Yesterday, I got the good news that my short story "My 12-Step Program for Yuki Hiramoto," which is part of my debut collection Atlas of Tiny Desires, was accepted by the Santa Monica Review. Of course, this is fucking awesome, not only because I've been sending the SMR submissions since oh, 2005, when I started my MFA program, but also because it's one of the best journals out there. Certainly, one of the top west coast journals. And, while I know the publishing landscape has changed a shitload since then, I happen to know that my friend and mentor, Aimee Bender, found her agent (Henry Dunnow) after she'd published her own story in the Santa Monica Review, so there's always hope when you're getting your shit out there for the world to see.
Going All Out
After a concentrated two weeks where LB and I saw both our families back to back, I'm finally getting back in the groove with my writing, revising, and submissions. And today I've realized that I'm going all out.
Recently, a bunch of my friends have been getting agents, then two-book contracts, thereby fundamentally changing their literary careers in the span of literally one year. A boy can only dream . . . Of course, because I'm human, I've been waiting by the phone too for the same phone call, waiting for the same miracle to magically transform my writing career into a solid object, but so far, I've been mostly stood up by publishing industry (literary journals have been much kinder to me). Agents are happy to tell me how talented I am, but their rejections are always about the fit. Truthfully, it's hard not to feel bad about yourself, especially when you stroll through the local bookstore and you see straight up shit on the coop. But I'm an eternal optimist, obviously delusional, and also very stubborn, so I'm not giving up. Not when I'm so close.
This leads me to the whole point I was making before I digressed earlier. Now that I'm back in action, I'm going all out, man. I'm submitting queries for NINJAS to a bunch of new agents soon (I'm still waiting to hear from three agents who are reading full manuscripts, but the longer time passes, the less hopeful I get). If Kaya rejects AMNESIA (they're taking their sweetass time, by the way), I'll send a query for it to fifty agents the next week. I just sent out several novella manuscripts to Plougshares and the Massachusetts Review. I'm also sending one of my best (and fave) short stories to several literary journals. Lastly, I'm sending my memoir to a few indie presses that I think would be a good fit aesthetically, conceptually, and structurally. Instead of staggering my submissions as I was forced to do during the school year, I'm now going full force. And that's not even including a screenplay I'll start revising/continuing this weekend about two bike messengers in DTLA.
And it don't stop . . .
When Your Hapa Face Becomes The Rule
I went to my first Mixed Remixed festival today at the Japanese American National Museum, and I have to say, it was an amazing experience. For the first time in years, my phenotype, my story as a hapa writer, my experience being biracial and multicultural (in my case, Japanese, French, and American)--was the rule of the universe. Being biracial and multicultural was normal, even common. It was fucking amazing.
Though simply the experience of being there and connecting with other mixed, biracial, hapa, and multicultural writers was enough for me, I really enjoyed the multimodal panel ofJamie Ford, Mat Johnson, Bryan Medina, Marie Mockett, Michelle Brittan, and James Tyner. Hopefully, I'll find a way to get on this panel next year for the next incarnation of the Mixed Remixed festival. That would be both fun and also an honor.
Kicking it with Ron Carlson because UCI
I met up and chatted with Ron Carlson today (the author of Five Skies, The Signal, and Plan B for the Middle Class,among other works) and I have to say, I thought he was pretty cool: smart, funny, interesting, observant, slightly offbeat. Aimee had introduced me to him being a UCI MFA grad and everything. Anyway, here are some of the highlights of our convo:
1. Unlike some compulsive fiction writers (à la TC Boyle and Joyce Carol Oates), he told me that sometimes he doesn't write for days and he really enjoys that perspective, the simple act of living, which gives him a good counterbalance to his writing life
2. He said he never wants to hate (his own) writing, which is why he never pushes himself to write when he doesn't want to write
3. He said that you can't force your writing. You can't rush your writing. And you can't quantify the quality of the work itself as if your writing operates on some point system. If you write one awesome page, that's better than say 50 meh pages
4. After I told him that I've had a bunch of agents asking for full manuscripts of Ninjas in the past year, and how Coffee House Press was still considering Atlas of Tiny Desires, my collection of short stories and how Kaya Press was about to give me their verdict on Amnesia very soon, he said: —You're busy. Then he said: —I hope you don't mind me giving you some advice (which I didn't), but don't get burned out, Jackson.
I told him I knew what he meant, but also that I tried to use one manuscript as artistic respite from another manuscript. So, for example, if I got sick of revising Amnesia again, I'd work on Dream Pop Origami, my experimental memoir. When I could no longer evaluate that manuscript effectively, I'd switch to Ninjas. It's my way to keep writing without hating the act of writing itself. So far, it's been working out pretty well.
