Dear Writers who post resumes/bios with “Pushcart Nominated”:
Stop. You’re embarrassing the literary community. You’re embarrassing yourself. Because let’s do the math: Duotrope has 3,375 active literary journals. Let’s assume 15% of those submit to the Pushcart Prize.
So 500 journals each nominating 6 stories/poetry apiece = 3,000 nominations a year.
Multiplied by the past two decades = 60,000.
60,000. You’re really going to brag about an accomplishment that 60,000 other writers share? Is that even an accomplishment?
You’re like people who brag about getting on the longlist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Guess what? Everyone who submits a book gets on the longlist! It's all-inclusive. You only look good to people who don’t have the slightest clue how the prize works. To anyone in the industry, you look like a wannabe douchebag.
Yeah, yeah, we know, you have to get promoted and most people in your department don’t have a clue what the Pushcart is; you need to appear important in your bio so people will fete you and buy your book and not think you’re wasting your life pecking at a keyboard.
But to people who know what a Pushcart Nomination means, it looks desperate. Especially when you don’t list what journal gave you the nomination. Because we know it’s not Tin House, it’s more like Podunk journal run by an MFA fail from his parent’s basement in Arkansas.
Caveat: "Special Mention" people, I’m not talking to you. Mad props to you. Because you made it to the shortlist, that top 100 action in the back of the anthology. That actually means you beat out a mess of people, so keep listing that. Special Mention is way different than Nominated and don’t let anyone tell you different.
And to the haters who diss me because they think I’m jealous because I haven’t won a nomination, you’re wrong. I have. I just don’t brag about it or put it in my resume/CV because it doesn’t matter unless I win.
Just because we live in a culture that tries to have as many prizes as we have publications, because we believe in high self esteem and rewarding everyone who tries, that doesn’t mean you have free reign to artificially exalt yourself. No. You need to get some self-respect. You need to show some self-restraint. You need to man/woman up and earn your writing epaulettes.
Sincerely,
A Writer Respecting the Pushcart
Indeed. Getting nominated by the same editor who already liked your story well enough to publish it isn’t that big of a deal, especially if that editor is promoting the journal as much as the writer.
agreed, pretty lame to boost your bio with P nominations, although, you certainly come across as a douchebag, too. i assume that is what you were going for.
I don’t think that’s what bucket list means.
I’ve never been nominated. Maybe I should submit to lesser journals?
@Jack: Absolutely.
@Boris: Your goal should be to find the smallest, most insignificant journal out there.
Makes sense. Why put something like down if it didn’t lead to something concrete?
Sort of like me listing my one and only publishing credit from 2009 in my writer’s bio when I’m querying. Doesn’t really impress anybody besides my family and friends, if that, so why make myself look like schlep in the process.
The post is entirely valid, but I wonder why the “open letter” is being posted without a name. I think the bad ass tone lacks something without a bad ass author.
Dude. It’s me. BookFox. Fully bad ass. Just hit the “About the Author” link on the left. I stand behind all pronouncements made on this blog, whether serious and rational or crazy and hyperbolic.
OK. I’ll be the non-bad-ass contrarian here. But I don’t see what the big deal is.
In fact, publishing a story anywhere is goddamned hard enough. You find the one place of the millions out there who likes your craptastic story, you should tout that journal and then go around and brag the hellz about it because here’s the deal:
No one flippin’ cares anyway.
Not your writer friends. Not your mom. Not your priest. Shit. Even if you get a notable publication in a place high up on Perpetual Folly’s Pushcart nomination list, I behoove you (am I using that word correctly?) to really find someone who gives a shit. Half your writer friends are either A. working on something that has nothing to do with short fiction anyway–their always goddamn novelists or some shit who have agents, and they look down upon any published short story; or B. they actually have never read any of your work or the journal it has appeared in anyway. The other half of your writer friends are poets, playwrights, CNFers working on shit that equally doesn’t matter to you. (How many halves did I mention there?)
You know who does care. The damn editor who accepted your piece in the first place. Listen to him or her, strangle-hug him or her, and bragz the flying F out of their zine because the chances of you convincing another schmuck to like your crap is a million to one. Literally. There are a million lit journals and you happened to find the one journal that liked your stupid story. And you’d turn your nose up at that? Come on dudes and dudettes. Who the hell are you?
