Submission Etiquette: Interview with Editor Elizabeth Burton, Round Table Literary Journal

Elizabeth Burton is a working writer whose fiction and non-fiction have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. She holds an MFA from the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University. She lives and teaches in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, with her husband and a plethora of animals.

On this episode, Elizabeth shares with us literary journal submission etiquette, as well as what she's writing, and more. (We can't wait to read her WIP!) 

Transcript

0:00

A N S Ayers head over to MFA payday.com to get your very own customizable free picks your pants off That's at MFA payday.com. That's at MFA payday.com.

Drema 0:26

Welcome to MFA Payday, where we talk with people about all the ways they make their MFA pay. We're your hosts Dream A

Barry 0:34

Drudge and Barry Drudge. We'd like to welcome today, Elizabeth Burton. Uh, Elizabeth Burton is a working writer whose fiction and non-fiction have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. She holds an MFA from Nalan Man Graduate School. Of writing at Spalding University. Uh, she lives and teaches in hopkinsville, Kentucky with her husband and a plethora of animals. So we wanna welcome you,

Drema 1:00

Elizabeth. Yes. Welcome to the show. And I have to ask at the top of the call. Could you tell us a little bit more about those animals? You said a plethora, what

Elizabeth 1:08

do you have? Oh my goodness. We have so many. We have four cats at the moment that may go up as my husband finds them around the farm Um, and, and he usually finds them as tiny little. Sick kittens. So we bring them in, nurse them, and then we just can't let them go. And so we have four cats at the moment. Three dogs. Um, a bird that you will hear happily chirping because he likes to chirp when I talk. And two horses. Wow.

Drema 1:45

Impressive Yeah. Suddenly I was thinking if you ever needed an audience to practice reading to, you would have it. I do.

Elizabeth 1:54

I do. The horses particularly like to be read to. Aw,

Drema 1:58

oh, I was kidding. But that's

Elizabeth 2:00

so great. Yeah, it's true. They really, I, I will go out and actually practice reading to, um, to the horses. Sometimes I'll practice an English lesson, I'm not sure of. um, for my students, and they'll, they're pretty good listeners, so That's awesome.

Drema 2:21

And that's neat.

Barry 2:23

Absolutely. Oh, Well, so tell us a little about your MFA journey. I mean, how, what made you decide to go after an mfa?

Elizabeth 2:32

Um, I had always been a writer and I had been pretty successful with, in the Christian market, um, writing short stories and short articles and devotionals and things like that. Um, and I was even making a little bit of money at that, but it had gotten to the point. I knew exactly how to do it and I was getting bored and so I wanted to stretch myself a little bit and write, you know, I always read literary stuff, so I thought, well, maybe I can write it. And so I actually applied to, um, the MFA program. I only applied to Spalding and. And it was faulting at the time that I Oh yeah. Was the Nalin Man graduate school. I'm still trying to get used to that, but, um, I applied and got in and it was an amazing journey. It was really fast and really intense, and I am so glad I.

Barry 3:49

Wow. That is just, that sounds similar to our story, but did you do any abroad program?

Elizabeth 3:55

I didn't. I, I really, I wanna one of these days, but with my schedule it's pretty hard to do that. Yeah, understood. With all these animals, it's kinda hard to get away.

Drema 4:14

Are you the editor of round table literary journal? Editor

Elizabeth 4:16

is that right? I am now. Okay. Um, and that is, um, part of my job at the community college, which I got cause of my mfa. Mm. Um, so the way I make my MFA pay I Am teaching full time, um, as a community college English instructor, and one of the privileges I have working here at Hopkinsville Community College is to be one of the editors of the round table literary journal. And so that's that's really awesome. It's, it's such a, An honor to be given people's work to work with and to, to just be entrusted with work and artwork that people put so much time and energy into. And to know that they are scared and nervous about having somebody read their work. And a lot of times we're the first publication for people. Yeah, and so that's really awesome. I hate having to send out the, um, the rejection letters, so, I don't I make the other editors send out the rejection letters. I'm the one who sends out all of the acceptance letters, which, which has a harder than I do which

Barry 5:52

full, full disclosure, I mean, I. I'm one of those people that received your acceptance letter. Yeah. During Covid. So, that was a very exciting thing. I loved it. I mean, and I, yeah, and I really like the journal. I think it's great. I was excited to be part of it.

Drema 6:09

How long have you been editor with the journal?

Elizabeth 6:13

I'm going into my fifth year.

Drema 6:15

I don't know if you're able to share this, but if you are, approximately how many submissions do you typically get per reading, period?

