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* Online lit mags are publishing some of the most intriguing writing available today. Every Monday, I post a pointer to a site that offers fiction and/or poetry either as free content or as samples from subscriber issues.

Today’s pointer is to PANK:

To the end of the road, the edge of things, a north shore, up country, a place of amalgamation and unplumbed depths, where things are made and unmade, and unimagined futures are born. To a kind of ultima Thule. Inhabit your contradictions. Squeeze your quirk and anomaly. No soft pink hands.

From their listing on Duotrope:

We are extremely committed to our writers and promote their work both in PANK and in other magazines, whenever we can.We also try to send personal feedback with as many submissions as we can.
—Roxane Gay, Co-Editor on 24 May 2010

PANK publishes Poetry, Flash Fiction, and Short Stories. “In 2009, across print and digital platforms, PANK had more than 80,000 readers in 138 countries.”

Poetry excerpt from Johnsie Noel’s,  TO UNDERSTAND STRING THEORY:

At the ages of six and nine
we understood simply
the ‘theory of everything.’
The 11th dimension was
condensed down
to – a ball of twine
unwound, vibrating secrets

Fiction excerpt from Robb Todd’s, GRACIAS, PERO SI

There is a heat here, a different heat, and there is a sweat here, a permanent sheen on the forehead that everyone wears because air conditioning is for the weak. A fan and a breeze is enough and you get used to the slick skin. A handkerchief or bandanna is suddenly in style. People only linger in shade.

via The Rumpus:

Rumpus: In terms of how you work, how many drafts do you usually put your stories through? How planned out are they in advance, and what do you start with?

Means: I could never plan them out in advance beyond a small seed, maybe an image, or a character in a specific predicament.  I might have more of a story in mind, but I hold it for a long time before I write about it.  I’m still holding onto all of my family stuff.  When I’m ready, when I’m inspired, I’ll start to write a rough draft by hand.  After typing it up, sometimes months later, I’ll begin to revise.  Some stories take many, many drafts over a long period of time.  Each story has its own set of demands.  I think it was William Maxwell who said you need to respect the story as much as possible.  I throw stories away.  Sometimes I hold onto the early draft for a few years and let my subconscious do the work. I have a long credo tacked to the wall.  Part of it says:  “Do not compromise.  Go as deep as you can.  If in the end it has to be thrown away, throw it away.”

Via the Guardian:

Saturday poem: The Life of Fiction
by Thomas Lynch

Excerpt-

Everything must, of course, advance the cause
of atmosphere or character or narrative:
the walk up the coast road, the sudden rain,
the stone shed at the sea’s edge to shelter in,
the two of them waiting out the weather,
pressed into the corner, alone at last.

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Yes, she is.

via Salon.com

Is Shirley Jackson a great American writer?
The author of “The Lottery” is still not getting the respect she deserves

Jackson… wrote during more or less the same period, but where the fiction of Mailer and Bellow is expansive, hers is (intentionally) claustrophobic. She was the bard of the domestic nightmare (as Ruth Franklin astutely pointed out in a recent essay for the New Republic), of people who were trapped, excluded, usurped and pushed in a corner to wither away unnoticed. If there was anything Homeric about her — and come to think of it, I believe there was — it was the serene pitilessness with which she dispensed their doom.

Illuminating article at Newsweek, The Creativity Crisis. One quote that struck me:

Plucker recently toured a number of such schools in Shanghai and Beijing. He was amazed by a boy who, for a class science project, rigged a tracking device for his moped with parts from a cell phone. When faculty of a major Chinese university asked Plucker to identify trends in American education, he described our focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. “After my answer was translated, they just started laughing out loud,” Plucker says. “They said, ‘You’re racing toward our old model. But we’re racing toward your model, as fast as we can.’ ”

Hat tip to Electric Literature for the pointer.

Two aspects of the Internet as it relates to literature–

From NPR:

William Faulkner Goes Online, 50 Years Later

In the late 1950s, English students at the University of Virginia got the opportunity that most American literature scholars would kill for — to speak with William Faulkner.

Faulkner spent two years as the writer-in-residence at UVA, where he gave lectures and readings and took questions from students. The lectures were recorded on reel-to-reel tapes, which have now been digitized and published online.

And from The Guardian:

The art of slow reading: Has endlessly skimming short texts on the internet made us stupider? An increasing number of experts think so – and say it’s time to slow down . . .

If you’re reading this article in print, chances are you’ll only get through half of what I’ve written. And if you’re reading this online, you might not even finish a fifth. At least, those are the two verdicts from a pair of recent research projects – respectively, the Poynter Institute’s Eyetrack survey, and analysis by Jakob Nielsen – which both suggest that many of us no longer have the concentration to read articles through to their conclusion.

I Write Like (via tweet by Electric Literature)

Check what famous writer you write like with this statistical analysis tool, which analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them to those of the famous writers.

(My results– James Joyce and Stephen King).

Author posts her vampire novel online for free — and gets an awesome book deal

Can posting your unpublished novels online for free still lead to a nice book deal, now that the web is saturated with free fiction? It worked for author Marta Acosta, whose young-adult vampire novel will come out from Tor Books.

Okay, so I don’t know how applicable this case would be to most writers– factors mitigating the headline would include the author already having her book under consideration at Tor and other publishers, that the book is about vampires and boarding schools at a time when both subjects are very popular, and that the book is YA which might make it more accessible to readers used to online text.

Still, Ms. Acosta’s success is heartening to consider. At the very least, it demonstrates that the Internet can provide writers with an alternative entry into existing markets as well as creating new ones.

but that’s just from my first 4 rejections– still plenty of time to run the table.

From The Chicago Tribune:

Top 10 most-used phrases in rejection letters
There are many ways of giving a brush-off, especially when it comes to rejection letters. After a rather unscientific poll of both our Facebook friends and Twitter followers, here’s what we found to be the most commonly-used phrases in rejection letters to writers:

1. “Best of luck in your future endeavors” or “best of luck finding a publisher for your work.” The subtle difference is key here. One says “good luck, now please stay the hell away” while the other is more cordial in its “good luck placing your work with someone who is not us. Not ever, ever, ever us.” Ouch factor: 4

A short piece by Pacific University MFA faculty, Debra Gwartney.

Via The National Book Critics Circle
What Are You Looking Forward to Reading, Debra Gwartney?

I also plan to take the summer to read some NBCC finalist books I haven’t yet been able to get to. I was knocked over by Bonnie Jo Campbell’s American Salvage, and am eager to fall into Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall