The Publication Mis-adventures of a Wayward Young Article
Woo-hoo!**
I'm very happy to report that an article of mine has just been accepted to the journal Law & Literature. The piece is “The Image of Law in Donaldson’s ‘Reave the Just’: Agency, Blame, and Sexual Assault," and it focuses on the problem of rape in the short story headlining Stephen R. Donaldson's collection, Reave the Just and Other Tales (1999), which won Donaldson a World Fantasy Award in 2000.
But yeah, this poor widdle guy had had quite the adventure. I first wrote the article in 2017 as part of my article on feminism and sexed violence in Donaldson's work (published eventually in Extrapolation), but I had to cut the "Reave" section because it turned the piece into a 13,000-word monstrosity. Then I re-vamped "Reave" as a conference paper for ICFA in March 2018 and, by December of that year, converted it into a stand-alone article. All in all, despite feeling rather iffy about the piece, so it goes -- like a sheep I sent it out among the wolves.
The problem was, while I knew JFA or Extrapolation would be a good fit for "Reave," I already had one article under review at JFA and, of course, Extrapolation had already published my other Donaldson article. So I spent most of 2019 just shopping "Reave" around. Three different journals rejected it -- two bench rejections, mostly due to fit it seems, and I think the third sent "Reave" through peer review. At least, they held onto the article for four months, but I never received any peer reviews, and the sub-editor was cagey about why. Well, at that point, I admit to being stymied. The article sat in my drawer (metaphorically) for a month . . . and then I woke up one morning, thinking, "Wait, isn't there a journal called Law & Literature?"
In retrospect, this journal does make sense -- the word "law" appears in my title, for Pete's sake. In actuality, I knew absolutely nothing about Law & Literature, either the journal or the topic. Where did I even hear about the "literature and law movement"? No idea. The tv show Law & Order is basically my entire previous exposure to the legal system. But what the hell, I thought. I sent off the article in August 2019, and you can imagine my surprise when a very positive peer review came back in November. I worked the revisions in January 2020 and received the acceptance just this morning.
What makes this adventure even more exciting (at least for me) is that, apparently, Law & Lit is quite fancy. I had no idea, initially, but according to MLA Directory of Periodicals the journal has a 10% acceptance rate, and it has published people like Jacques Derrida and Stanley Fish. Being such a mainstream venue, I was also surprised that they'd consider an article on a fantasy writer . . . although, after researching L&L in preparation for my revise and resubmit, I realize that they're actually highly open to speculative fiction, especially children's fantasy. At any rate, the journey has been a long and arduous one, but all's well that ends well.
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** "Woo-hoo," by the way, is the way that all article blog posts should begin.
I'm very happy to report that an article of mine has just been accepted to the journal Law & Literature. The piece is “The Image of Law in Donaldson’s ‘Reave the Just’: Agency, Blame, and Sexual Assault," and it focuses on the problem of rape in the short story headlining Stephen R. Donaldson's collection, Reave the Just and Other Tales (1999), which won Donaldson a World Fantasy Award in 2000.
But yeah, this poor widdle guy had had quite the adventure. I first wrote the article in 2017 as part of my article on feminism and sexed violence in Donaldson's work (published eventually in Extrapolation), but I had to cut the "Reave" section because it turned the piece into a 13,000-word monstrosity. Then I re-vamped "Reave" as a conference paper for ICFA in March 2018 and, by December of that year, converted it into a stand-alone article. All in all, despite feeling rather iffy about the piece, so it goes -- like a sheep I sent it out among the wolves.
The problem was, while I knew JFA or Extrapolation would be a good fit for "Reave," I already had one article under review at JFA and, of course, Extrapolation had already published my other Donaldson article. So I spent most of 2019 just shopping "Reave" around. Three different journals rejected it -- two bench rejections, mostly due to fit it seems, and I think the third sent "Reave" through peer review. At least, they held onto the article for four months, but I never received any peer reviews, and the sub-editor was cagey about why. Well, at that point, I admit to being stymied. The article sat in my drawer (metaphorically) for a month . . . and then I woke up one morning, thinking, "Wait, isn't there a journal called Law & Literature?"
In retrospect, this journal does make sense -- the word "law" appears in my title, for Pete's sake. In actuality, I knew absolutely nothing about Law & Literature, either the journal or the topic. Where did I even hear about the "literature and law movement"? No idea. The tv show Law & Order is basically my entire previous exposure to the legal system. But what the hell, I thought. I sent off the article in August 2019, and you can imagine my surprise when a very positive peer review came back in November. I worked the revisions in January 2020 and received the acceptance just this morning.
What makes this adventure even more exciting (at least for me) is that, apparently, Law & Lit is quite fancy. I had no idea, initially, but according to MLA Directory of Periodicals the journal has a 10% acceptance rate, and it has published people like Jacques Derrida and Stanley Fish. Being such a mainstream venue, I was also surprised that they'd consider an article on a fantasy writer . . . although, after researching L&L in preparation for my revise and resubmit, I realize that they're actually highly open to speculative fiction, especially children's fantasy. At any rate, the journey has been a long and arduous one, but all's well that ends well.
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** "Woo-hoo," by the way, is the way that all article blog posts should begin.
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