooked your genius, but there are literally thousands of magazines out there. Unless you’ve been submitting photocopies of your diary (true story!), your work will be accepted somewhere and then you can think, “Take that, mean editor!” Win/win.

7. If you have been published by a magazine, stay in touch. You don’t necessarily need to update editors on every   shift and turn in your writing career, but when something you deem important happens, drop your friendly editors an e-mail. Help them promote you. Or just say hi. It is nice to get e-mails from past contributors. They always always make my day.

8. If a magazine has print and online imprints, don’t submit unless you are comfortable with your work appearing in either medium. Sometimes, we get cover letters stating that the writer is fine with online publication so long as we include their work in the print edition. That sort of preference is fine but that sort of statement is also called blackmail and blackmail is against the law. It is also not very nice. Print publication is expensive, and 1/100 of the writers who submit to a given magazine subscribe. You can’t have it both ways. Which brings me to…

9. Subscribe to a couple magazines. You can’t subscribe to every publication to which you submit. That is simply unrealistic. And expensive. But you can throw your support to a select few that catch your eye. Every subscription helps.

10. If your work has been rejected, take a breath. If you’ve been given feedback, think about it, let it simmer a bit.   Submitting a new manuscript the very same day you’ve receive a rejection isn’t necessarily wise. We can remember what you just wrote and that may or may not be a good thing.

11. Read. Please. Read.

12. If your work has been accepted and you receive editorial correspondence, respond within a reasonable time frame, particularly if galleys are involved. For example, we give authors 72 hours to review their galleys before we go to print. If you don’t get back to us within that time, there’s not much we can do if you find a mistake a couple weeks later.

13. Don’t submit something fifteen seconds after you have finished writing it. Again, let it simmer. Sleep on it. Take another look in the morning. If it is still as good as you thought, then proceed with sending it into the world.

14. Recommend magazines you like or who like you to writers you may know and respect. In the past several months, we’ve gotten some awesome work from writers who have been sent our way by writers we’ve published without even knowing that this networking was going on. In corporate America, I believe they would call this synergy.

15. Edginess. There is edgy and there is absurd and betwixt them there is a line. Find the line. Avoid crossing it, because sometimes, there are submissions and we start to think they were written by serial killers and then we get scared.

Feel free to add your editorial advice to writers in the comments.

*I have broken all of these rules. I am a bad writer.

PANK Magazine is pleased to announce its first writing competition, 1,001 Awesome Words. And we think it suits the PANK ethos to leave it at that.

Not enough, you say? Need key words, you say? Explode. Excite. Intrigue. Surprise. Blow. Our. Pea. Sized. Brains. Any form or formlessness, 1,001 words or less. You know who you are. Now go to it.

Prizes and Fees

Yes! Prizes!

1st Place: $750* and publication in PANK 4.
2nd Place: $500* and publication in PANK 4.
3rd Place: $250* and publication in PANK 4.

Yes. An entry fee, too.

$15 for one entry; $25 for two entries. Each entrant will receive a copy of PANK No. 4, out in January 2010.

*For the sake of transparency— We realize entry fees are controversial—acknowledged. Whether you believe us or not, this isn’t a reading fee—we consider it a privilege and pleasure to read your work. While we are hoping this will make us some money, we mostly want to hold a contest and we want to pay the winners, and we want the winners to truly benefit from participation. That said, the announced prize money is predicated on getting enough entrants (we don’t anticipate a problem). However, if PANK draws a prize pool less than $1500, we will announce how many entries we received, and we will pay the three winners on a graduated scale of 50%/33%/17% of the total prize pool. Good news last—if the prize pool exceeds $2000, PANK will lock its profit at 25% and increase the prize pool accordingly.

If this doesn”â„¢t suit you, please do not participate.

To Enter

1.      Pay the entry fee. Go to https://www.pankmagazine.com/subscribe.html and click on the “Paypal Buy Now” button and “Contest Entry Fees.”
2.      Make a note of your Transaction ID. You will need to submit a transaction ID with your contest entry.
3.      Email entry(ies) to contest@pankmagazine.com, subject line “AWESOME CONTEST ENTRY.” Include your PayPal transaction ID in the body of the email along with a brief bio and your preferred contact information. Attach entries as .doc, .pdf, or .rtf attachment.
4.      All entries must be original and previously unpublished.
5.      All entries will be considered for publication in PANK.