5. I also told him that if he needs any more lecturers in creative writing in the future (it can't hurt to ask), he should hit me up. He gave me a knowing smile and then said he's got my email now, which was his way of saying "Nice way you snuck in your pitch like that but as you know since you teach here, our department is being ravaged by a Dean who just gave a bunch of lecturer positions to TA's from other departments."
6. I told him how much I'd learned from Aimee, one of his protégées, how she taught me to actually sit with my characters instead of whizzing by to the next scene and he seemed to appreciate that advice. He said that often the biggest mistakes fiction writers make aren't the obvious ones that workshops focus on, but the things they passed on up, the missed opportunities in their own fiction to let a character, a place, a moment, bloom for just a few moments.
Ultimately, there was a lot more I wanted to talk about with him, but our conversation came to a comfortable and organic lull after forty-five minutes and I was happy to leave it there.
Just as important to me, I know now that when I spot him in the bright hallways of UC Irvine in the next year, we'll recognize each other, which can only be a good thing for me in the writing universe.
Amnesia of Junebugs Submitted to Kaya Editorial Board
So last week, I finally submitted my completely reworked, revamped, and revised novel, The Amnesia of Junebugs, to the editorial board at Kaya Press. In case we just met, I sent Kaya a radically different iteration of this novel two years ago that had a different name (Blank) and also a different narrative framing device, among other wholesale changes. The board liked many things and disliked some other things, so I've spent the last two years working with Sunyoung Lee, Kaya's publisher, to address many of the big problems the board raised and also to rewrite this novel until it was a tiny bit awesome. I've been working on and off on this novel since 2007 when I finished it, which is oh, just 8 goddamn years!
But now this novel is something I love very deeply and am immensely proud of. I'm giving Kaya first dibs because Sunyoung has helped me so much making suggestions and also because I'm unbelievably grateful they're reading it again after 2 years. If you know me, you know I'm intensely loyal. Beyond that, Kaya is a great fucking press that publishes great writing about the APIA Diaspora with beautifully designed covers. But if for some--completely insane--reason they don't publish it, I feel confident that another press will. It is a very good novel. It is in fact, a great novel. It belongs with Kaya and the choice is now theirs.
Stay tuned!
So Three Literary Agents Walked into a Bar . . .
Yesterday, I got a request for a full manuscript from a junior and senior agent at Writers House, putting me in a unique and odd place: for the first time in my life, three (four?) different literary agents are reading full manuscripts of NINJAS at the same time. Usually, this happens in a staggered fashion: one agent this week, two agents next week, one agent the next month, etc., etc. Anyway, this recent synchronicity doesn't really mean anything except that I write a good query letter (and maybe that I have a dope second novel that's ripe for the market). Other than that, who really knows?
Still, it feels fucking good whenever I know an agent is seriously considering my work. What's not to love about that?
Still, it feels fucking good whenever I know an agent is seriously considering my work. What's not to love about that?
Poem To Be Performed at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music
My poem, "The Miracle of the Walking Fish," a bilingual immigrant narrative poem I wrote for David St. John's poetry/ composition workshop (where grad students, most of them poets in our PhD in Creative Writing and Literature program collaborated with grad student composers at USC who set their poems to music) will be performed at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music this Sunday. In the same class, I met the very talented composer Laura Kramer, who set my 12-section poem to music. It's a masterpiece song written for Baritone and acoustic guitar. "The Miracle of the Walking Fish" is a narrative poem about a young mexicano who travels from Baja California to LA to find his dad, and finds love by accident.
In a way, this poem is a love song for LA, celebrating its vibrant multiculturalism, its place as a host site for all the immigrant narratives Angelenos carry with them upon their arrival. In another way, "The Miracle of the Walking Fish" is a conscious and unconscious attempt to humanize the immigrant narrative, to celebrate and explore the passing through and between cultures, identities, roles, and dreams that's both a cultural metaphor of LA itself and also a cultural amplifier for the storytelling itself.
Great Rejection from Lisa Bankoff
JB,
I feel history about to repeat itself. I'm remembering when I
received a query years back from an unknown writer whose manuscript
caught my attention. I knew he had something exciting going on but I
didn't make an essential connection with the work-- didn't
quite 'get' it. I told him the truth, he found an agent elsewhere, and
has since had more than a few bestsellers. That unknown writer is
Christopher Moore.