Elizabeth 6:22

Oh, it varies wildly. Mm-hmm. Um, before Covid we were getting probably around 300 submissions.

Barry 6:34

Oh.

Elizabeth 6:35

And now we're getting through Covid. We started getting around 500. Oh my. Yeah. So we'll see how it goes.

Barry 6:47

Since you are also a writer, I guess one of the questions I'm curious about is what are you working on now? have you got something on the burner or is it just too

Elizabeth 6:56

busy? Well, and sometimes it's, Um, but so what I'm working on right now is a novel and, um, it's not my first novel. I've written several of them, but this is the one that I hope has a really good chance of getting published. Oh. So it's um, in 1957 rural North Carolina. Um, a 14 year old girl is a victim of the eugenics policy of poor sterilization. Oh my. And she leaves North Carolina for Hopkinsville, Kentucky in search of her vent idol. Um, but will another injustice call her home? Wow,

Drema 7:48

That's something that's fascinating. Okay. If you need a beta reader, I'm raising my hand

Elizabeth 7:54

so awesome. I'm sure I'll right now, it's still in the messy middle. Oh yeah. Um, but, uh, hopefully, and I have so much to rewrite, but it's coming together and I can actually see the end. Oh

Drema 8:10

wow. And how long have you been working on

Elizabeth 8:12

that? Oh my goodness. Since I start, I got the idea my very last semester at Spalding. Mm-hmm. and I had 200 pages written, and then it occurred to me, I was writing it in third person point of view, and it occurred to me that I was actually doing an injustice. To my character because her whole story was about her voice being taken away from her. Mm. And then I realized it had to be in first person. Oh my. Yes. So I had to completely start over instead of just trying. When you're dealing with that many pages, it's not just a simple thing of, you know, find and replace.

Drema 9:05

Yes, I've been there. I totally yeah. Understand

Elizabeth 9:08

yes. Yeah. So it was basically start over again and um, and I've had to learn to do a lot in a very little bit of time because my life is really crazy. And so sometimes it's a half an hour a day, sometimes it's 15 minutes, but it's still going. Yeah, I think that's really

Barry 9:36

important. I think that's a good bit of advice to many people that go out there because it's one of the things we find when we talk to people. Is that they say something to the effect of, well, I just don't have time. It's like, well make time, you know, turn off the TV 15 minutes early. Yeah. And you know, before you go whatever, you gotta, gotta make time to go ahead. Oh,

Drema 9:59

absolutely. I, I a hundred percent agree with that in, since you are the editor of a literary journal, I think we would be remiss if we didn't ask you for writers who are wanting to. more to literary journals. Um, what are some things maybe, people get wrong? Like what are some things they do that are, are rude or unintentionally pushy or, or something you think they could do better? Do you have any tips for people who want to submit?

Elizabeth 10:24

Well, the main thing that we get at Round Table, um, is people not reading our guidelines. And why that's really important for us is because we're a family friendly journal. We have a children section, and it's quite robust. So we have, you know, children from all over the country, plus local children that submit their work. And so we can have. You know, the f word in a title, for example, right? Sure. Yeah. It's, it's just, cause these are little kids, I mean, we're talking like second grade. Oh. And, and their work is so huge and it, it really makes. The, to be perfectly honest, I mean mm-hmm. we all love reading about the Halloween Bear and things like that. we, we just love it. And so because of that, we can't have overt sexuality. We can't have overt, you know, gratuitous violence. We can't have a lot of curse words, so, That's really important for us, and uh, people just ignore it. Yeah. So because we're listed on duo trope as one of the friendliest markets for new riders, which is great, we're thrilled about that. But that doesn't mean that. Can't read the guidelines.

Barry 12:05

That's a, that's an excellent point. I think that can. Generalized to a lot of them. I mean, you know, one of the things somebody told me early on was, don't write or find the things that fit your writing, I think was the way that it went.

Drema 12:20

Yeah. Yeah. And I also wanna just, tip my hat to you because, what a wonderful feature for your journal to have that you are nurturing these young writers. That's just so special. Thank you for doing that. Oh,

Elizabeth 12:34

Oh, it's so much fun. It's the best part of the journal. We love it.

Drema 12:40

Oh, that's very, very neat.

Barry 12:43

Well, now you've given this advice for submissions. What advice would you perhaps give for an MFA or out there or someone who's interested in, in getting into the MFA program? Is there something that you, in your journey could look back on and, and share that might help them?