Unless you’re one of five writers in America (and I suppose Canada and maybe a few other quasi-American speaking countries) who can expect a call from the New Yorker, you should just assume your story is shit and it won’t be read by anyone.
So, writers-who-turn-their-noses-up-at-the-only-lit-ragz-they’ll-ever-get-published-in, I bid thee thus: Play with the first damn dog who sniffs your butt. Then yip your nutz off.
100% of the world doesn’t care where or how you were published and the infitesimally small percentage who does care knows how flippin’ hard it is to get someone to, first, read your work and , .B., get someone to actually like it.
Be one of the 60,000. Print out your Glimmertrain finalist certificate and paste it to the back window of your car. Goddamnit. Make a bumper sticker that says “I’m a published Hint Fiction author.” And tell all your cousins that you placed a poem at poetry.com and you have the 1996 anthology to prove it.
You’re writers, you bitches. Everyone hates you and no one cares.
Jesus.
Mark
man, my bio would be so lame if i didn’t make stuff up. no one would publish me otherwise, ever. everyone knows it’s 50% the piece submitted and 50% bio.
jack has or will be published in douche, shite mag, and digital a*_h*L_. he is known by his friends as the only real bad ass left on the planet.
@Mark: you are awesome. Start a blog with rants like that.
@Jack: When I was a fiction editor for a literary journal, I found made-up bios. I read their piece and thought there was no way they’d been published in Top Ranked journals. Google proved me right.
However, I also found bios that I thought had been made-up, but were not. Their pieces were so full of dreck I wondered why another journal had accepted them.
Haha, Mark, you loser. Glimmer Train doesn’t give you a certificate.
ahh … @ boris?
No. Shit.
Sorry. I should have been clearer.
Print out your pdf email that lists your name as either a finalist or Top 25 and paste that bullshit to the back of your car window.
Everyone in the world will be astounded at your accomplishment. Maybe you even won one of the 12 competitions they have a year. Hell, maybe you have gone so far as to pay for a couple of rejections.
Tout that shit, baby.
Damnit! I didn’t want to do this again. Shit, man. OK.
Glimmertrain is able to stay afloat because of their monthly goddamn competitions. Those competitions stay afloat because douche bags like us, who don’t know any better, actually pay to have people read our work. Every time we cough up 20 bucks for their New Writer comp, or Short Fiction comp, or Family Christian Values comp, Jane and Mary–or whatever the shit their names are–say to themselves:
“Hmmm, here’s a new jackass who just paid me 20 dollars to read his or her stupid as hell story. It’s dumb as shit, but I want them to keep sending me crap and paying me 20 dollars to read three words and reject them so my, admittedly, subpar journal can keep publishing stories and actually make a profit (as opposed to the majority that operate from donations or from universities and are of decent quality). I know it’s racket, but you know what? We send our finalists pdf emails of their totally stellar (yet illegitimate) Top 25 or finalist performance. We even tell them to put it on their resume because that’s going to really improve their career.”
But best of all–yes, best of all, Boris–sending out that one little pdf of your awesome Top 25 performance is basically like the slot machine stopping three cherries right above the jackpot line. You are going to feel like you almost made it.
And you–knowing how totally awesome you are as a writer–will say to yourself, “Shit, dawg. I almost won that son of bitch. That family values competition was in the bag with my “experimental” story about two star-crossed lovers meeting at a bar that only serves Tequila-fucking-sunrises. Those Glimmertrain ladies were way into that. They’re going to be way into my next crappy story about two star-crossed lovers who meet at a coffee shop that only serves mocha-fucking-chinos. They will be amazed. I am going to win that twelve hundred and fifty dollars and think I am the man or woman. I will be in McSweeney’s next month. And then, who knows? I’ll probably be at Yaddo doing blow off the next up-and-comers butt cheek and breaking windows and writing the next great piece of shit for the New York publishing gaggle to masturbate over. I am that sweet dot com because I got an email form from Glimmertrain that says:
“Although your work did not make it all the way to the top 25, it did make it a long, long, LONG way through the judging process (top 3%) and you are a finalist in the Spring 2007 Short Story Award for New Writers–nice work! (If you log in and click on “My Submissions,” you will see that designation.)