With your book, I have that same certainty about its potential but
also that same underlying disconnect. But I want to recommend a
colleague who might be a good fit. His name is __________ and you can
reach him at wouldntyouliketoknow@literaryagents.com. Tell him I sent you.
Good luck and all the best,
Lisa
Lyrical Essay Pubished in The Boston Review
In perhaps the shortest turnaround the in history of publishing, my essay "The Day I Lost Rock 'N' Roll" (renamed"Jim Morrison, Where The Bombs Don't Fly") was published today in the always awesome Boston Review only one week after it was accepted! This piece is about the day I was searching for Jim Morrison's Grave in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris on the beginning of the Iraq Invasion when I ran into two German tourists doing the same. Together, we wandered around the cemetery as three foreigners until we finally found the rock star's grave. This lyrical essay explores the concept of war, memory, tourism and estrangement, and the impossibility of forgetting.
1st Piece Accepted in 2014
Today I got the best kind of email. Simon Waxman, the managing editor at the Boston Review, contacted me to publish my lyrical essay,"The Day I Lost Rock and Roll," at the BR. So, of course, my day became fucking awesome. This essay is part of my high-concept memoir, Dream Pop Origami. Be on the lookout for my essay in the near future!
Final Revisions Before Sending Manuscript to Publisher for Evaluation
Even though I'm leaving Chicago in less than two weeks, I'm trying to pack my whole life into cardboard boxes, see Chicago as much as humanly possible with my gimpy ankle, and also finish a third and final master revision of my debut novel, The Amnesia of Junebugs, before I send it to Kaya Press. Sunyoung, the publisher, who I've been working with for the past year, will then read my completely revamped manuscript, and then pass it on to the editorial board for a second evaluation if she likes it (I sent them a very different version of this novel a year ago after which, they asked for a rewrite). Anyway, I know this may sound like a sure thing, but the reality is, the editorial board at Kaya Press is really tough and I don't get the impression they agree on novel manuscripts very often. Either way, I can only hope they love this newest version as much as I do. If they do, this could finally be it. Could being the operative word here. Stay tuned, people . . .
Taking A Break from Journal Submissions
Getting rejections from literary journals is no big thing anymore. As an emerging fiction/nonfiction writer, you have to make your peace with rejections because you're gonna get a shitload of them. There will be times when you'll get nothing but rejections for months and months and months. More than you can possibly imagine. One year, I got over a hundred rejections. And what will fuck your idea of normalcy in this industry is that one day, one of your talented writing friends will get something picked up in a journal you've sent like a millions manuscripts to, and then you start to think: shit, maybe it can happen. Or: well, why not me? And writers need a certain among of unjustified faith to push through the inevitable rejection. They need something to keep them moving forward when the evil voice inside their head says, "maybe there's a reason why you're not publishing anything. Maybe you're just not good enough." So, a certain amount of unjustified and unbridled faith can be fucking crucial in the biz. Otherwise, we'd just give up.
I've published enough short stories and lyrical essays in enough legit literary journals and also received quite a lot of positive editorial feedback to know I'm certainly talented enough for this game. But, for the past couple years, I've been struggling with a complex feeling of appreciation and exasperation with the good rejection standstill. There are a bunch of journals, some of them very prestigious, that keep sending me good, sometimes even great rejections. And I'm incredibly grateful for them. I really am. At the same time, while I used to think that eventually I could turn a good rejection from a great literary journal into an acceptance (as I did with Fiction), I'm now starting to feel like the good rejection has replaced the acceptance letter. In other words, I'm starting to think that some editors are never gonna accept my shit, and the good rejection is actually a modern day consolation prize for the wall separating me from more famous authors with recognized agents. I mean, good literary journals are only publishing 2-4 stories in any given issue anyway, most of them submitted by agents or solicited from the editor herself/himself. The way the math works, some editors are simply never gonna publish you. Ever. And the rejection letter is as much a note of encouragement as it is a mea culpa for the stacked odds against you.
Maybe, that's cynical of me. Maybe, I've got it all wrong. But as it stands right now, I feel like I have to focus my energy of finding the right agent for my memoir and the right presses for my novels. Nine years ago, I'd be ecstatic with my publication history. Now, I'm like: meh. Not because I don't appreciate it, but because my best work hasn't even been published yet. It hasn't even grazed the future readership it'll have someday once my books are all finally out there in the world, ready for public consumption.
