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Monday, November 03, 2008
Submissions temporarily down
To anyone who has tried to submit since October 30, you've probably noticed that you've gotten an error message. Our server was having issues on October 31 that took the whole site down, but got it fixed that same day. However, in getting the site back online, something went awry in the permissions on the database that houses submissions. We have a support ticket in with our hosting service, and have put in a payment to upgrade our hosting plan to include SQL Server, rather than just Microsoft Access, so that we can have a more robust submissions system in the future.
Thanks for your patience. We hope to have this fixed ASAMFP.
Edit: The permissions on the folder were set inccorectly when the servers were brought back online. Support has fixed this now and y'all can submit again!!! Thanks for your patience!
Labels: SmokeLong Quarterly, submissions
posted by Dave Clapper at 11:56 AM 0 commentsSaturday, January 19, 2008
Some things we've never published
I've just spent a fair amount of time reading (and, alas, rejecting) submissions, and a few of them brought to mind things we've never published. Or, if we have, I can't recall them. I'm not saying we'd never publish flashes with these things in them, but it's probably pretty telling that we haven't before now. Maybe seeing these things in a list will be of benefit to submitting writers. Maybe not. But here are a few:
1) Guns. Chekhov talked about the fact that if a gun was seen onstage in Act I, it would have to be used in Act III (or something to that effect). Flash almost never has three acts. To set up the use of a gun in less than a thousand words isn't impossible (Pearl Jam does it very well in the song "Jeremy"), but it ain't easy. The writer has to overcome a lot to make a gun's presence work in a flash.
2) Dead babies. I'm cheating on this, because I know we've published at least one dead baby story. But most dead baby stories rely too much on the sympathy/empathy of the reader. Most dead baby stories, I'd argue, aren't all that honest, either. They sit heavy on the grief, without ever touching other emotions, more negative emotions that we may honestly feel, but are too ashamed to acknowledge. It's the stuff we don't want to acknowledge that's interesting. Grief happens, yes, of course, but... can we see something else? (And for anyone who reads the next issue of Per Contra, I know I'll probably get called out for this item. The story of mine they'll be publishing was written specifically in response to one of my favorite writer/editors challenging me to write one, since she knows how I feel about them.)
3) Dead grandmothers. See #2. Actually, take a look at all dead relatives. Interestingly, dead fathers occupy a different place. These tend to be the stories where the anger spills out, and the fathers are reduced to archetypes. Yawn.
4) Abuse. See the bit about fathers in #3. I keep a general rule in my head when reading abuse stories: can the genders of the characters be reversed without it becoming offensive? Very, very few stories pass this test.
5) Full names. Really, does knowing a character's last name in a flash do anything other than waste a word? In a lot of cases, when we see full names, they're used as an attempt to paint the class/race/social station of a character. It's cheap. Often, the full name appears as the first two words of the story. When I see this, my eyes roll out of the back of my head.
6) Digital clocks at night. Seriously, can the writer think of no other way to set the time? Think of this: have you lived in more than one place? Did 3:00 am feel different in those two places? I know the regular sounds of the El passing by my apartment in Evanston were entirely different from the sounds of the alley below my studio on Capitol Hill. And if I woke up in the middle of the night, it wasn't the clock that awoke me, and it wasn't the clock that wedged me back into reality from dreams. Get rid of the clocks, okay?
7) Anthropomorphic animals. Really, do I need to say more than that?
And, to give representation to the other side very briefly, one item that seems to appear in more stories we've published than one would expect:
1) Fish. I'm not sure I could say why, but we do seem to have been predisposed to liking stories with fish in them. All kinds of different fish, too. For whatever reason, several writers have used an array of fish to help set stories in ways that really resonated with us. Go figure. Maybe it's because we love Kath so much?
Labels: SmokeLong Quarterly, submissions
posted by Dave Clapper at 9:44 PM 4 commentsJanuary 2005, February 2005, March 2005, June 2005, August 2005, September 2005, October 2005, November 2005, December 2005, March 2006, April 2006, May 2006, June 2006, July 2006, August 2006, September 2006, October 2006, November 2006, December 2006, January 2007, February 2007, March 2007, April 2007, May 2007, June 2007, July 2007, August 2007, September 2007, October 2007, November 2007, December 2007, January 2008, February 2008, March 2008, April 2008, May 2008, June 2008, July 2008, August 2008, September 2008, October 2008, November 2008, December 2008, January 2009, February 2009, March 2009, April 2009, May 2009, June 2009, September 2009, June 2010, August 2010, September 2010, December 2010, Current Posts