Elizabeth 12:58

Well, one thing. Was, I was way too nervous about the whole process. I was so caught up in doing everything perfectly and doing it well. That I didn't enjoy it as much as I could have Understood. Yeah. And because its, its really intense and I took everything very seriously as you should. But I think I let my anxiety get the best of me sometimes, and really it's supposed to be fun and otherwise why are we doing it?

Drema 13:38

Perfect. Absolutely. A hundred percent I have a two parter here. Okay. What are you currently reading and are you reading, books to help with your own novel? Like, for instance, you said you're writing a Southern novel, right? Mm-hmm. So are you reading books? To compliment your writing or just reading, just whatever suits you. What are you reading nowadays?

Elizabeth 14:02

Well, right now I'm reading the most fascinating book that has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm writing, and it's called If I Had Your Face by Francis Cha and it's. A world I didn't know existed, which is the Asian, specifically Korean obsession with plastic surgery. And it's, it's, like I said, it's a world I didn't know existed and it's just fascinating. Um, I think I prefer to write. Things that are different than what I'm working on, um, because they can still teach me a lot sentence structure, um, the way words are put together, just the way chapters are put together. But, but I can't copy it. And I, it's not that I worry so much about unintentionally copying something, but I know I have a tendency to pick up on other writer's styles. And so I try very much to stay away from, um, From other Appalachian works or other southern works when I'm working on my own stuff right now, for example, I'm dying to read Silas House's new lar ascending. I'm just dying to that. It's gonna have to wait until I'm not working on my right now.

Barry 15:51

Besides. Being something that might be a pallet cleanser, it's, and you learn something from it, but you don't also have to have something necessarily in your lane per

Elizabeth 16:02

se. Right, right. And this book is just really well written. I think it's getting some awards and some recognition right now. And I'm in a book club with a friend of mine in New York, and. Choose something new. We trade picks every now and then. We read poetry and we read fiction. And, um, the poetry is to just sort of, we're both fiction writers and so the poetry is to help us become more aware of, of words and how they go together. Mm-hmm. and, um, the fiction is, You know, to teach us craft. And so I think it's really important to read vastly and whatever suits you. Yes. So don't feel constrained. Like if you love science fiction, I've got a Star Trek novel on my audio book right now, Um, so it's not like I just read high literature. Um, I, I really like whatever suits me at the moment. As long as I keep reading, I'm learning something.

Drema 17:17

Oh, that's a soundbite right there. That's absolutely Now I do have a question. I'm sorry to say I'm not familiar with if I had your face. Um, is that nonfiction or fiction? It's

Elizabeth 17:27

fiction. Oh, oh, wow. Okay. And it's just, it's really. I had never heard of it, but my friend in New York, uh, ran across it, um, and he said, Hey, let's try this one. And so we did. And we're both just like, wow, I never knew this. So it, it's just really interesting.

Drema 17:52

Yeah. Oh, thank you so much. I know. Um, I'm gonna be adding it to my reading list for sure. Oh wow. Yeah,

Barry 17:58

definitely. In that vein what would be your best tip for writers in general? Outside of submitting things to you, as a writer and if, do you have, I guess that's another question. Do you happen to have a class that you teach on writing? Is there a creative writing class or.

Elizabeth 18:15

I do teach a creative writing class. Um, I teach several, and I also teach through the Carnegie Center, um, in Lexington, Kentucky. Um, I teach, I have taught, uh, classes on how to be an anti-racist writer, and, um, I taught that with my best friend Claudia Love Meyer.

Drema 18:39

Claudia. Yeah. Yeah. We're just back from Paris with her in the

Elizabeth 18:45

Awesome. Yeah. I teach that class with her. And um, I've also taught classes on setting versus place. Oh, okay. And that is a little bit, it, it's showing how, you know, a lot of people talk about setting as a character and I think the place, although a little bit different, um, Wealthy said the place is the lesser angel of fiction. Mm-hmm. And, um, so I, I teach a class through the Carnegie Center on how to explore that. Concept a little bit. Um, so, and that's another way I make my MFA pay is, is I teach through, um, I teach a lot. I teach some local classes, um, through the, the public library here and through the senior center. And I also teach through my college, um, some, some classes. And may I

Drema 19:52

ask, do you prefer one group to another? Or maybe you don't wanna answer that question

Elizabeth 19:58

Well, it depends on what they're looking for. Um, I really prefer working with seniors actually, um, because that, Seniors and little kids are the ones that are really open to trying new things usually. Um, it's, and they aren't so afraid of making a mistake. Yeah, and I guess that would be my advice to writers write that really awful first draft Yeah, because we all write really awful first drafts. It's an

Barry 20:42

echo of Anne Lamont.

