I made my way through another set of lit mag submissions a few days ago, actually – while watching Mighty Ducks 2 with Jordi, inexplicably. At any rate, I had a nice list kept of what I submitted where so when I inevitably get picked up by one of these brilliant literary magazines who can see my genius through the thin veneer of my eloquent prose (kidding), I’d be able to let the rest that I’d simultaneously submitted to know that they hadn’t moved fast enough and were just out of luck until the next time I go throwing submissions around, and weren’t they sorry now (kidding again).

And then my computer’s powercord fritzed out on me, the whole thing crashed, and I’d never saved the notepad file. So dragging myself through the M-Z listings of Newpages I managed to figure out where I submitted (er, mostly), but not necessarily which piece got submitted to where. Folks, don’t be me. I’m an idiot. Keep better track of these things. Anyway added to my previous list are:

• Natural Bridge
• /nor
• Passager
• Permafrost
• Rainbow Curve
• Redivider
• The Salt Flats Annual
• Watchword

I feel like there were at least a couple more – Marginalia being one that sounds particularly familiar – but I have no way of being sure. From now on I fully intend to either save my files right away, or to have a hard copy of all of this stashed somewhere that I can’t accidentally lose because my computer is a piece of junk. Or maybe what I really need to do is just not let myself get so distracted by Gunner Stahl. Hmm…

Edit: Mostly for my own records, this afternoon I sent out another three; Fever to the first two and Chinook to the third:

• Artful Dodge
• First Intensity
• Ellipses 

After spending a very listless and uninteresting afternoon watching the Tigers lose another baseball game and whining about lacking the money necessary for a good therapeutic shopping trip, I got a call from Finny which, although it didn’t really even consist of much writing discussion, served to remind me that I was being a lazy jerk, and that all those lit mags I’d intended to submit to at the beginning of the summer (and had then been infuriated to learn that most of them had closed submissions until August) were taking works again.  So I buckled down and worked my way through A-L section of lit mags at Newpages.  I was stymied in my efforts by only having five stamps on hand (SASE’s are a bitch!), but in the course of two hours I got through eight submissions (the last three of which were electronically submitted) and bookmarked a good 7-8 more that I’ll finish up with once I acquire stamps, before I move on to M-Z, and 4-5 more that aren’t taking submissions yet but will be soon.  So far I’ve covered:

•  580 Split
• Alaska Quarterly
• Caketrain
• dANDelion
• Filling Station
• Black Clock
• Compass Rose
• Fence

I sent Fever to the first five, and another short piece called Chinook to the next two.  The final accepted up to two submissions at once, and thus I sent both. Originally I intended to split the two more evenly, but for some reason Alberta likes having lit mags I could see myself getting accepted to – and Chinook is set in Calgary, where I have never been and yet presume to know all about thanks to things like Wikipedia entries about freeways and national parks.  Needless to say, I do not feel ballsy enough to try that quite yet.

The turnaround on most of these is about 4 months to a year, and the acceptance rate is somewhere around 3% – but I feel good about both of these pieces and the feedback I’ve gotten on them, so here’s hoping!