I've published enough short stories and lyrical essays in enough legit literary journals and also received quite a lot of positive editorial feedback to know I'm certainly talented enough for this game. But, for the past couple years, I've been struggling with a complex feeling of appreciation and exasperation with the good rejection standstill. There are a bunch of journals, some of them very prestigious, that keep sending me good, sometimes even great rejections. And I'm incredibly grateful for them. I really am. At the same time, while I used to think that eventually I could turn a good rejection from a great literary journal into an acceptance (as I did with Fiction), I'm now starting to feel like the good rejection has replaced the acceptance letter. In other words, I'm starting to think that some editors are never gonna accept my shit, and the good rejection is actually a modern day consolation prize for the wall separating me from more famous authors with recognized agents. I mean, good literary journals are only publishing 2-4 stories in any given issue anyway, most of them submitted by agents or solicited from the editor herself/himself. The way the math works, some editors are simply never gonna publish you. Ever. And the rejection letter is as much a note of encouragement as it is a mea culpa for the stacked odds against you.
Maybe, that's cynical of me. Maybe, I've got it all wrong. But as it stands right now, I feel like I have to focus my energy of finding the right agent for my memoir and the right presses for my novels. Nine years ago, I'd be ecstatic with my publication history. Now, I'm like: meh. Not because I don't appreciate it, but because my best work hasn't even been published yet. It hasn't even grazed the future readership it'll have someday once my books are all finally out there in the world, ready for public consumption.
Scoring an Awesome Teaching Job!
After applying to a gazillion tenure track jobs, visiting assistant professor jobs, writer in residence positions + creative writing fellowships in the East Coast, the Midwest and the North, eventually reality kicked in and I realized I needed more teaching experience (and a published book or two) before I started getting serious attention from hiring committees. At least in the cities that I want to live in. I'm close, mind you, but not there yet. So, then I started applying to lecturer positions and (to quote Morrissey) I was shocked and ashamed to discover that it was as hard, if not harder scoring a lecturer position because 97% of the recent PhD's, MA's and MFA's that weren't hired this year for tenure track jobs still had to pay their rent, so now they were all applying to lecturer positions instead. So, committees for lecturer positions are getting ten, twenty, even thirty times as many applications as they did for tenure track jobs. And while in some cases, universities definitely prefer candidates with a PhD, others (like UIC where I applied and was basically told that I was still not going to get a teaching position for unspecified reasons even though I was clearly qualified for the job) don't want the credential inflation because it means they have to pay you more.
Anyway, I won't belabor this point anymore except to point out that the academic market right now is fucking horrendous. There's just too many smart, published and qualified people with degrees and simply not enough academic positions for all of them. That's the statistical reality, grim as it sounds. Ultimately, for the past month or so it's come down to academic positions in California. A week ago, I finally got "the call," and I almost started crying. Crying! Anyway, I'll now be a full-time lecturer at UC Irvine, which has a dope English department and an equally dope MFA program, so it'll be an honor to teach composition/rhetoric there and be part of UCI's English department. On top of everything else, I get bennies, one of the best salaries I've seen for any lecturer position in the states, and some degree of job security (all thanks to a unionized adjunct labor force). And I get to move back to LA too! I totally lucked out, man.
I'm thrilled about this opportunity. Thrilled to be teaching again. Thrilled to be back in the West Coast. And thrilled to teach writing while I make it in LA as a fiction writer.
Writers Gonna Write!
LB: Say something sweet.
ME: In a land of orally-fixated, sugar-crashing teenagers, you're my lollipop.
LB: You're such a writer.
— Jackson Bliss ジャブ (@jacksonbliss) May 30, 2014
Warren Frazier Asks for Partial of NINJAS
Less than eleven hours after I sent him a query letter, Warren Frazier emailed me back and asked for a partial, which is of course both appreciated and shocking, to be honest. I'm not sure I've ever had an agent ask for a partial of NINJAS in such a short amount of time, but I'm definitely not complaining.
I won't get my hopes up at this point because it's just a partial. Additionally, NINJAS is very voice-driven and stylized, so it's not for everyone. I give agents fair warning in the query, but seeing voice-driven stylization on the page is always different. Also, Warren Frazier represents some motherfucking heavy-hitters in the literary world: Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Olen Butler, Adam Johnson, and Jess Walter, among others, which includes three Pulitzer-Prize winners ("Bob," as Julianna Baggott called him back when we talked long-distance on the phone from Argentina to Florida in 2008, Adam Johnson and also Frederik Lovegall, who won a Pulitzer in history for his book, Embers of War). So, I'm nothing if not realistic. Still, when an awesome agent is reading one of your novels, there's always a little room for hope.