Be sure to mention your finalist status as you send your stories out into the world.”
Wow. That IS pretty great. I feel good about myself now.
**This is a late revision to my previous rant. But, there is a big difference between a zine with an editor who actually likes your work and a flippin’ racket that convinces poor as shit writers that they’re getting somewhere with their works … not to be confused with lit mags just trying to stay afloat by charging for operating costs, like Missouri or American Short Story … ‘they’z be legit, yo’ (in the parlance of Junot Diaz, I guess)
Zine means someone liked your shit. A Glimmertrain e-mail means there’s a profitable lit journal (one of the few) who wants more of your scratch.
Damnit. I hate myself.
Mark
Dude, we should start our own journal and give our ACTUAL certificates for the top 1,000 stories. But we’ll call it the Supreme Mille award, so it will sound foreign and impressive. And we’ll charge 19.95 to beat them at their own game. And we’ll be super rich! Are you in, Mark? I’ll write the rejections because you just seem like you love crushing souls, which would hurt our bottom line.
Can I be godfathered in like some kind of super-important Editorial Board member?
This sounds like a fantastic idea, Boris. Man!
If you got the rejections covered, I’ll take the submissions because I’ll gladly give our slush pile better attention than what most slush piles receive at hoity-toity lit journals. I’ll throw them all straight in the trash. Instead of giving our submitters hope of publication, we’ll just go ahead and be transparent about the whole deal: ‘Submissions will be deleted upon reception. Hope you like your certificate.’ First 1000 submitters will get our coveted Supreme Mille Award.
Probably should set up an email account with an auto-response that sends the e-certificate. Anything else would be way too much effort. We also may need to convince a first-year MFA’er to write the certificate, one who still believes in the possibility of a career as a short fiction writer. You know, we don’t want to come off too cynical.
I think we’re on to something.
Bookfox, your namesake will likely have to appear on this thing. Hope that’s OK.
Yes! As long as I get credit somehow, my life will be complete.
Also, check out the competition: Journal of Universal Rejection.
http://www.universalrejection.org/
Well, I am probably the only person who will comment here who got Pushcart nominated for the first time in 1976 (twice, I think, and that ‘twice’ made me realize it was no big deal.” It was ever thus from Bill Henderson’s day.
It did make me happy to get nominations the first couple of years, but I never would tell anyone because it meant nothing. I actually was listed in the back of the book a couple of times in the 70s and 80s and I would never put that on my CV or anything.
Bless you, John Fox, bless you.
@Richard Thanks for the support. We need elder statesmen to tell our young whelp writers how to have dignity.
@Tod Somebody had to say it, right? And by the way, you were hilarious for the Chris Adrian/Aimee Bender Festival panel. Loved that one.
“And to the haters who diss me because they think I’m jealous because I haven’t won a nomination, you’re wrong. I have. I just don’t brag about it or put it in my resume/CV because it doesn’t matter unless I win.”
I’m betting this was the point of the whole post. You just wanted us to know that you’d won a nom. Very sly!
@Katy You caught me! I’m going to write a post like this every time I get nominated, just to brag without bragging.
doesn’t it stand to reason that you then never mention any publication credit, because the magazine publishes, say, 30 stories/year, and you aren’t special? the p nom is basically saying something just slightly better, that you made a cut at a publication. I don’t understand your logic? yes, lots of people get nominated. so? why would ever mention where you were published then? more people are published than receive p noms…why do you mention you have a MA? do you have any idea how many people have masters degrees? I think you should mention all of it. if when you’re cynical, you’re cynical all the time, not just with p noms. logic fail.
@Sheila You should mention publication credits because most journals only publish 10 or so a year, as opposed to 3,000 Pushcart nominations a year. It’s a matter of statistics.
I know it makes you feel good to get a nomination, and that’s important and I congratulate you, but from an editor’s perspective (someone who has read a staggering number of cover letters), it matters absolutely zilch.
As far as listing my educational background, I believe my Master’s degree was slightly harder to get than a Pushcart nomination.
Also, I think you’re missing the point with your analogies: a pushcart nomination isn’t something real. It’s the potential to win something. You’re just up for a prize and therefore haven’t won anything at all. Publication in journals and educational degrees are real things that an individual has actually achieved. So perhaps the error in logic is your own.