6.      Deadline for entry is midnight, September 30, 2009.
7.      Winners will be announced on the website in October, 2009.

Questions

If you have any questions regarding the contest, e-mail awesome@pankmagazine.com, subject “CONTEST QUERY”.

I get a lot of questions about what it takes to start and sustain a journal and while I don’t have any profound insights, I’m happy to share some of the things I have learned. PANK was founded in 2006 by our esteemed editor M. Bartley. (ETA: He has some additional thoughts in the comments below.) For Issues 1 and 2, it was mostly a one-man operation supported by student editorial assistants. The endeavor was and remains a labor of love. He is better able to discuss what it takes to get a magazine off the ground because he’s been doing this since PANK was a zygote. I consulted for PANK 2 and came on board full time for PANK 3 so I’m going to talk about what it takes to sustain a magazine once it becomes a toddler and starts walking around, getting into trouble. This is not rocket science. Most of what I have to offer is stating the obvious.

1. Have a good idea

Don’t try to be everything to everyone. At the same time, don’t be so invested in a niche that you’re not open to work that doesn’t fit your narrow guidelines.

2. Follow through.

In my experience, many journals start strong, but then fizzle out because the editorial staff gets distracted or over-committed, or burnt out, all understandable. But when you look at the magazines that are well-respected, love them or hate them, they have often succeeded because they have stayed the course. Knowing what little I do about what it takes to keep a publication sustained, I have the utmost respect for magazines like Prairie Schooner and The North American Review, Ploughshares and AGNI and so many others who have weathered fluctuations in funding, staffing, reader interest and writers while consistently publishing quality writing. It’s not as easy as it looks.

3. Be kind.

Treat readers and writers well.

Your writers:

• Sometimes, a little title and a fancy e-mail address makes editors assholes. That’s not necessary. It’s one thing to be snarky when faced with 171 submissions about cats, for example. We are only human. And yes, there’s a fair amount of bad writing in the world but either be constructive or don’t say anything at all when you respond. Pointing and laughing is tacky.   It’s really not nice to be cruel to the very writers who make your publication possible.
• Respond to submissions within a reasonable amount of time. If you can’t respond to submissions within 90 days, you may well have a priority, time management or staffing problem. Everyone gets behind. We have before, we will again, but we make a concerted effort to respond to all submission within thirty days. This summer, we’ve been even faster. It keeps things moving along nicely. It keeps writers happy. If you fill up early, well, you fill up early. When I see 300-day response times   on Duotrope, I get it but I lose it a little. I really do. Maybe that’s just me.
• Develop relationships with your writers and promote not only the work that appears in your publication but the work they have published elsewhere. Visit their blogs. Comment once in a while. If you see work of theirs elsewhere, make a note of it on your blog. We get excellent writing from excellent writers and we do not yet pay for the privilege. I find that humbling. We really believe in honoring that kind of support and it has benefited us immensely.

Your readers:

• Attending AWP 2009 was very illuminating. I went to one well-respected journal’s table and a guy was sitting behind his table in skinny jeans with his crazy hair, wearing sunglasses while he leaned on the hind legs of his chair. I was there to purchase some issues of his magazine. I was there to spend money on literature, and he could barely be bothered to acknowledge my presence. That’s not necessary. You are not special because you’re sitting behind your little table with your disdain and superiority. I didn’t need a parade, but I did need him to like take my money in exchange for his product without making me beg. Now I really have no interest in ever reading that magazine again. The issues I bought remain at the bottom of a very tall stack of things to read. They are dead to me. I am mad about the $15 I spent. It is burning a hole in my soul. Long story short, respect your readers, whether in person or via the Internet. It is a small world, and news of bad behavior travels fast, not that I’m going to name names.
• Conversely, one of the best experiences I had at AWP was at the McSweeney’s table. They were funny and kind and seemed interested in what I had to say. They ended up getting a lot of money out of me as a result. They made me want to read their publications. They made me want my writing appear in their magazine, despite their inordinate response times. They know how to treat their readers.
• Fulfill subscriptions in a timely manner.
• Provide a good product. Be consistent. Keep things interesting by remaining open to new ideas and approaches.

