41 (possibly 42) have made it through to round two!

Well, there’s only one more story left in our inbox, and it’s only there because we’re unable to open the attachment. Andrew’s going to try again to open it, and if he’s unable to, he’s going to email the writer.

We have 41 stories in our “maybe” folder. Our goal: re-read each of the 41 stories, talk to each other about them, then make our decisions. To be honest, I don’t know if we’re going to be able to only choose three stories, total. Because there are at least a few that I really like already, some of them very very short pieces … This is probably something we’ll have to talk about: do we really need to stick to our one-story-a-piece rule for Avery 3?

I should probably contact Park Printing and see if they can give me a ballpark number of pages we should shoot for in order to keep costs down. We have about $1,600.00 in the bank, and that ain’t much, especially considering we have to buy more shipping envelopes (assuming people will actually buy copies of Avery 3 … I hope I’m not being too optimistic) and need to set money aside for shipping costs (again, I hope I’m not being too optimistic).

FYI: I’ve got a piece about Avery in the upcoming Poets and Writers. You should check it out when it’s available (May/June?). It’s not my best piece of writing – I think I must have been nervous or anxious or something while writing it. Anyway, it’s just a small piece about how Avery came about and the challenges we face. It’s also about what submissions looks like and stuff like that.

And I’m not ashamed (okay, fine: I’m a little ashamed) to admit that this is the first time I’ve actually gotten paid for my writing. God, I’d love to be able to make a living off my writing. What must that be like?

Dream job: running Avery and getting some of my own stuff published every now and again, while still being able to teach at least one class per semester of College English. Oh, and somehow, getting paid a decent amount of money for it.

Not likely.

Getting back on track ...

So, the submissions were good this time around. I read one yesterday, though, and I didn’t understand it at all. Figuring something must have slipped past me during my read, I put it in the “maybe” folder, hoping that either Adam or Andrew would be able to enlighten me. I tend to give the writer the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s me, not the story.

While reading all these stories, I’m learning a lot about how to write good fiction (well, I think). Or, at the very least, I’m learning about what things to avoid. For example, I’m finding that I lose interest when a story begins with multiple characters and their traits and a very specific setting and its ensuing action, sentence one. In other words, when a story gets too specific too soon, I lose my bearings and can’t figure out time or place or person, and this colors my read. I end up skimming the story, rather than reading it; when I catch myself doing this, I have to stop and start the story all over again. This takes (wastes?) so much time.

So, warning: try not to put too much in all at once in the very beginning. Give us some breathing room!

Don’t you agree? If you want clarification, lemme know and I will post more about this.

Doug sent us some awesome photographs for the cover. We’re going with black-and-white with a splash of color. We also have an idea for the internal photographs, though the specifics will depend upon the stories. Avery 3 will look a lot different than Avery 1 and 2, and I’m really excited about it.

By the way, we still have many copies of Avery 1 and 2. Would you be apt to purchase them if we offered them at half-off? We’re already losing so much money, we might as well keep losing it, especially if it means more people will be reading us. Like, you could maybe buy both Avery 1 and 2 for a total of ten bucks. If you’re interested in that, please let me know and we can take steps to facilitate this.

We’ll be updating our website next week. I’m working on that this week – not many changes, just some further information. Ugh. I hate having to have a website. It’s a pain in my ass, seriously. I have to write out the changes and email this to Adam, who then has to make the changes. Neither of us really knows what we’re doing.

So, while ya’ll complain (three people have done so on the past two blog posts, and also via email) about how fast our “story quotes” are on our website, know this: I don’t even understand how we put those up there in the first place.

We ain’t gonna change them any time soon, unfortunately, and I apologize for that. But we have much bigger things to worry about right now. Mainly, Avery 3.

Which is supposed to come out in less than two months.

Um.