Elizabeth 20:44

Yes, exactly. But I'm a preacher's kid, so Oh yeah. I'll

Drema 20:48

do ood. That's, no, that's quite alright. We'll be polite.

Barry 20:54

we're we're a polite company

Drema 20:55

now. I would love to know more about, how you differentiate setting in place, but maybe that's like a nugget you would wanna say for your own class. But I just wanna say I find that concept fascinating. Oh yeah.

Barry 21:09

Being right if we wanna and learn something.

Elizabeth 21:11

Yes. We'll definitely have to get together and talk about that. Yes,

Drema 21:15

absolutely. Yeah,

Elizabeth 21:17

it's um, cause there it's more abstract. So setting is, is very concrete and place is is like more abstraction. So if that gives you any hints on Oh sure. Um, Yeah, yeah, yeah. How I differentiate it. Yeah.

Drema 21:37

Interesting. Yes. And we always like to give, our guests the opportunity is there something that will give you the, give you the soapbox? Is there something that you would like for our listeners to know that maybe people, don't always ask you about?

Elizabeth 21:51

Well, I think people always ask me when they hear what I'm working on, cuz I've been working on this novel since my last semester. It's spading and so I think people are getting a little sick of hearing about it. Oh no. But people never asked me how the vent cum came in. I wanted to ask

Drema 22:12

that. I wanted to ask that. So you tell us. Good. You have instinct Um,

Elizabeth 22:19

well, what happened was the first, and the title is a puppet's, and so I knew I wanted ventriloquism in there because the symbolism. Um, losing your voice through the eugenics sterilization and having no choice in the matter and having, you know, your rights taken completely away from you. Um, the symbolism of that with a puppet. And vent quiz, regaining your voice, um, seemed to be really profound to me. Um, but nobody ever asks me about that. They're always just like, oh, that's weird.

Barry 23:15

No I think the whole thing is astounding. I'll be a buyer of that book when it comes out. I say, oh,

Elizabeth 23:20

good. I do have a couple of agents interested. That means I have to hurry up and finish the thing

Drema 23:30

You know, if only our books would listen to us when we say that. Right? I know.

Elizabeth 23:35

Or the little book elves would come along and finish it overnight while I'm sleeping. That would just be wonderful. And my favorite part of the writing process is actually revision, so I'm still in the muddy middle of the rough draft process. Um, and so. I can't wait to get to the revision process. I can't wait. Yes.

Drema 24:07

you're preaching to the choir here. At least. I can't speak for Barry, but Yes. Oh, no. Yeah. Amen. Yeah, the, uh, the revision is just, you know, I don't know about you, but for me, uh, when I revise, when I can read like a page and nothing like stops me, nothing makes me go, Hmm. I'm like, okay, then this page is ready and I go onto the next page and Yeah. Yeah. Is

Elizabeth 24:29

it kinda like that for you as well? Yeah, it is. It is. If, if there's nothing that I think, oh wait. I have to fix that here. Let's make a red mark then. And I don't make red marks when I grade my students work because studies have shown that red marks are bad for students. Psyche, and, but I make marks for me. I don't care about my psyche. So

Drema 24:59

Yes, exactly. Because bread will stand out nicely on the page. That's what I found. Right.

Elizabeth 25:05

Exactly.

Drema 25:06

Or purple or pink. As long as it's a contrasting color, I don't care. Yeah. But yes, that's important to me. Yes.

Barry 25:12

We had a, we both had a professor at our local university that, uh, another professor said, well, he seems to like, like a dog to mark his territory. So he is doing that all over your

Elizabeth 25:23

paper. Oh, no.

Barry 25:27

Oh, hmm. We just, we just appreciate this so much. I guess here's a question. Where can we find you online if

Elizabeth 25:36

you need to find? Well, right now, um, I'm working on my website. So my website is down at the moment. Ok. Um, but right now the best place to find me is either on Facebook or Twitter. And I'm at eberton writes on Twitter.

Drema 25:57

Okay, good, good. Noted.

Barry 25:59

Thanks so much for being on our show. Elizabeth. It's been a pleasure. I'm, I'm so glad to have seen you face to face. Yes. And, and word to word audio as well. Um, so we just thank you for your time. Everybody, just wait in anticipation for her book and in the meantime, keep writing

Drema 26:17

all the things.

26:19

Good

Drema 26:40

all the things.