4. Ask for help. Offer help.

Recently, we realized that we needed to upgrade our website to a content management system, but we don’t’ really know how to implement Drupal. We put a plea on our blog, and a very very kind soul responded. Soon we’ll have a new website. In exchange, we’re going to help their publication out using the skills we have to offer. One of independent publishing’s greatest strengths is the collaborative nature of the work, and the willingness to help where needed, that so many people demonstrate. If you’re going to be part of the community, be part of the community.

5. Be open to new technologies. Make sure you know why you’re using them. Use them well.

Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, our blog and our website have been invaluable in furthering the PANK project. These tools allow us to connect with new audiences. They allow us to promote our work and our writers. They allow us to publish monthly issues, for free, to supplement our annual print issue. They allow us to learn about other exciting projects in the independent publishing world and have interesting conversations about the state of the written word.

At the same time, sometimes publications use technologies without a clear sense of purpose. At one point, we had a MySpace page because we felt like we should, but then we realized that we didn’t really want the page, or need it, or have a clear reason for using it, so we got rid of it and tried to streamline our online efforts. You’re always going to have these missteps. The most important thing is to make the necessary corrections. It’s also important, again, to be consistent. If you’re going to have a website, keep it simple, accessible, easy to navigate and nice to look at. Update it regularly with fresh, free content so that people have a reason to keep coming back. A regularly updated website also helps you keep your brand (forgive me for using that word) relevant. For us the website (ever evolving) has been a small investment with huge dividends.

If you’re going to have a blog or a Twitter feed or a Facebook page, update them regularly. One of the things that drives me crazy is going to a blog that hasn’t been updated in months. If you’re not updating a given social networking tool regularly, you don’t need it.

6. Respect the people you work with.

This one, I think, is self-explanatory.

7. Love what you do.

The best magazines are the ones where you can clearly see how well-loved they are. These publications are refreshingly free of cynicism (not that there’s anything wrong with that), and are very invested in promoting great writing. Magazines like Caketrain, Hobart, Keyhole, Monekybicycle, decomP, mud luscious and many, many others, are endeavors where you can clearly see that they are assembled by people who are passionate about their work and enriching the world with outstanding writing.

8. Support other publications and presses

The best gift you can give an independent magazine or press is to buy the things they publish. I read mainstream stuff all the time but I also make a real effort to read the stuff that our peer publications are doing, both online and in print.

9. Invest in the tools you need to make your life easier even if it means using Evil Corporate Products.

I don’t use open source software, for the most part, because I don’t have time or energy to learn it. You don’t need to buy fancy software packages to get things done. There are lots of journals that use open source, free programs very successfully. There are also other fantastic alternatives to what I’m about to suggest.   I’ve found, however, particularly in terms of web publishing and print publishing, that it is well worth the investment to get a copy of Adobe Creative Suite. If you are at all affiliated with a university, there are steep discounts available. We paid $300 for CS4 Premium. If you’re not affiliated with a university, you probably know someone who is. Ask them to snag the software for you. There are also other ways to obtain the software that involve searching, say, a torrent search engine, not that I know anything about that. The best thing about Creative Suite is that it is very powerful and integrated. You can lay out your magazine in In Design.   You can export In Design files in e-book formats. You can create publications for mobile devices. You can make PDFs and edit PDFs. You can design websites. You can edit images. And do all these things in formats that are cross-compatible and all the programs (Dreamweaver, InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc) have a similar interface so once you get the hang of things, you’re able to move between programs without going crazy. Also, it’s 2009. Can’t we all get on board with the latest version of Microsoft Word?

10. For print journals, develop a good relationship with your printer and understand what you need to provide them with so they can succesfully execute your project.

Working with printers can be overwhelming. Printing is expensive and detail-oriented. There’s a whole language they use that can be bewildering. Here‘s a good place to start to familiarize yourself with some of the lingo. One of the most expensive aspects of printing is that so often, publications send improperly formatted files to printers who then have to make a lot of time-consuming and costly changes before they can execute your project. Knowing what needs to be done beforehand can save you a great deal of money. As an aside, another advantage of using Adobe Creative Suite is that InDesign will check your files to ensure they are properly prepared, and then package everything including images and fonts for you to send to your printer.

11. Evolve

For the other editors out there… what kinds of things have you learned about what it takes to sustain a magazine and or small press?