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MDP

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Everything posted by MDP

  1. MDP
    Ditto. The first time I applied I just picked the most competitive programs possible and did zero research on location, price, whether I would even like living in a given region, etc. Lol. My follies...
  2. MDP
    I'm sure I'll be in this boat soon enough...none of my schools have notified yet, so I'm just sitting in the waiting period purgatory. Not sure if I'll feel better or worse once my rejections come in. At least then I'll know!
  3. MDP
    Another day of waiting...? Googling "how to not go insane"
  4. MDP
    Does anyone have a rough list of which programs interview and which accept without interviewing?
  5. MDP
    Another note for @oatcrust: beware of contests when you're still building up a thick skin for rejection! Contests are usually a great way for a publication to make some money off of a huge submissions pool and a famous judge, and your chances of being published are substantially smaller than when you submit to lesser known journals. I found it useful to send my writing to smaller journals at first, then try to work my way up. I still have never sent work to any of the literary titans, haha. I've been on a submission hiatus for the past several years.
  6. MDP
    When I was submitting and publishing, I would pick between 10 and 20 journals to submit a piece to on Submittable. You can filter submission calls by genre, price to submit, and submission deadline. Main thing for me was casting a wide net. Usually I would get all rejections, so I would edit the story and send out another batch after that, then rinse and repeat until a journal wanted to print it. More often than not, the pieces that got published were ones that I sent out to at least 15 different places. Almost every piece will get rejected before being accepted somewhere, so keep editing and don't give up Re: submission fees, my rule is to never pay more than $5, MAYBE $10 to submit somewhere. I don't have the coin to send out a high volume of submissions to journals that charge their artists a $25 reading fee. And high volume is key! If you don't mind paying for a yearly subscription, duotrope.com is a great database of places to submit to. It also includes acceptance rates for each publication and a way to track all of the places you've submitted work to, whether it was rejected, accepted, etc. I think a year of Duotrope was about $60 when I used it years ago.
  7. MDP
    Haha. Wish I could say the same. I've re-read it about a thousand times now, but not touched it editing-wise. That's nuts that your schools had such a big range! Most of mine capped at 7500 words or said to send between 20-40 pages. I sent the first 30 of my novel. First time I applied, I sent several excerpts from random points in a different novel I was working on at the time, which no doubt worked against me. That and the fact that nothing of note happened in that entire sample, lol. Hoping that this year's sample reads more cohesively.
  8. MDP
    What a good idea!! I could definitely use the distraction...maybe I'll have to give this a go. I feel like I can't even touch the novel excerpt I submitted as my writing sample yet. Too anxiety-inducing...
  9. MDP
    From results page: Rejected, Creative Writing Fiction, University Of Mississippi Website has been updated to say that everyone who made it to Phase II has been notified as of 02/07/2022.
  10. MDP
    Meeee too. Fortunately (?) some of mine could be notifying any day now, but I honestly don't know how I'm gonna feel when they start rolling in. My friends/family/other writers keep telling me to just forget about the whole process (impossible) and keep writing, but I honestly don't even want to do that! I don't have the focus right now. Reading is the only thing that has helped.
  11. MDP
    True! I do respect that aspect of it. I actually read that piece earlier this year when my hard copy came in the mail and I have thought about it pretty regularly since, so it must be doing something right. I definitely have to work for it, which can be frustrating but rewarding when reading.
  12. MDP
    Agree -- that final paragraph!
  13. MDP
    Thanks for sharing these! I was bored at work. Third one is probably my least favorite...too self-conscious for my taste. Though it does remind me a bit of Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, which I do like. Love the ending of the first one, though I'm not really a fan of the hyper-colloquial, just-pulled-this-from-my-Notes-app voice. Seeing a lot of that in fiction lately and finding it kind of tiresome.
  14. MDP
    Based on last year's Results page, it looks like their Waitlists go out a week or two after acceptances, so could be sometime this week or next if they follow a similar timeline.
  15. MDP
    I’ve heard MANY stories of people who get rejections from everywhere but, say, Iowa or Cornell. It really is so subjective, and I agree with Yellow, don’t count yourself out! It ain’t over til it’s over
  16. MDP
    Best for me was the rejection I got from University of Michigan in 2020 letting me know that I made it to the top 15% of the applications before getting axed. Kind of bittersweet because it felt like a “so close, yet so far” type of thing, ha.
  17. MDP
    Oh it was brutal! And to top it off I got the email while in my creative writing senior seminar. I spent that night drinking alone, lol. Oh the sorrow...
  18. MDP
    Also unrelated: who here was a Cornell applicant during the infamous 2020 Valentine's Day rejection? Major insult to injury. An honor to be a part of that bloodbath.
  19. MDP
    Ahhh that's a great one! Unrelated: not that it's useful to speculate about all this, but it looks like WashU, Northwestern, U Oregon, Ohio State, Miami U (OH) and Syracuse have all notified about a week or two earlier than they did last year. Hoping this will be the trend for the rest of the season...
  20. MDP
    What a great sign! Congrats. I think interviews are usually about personality -- making sure an applicant will mesh well with the rest of the cohort, making sure that they aren't too much of an asshole (or too much of a baby), etc. To my knowledge, a lot of schools conduct these because they really like your portfolio/at the very least are seriously considering you. Could just want to verify that you have adequate social skills, lol.
  21. MDP
    This is great BTW. I love absurdist dreams.
  22. MDP
    WashU rejections are apparently out. (EDIT: didn't see comment above, haha)
  23. MDP
    I do! I'm reading the collected journals of Sylvia Plath right now. Brilliant but so bleak. And it kills me that Ted Hughes destroyed her final journal (with entries dating to within three days of her death!) Terrible loss. He was a bastard.
  24. MDP
    I'm in more or less the same headspace. Trying to keep in mind that almost all of these programs have a high volume of applicants who apply on a whim -- people who get bored, think "Oh, I know, I'll be a writer!" and send off a few unrevised stories that they wrote in high school. Not knocking these folks, but it's true that these schools receive and reject thousands of such applications each season. These apps alone ensure that acceptance rates stay crazy low. Sounds shitty, but it reassures me that after accounting for the MASSIVE slush pile, many of us likely have a better shot than these 0.000001% acceptance rates indicate. But also, you just never know! At this point in the game (and it is a game, ha) I don't have any expectations. None of my schools are slated to notify until late Feb., but for some reason I feel like I might receive some news this week? Had a dream a few nights ago where a man walked up to my car at a red light, took out a rubber stamp, and stamped the date 2/12/22 all over my windshield. Didn't seem like a particularly positive or negative message, just a message. (He was very serious, very calm, very well-dressed.) In the dream I thought "Man, I've gotta remember that date." Could be nothing, but would be cool if I hear something (good or bad) this Saturday. (I am a superstitious person if you couldn't already tell, lol.)
  25. MDP
    Dm me your email on here! I'm by no means a professional, but I've had fiction/CNF/poetry published in 10 or so publications, and I do a lot of freelance editing on the side. I also learned a bit about reader reports/what publishers look for in a manuscript when I interned at a publisher. I would love to work with you on your writing at no charge. I love helping people grow, and I know it's hard when you feel like you're shooting in the dark. Keep your head up and drop me a line
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