I won't get my hopes up at this point because it's just a partial. Additionally, NINJAS is very voice-driven and stylized, so it's not for everyone. I give agents fair warning in the query, but seeing voice-driven stylization on the page is always different. Also, Warren Frazier represents some motherfucking heavy-hitters in the literary world: Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Olen Butler, Adam Johnson, and Jess Walter, among others, which includes three Pulitzer-Prize winners ("Bob," as Julianna Baggott called him back when we talked long-distance on the phone from Argentina to Florida in 2008, Adam Johnson and also Frederik Lovegall, who won a Pulitzer in history for his book, Embers of War). So, I'm nothing if not realistic. Still, when an awesome agent is reading one of your novels, there's always a little room for hope.
The Two Sentence Rejection
I almost never take rejections personally because they're a part of my profession, shitty and depressing as that is. And I wasn't offended by this lame rejection either because like I said, that's what I signed up for. But when applicants drop $25 that they submit on submishmash for a book contest in the tiny hope that their collection of short stories will be published, I don't think it's asking a lot for the rejection letter to be:
1. Gracious or sincere in a way that doesn't feel rushed
2. Longer than two sentences
3. Addressed to me.
The long and short is, I'm absolutely not gonna enter this contest again. I could have used that money to take LB out for dinner at The Loving Hut or bought 25 songs or three ebooks on iTunes or ordered new boxer briefs at Hugo Boss.com! Something's gotta give, and it's not gonna be dinner, music, books or underwear, I'll tell you that.
Thank you for entering our Juniper Prize competition. I am sorry that your entry was not chosen. I hope you will enter again in August 2014.
1. Gracious or sincere in a way that doesn't feel rushed
2. Longer than two sentences
3. Addressed to me.
The long and short is, I'm absolutely not gonna enter this contest again. I could have used that money to take LB out for dinner at The Loving Hut or bought 25 songs or three ebooks on iTunes or ordered new boxer briefs at Hugo Boss.com! Something's gotta give, and it's not gonna be dinner, music, books or underwear, I'll tell you that.
Thank you for entering our Juniper Prize competition. I am sorry that your entry was not chosen. I hope you will enter again in August 2014.
Sending Out Query Letters for Dream Pop Origami
I've been working on my awesome (totally sui generis), innovative memoir, Dream Pop Origami, off and on for the past year. Some of the essays I wrote back in 2002 when I was living in Portland but most of this memoir was written in the past year. The basic concept, though, has been marinating for at least a decade inside my noodle. Anyway, I can't give any specific details about my memoir--top secret shit--but I can admit that I'm finally sending out a few query letters to literary agents now that Dream Pop Origami is ready for public consumption. I've finally reached that stage for this manuscript. Stay tuned for the deetz, man.
Good Rejection from Upstreet
Dear Jackson Bliss:
I'm sorry to tell you that we won't be using the work you submitted to the tenth issue of Upstreet. This issue has not been easy to get into. Out of almost three hundred submitted essays, we will be publishing fewer than ten.
I hope you won't let this deter you from submitting to Upstreet again. We will always be glad to read and consider your work. Best of luck with your writing, and thank you for letting us read " . . ." which has been on our short list since we received it.
Sincerely,
V***** D*****
Editor/Publisher, upstreet
P.O. Box 105
Richmond, MA 01254-0105
http://www.upstreet-mag.org/
I'm sorry to tell you that we won't be using the work you submitted to the tenth issue of Upstreet. This issue has not been easy to get into. Out of almost three hundred submitted essays, we will be publishing fewer than ten.
I hope you won't let this deter you from submitting to Upstreet again. We will always be glad to read and consider your work. Best of luck with your writing, and thank you for letting us read " . . ." which has been on our short list since we received it.
Sincerely,
V***** D*****
Editor/Publisher, upstreet
P.O. Box 105
Richmond, MA 01254-0105
http://www.upstreet-mag.org/
Melissa Flashman Requests Full Manuscript of Dream Pop Origami
Less than 24 hours after I sent her a query letter for my conceptual memoir, Dream Pop Origami, Melissa Flashman wrote back requesting the full manuscript. In many ways, this is really awesome considering that she was one of the first agents I queried, in part because she's very forward thinking and is always looking for something that's bold, fresh and also deals with what it means to be human--all things I also care about deeply in my own writing. Anyway, I won't get my hopes up at this point but I'm happy to see her interest in my manuscript. She's exactly the agent, or the type of agent, I'd want interested in my memoir.
New Essay Published in the Huffington Post
