Thank you very much for sending this submission for our consideration.

Due to the number of submissions we receive a day, we are unable to comment on the work.

Please realize that we appreciate (and even respect) your impulse to transmit material for potential posting on our online literary Internet e-webzine, yet we are faced with the simple problem of too many submitters, not enough time to respond in detail to them all.

If this response were seen from close up, it would include myriad analyses, concise suggestions, and conciliatory curlicues. Thanks to the number of submissions we receive, however, we are only able to provide a macroresponse, one visible from somewhere very high above, and, up in the netherworlds where no winged creature born of bird can propel and sustain itself, our response, nearly embedded in earth far below, simply looks like two vertical/parallel lines of equal height connected by a swift diagonal from the head of the western line to the foot of the eastern one (ie, "N"), accompanied a few clicks eastward by a complementary-sized circle (ie, "O".)

Thank you. And good day.

Eyeshot's Failed Attempt At A Form Rejection Letter

Ok. Stop a sec. You've submitted eight pieces in one day. And they've all been rejected. How does that make you feel? Maybe you should work a little harder on one or two things. You seem to get an idea and think the idea itself is worthwhile. You should work a little harder. Concentrate. Give the idea a context that makes what's funny about it come to life. Please don't send anymore of these little jokes and lists. They're not funny. Particularly the spam thing. Not funny at all. Sorry. Also, you shouldn't submit more than one thing at a time. Editors get pissed. I'm hungover and homebound on a beautiful day and there's nothing much else I can do, so it's been a pleasure responding to these as quickly as I can. But listen, if someone accepts any of them, do not trust that source. You've got some work to do. You've got good ideas, but you've got to build little houses for them to run around in, get me? Good. Treat what you're doing like your children, not flies that you catch for a minute, rattle, then send off into the world.

Eyeshot's Bloodshot Brains

The word "rusted" at the end of the first paragraph. The modifer-hanging-after-comma thing you did with the word "abandoned" to end the second paragraph . . . There should be a law. I suggest you be careful with that in the future, vigilant. Don't go hanging those things: they're like curveballs. If you hang one like that, it better cut quick, fall off table etc, otherwise, punkass editors like me knock that junk out. But such things can be snipped. And I would suggest snipping if I liked the overall story. But it's like a roving webcam that doesn't do anything but show what's known - it also seems to think its pixalated distortion is all pretty and shit. But it's a short piece that's all stylized in a way I don't get off on. 

Sorry for the attack. I get that way sometimes. I do it because I used to get form-letter rejections all the time, and I started the site in part to treat submitting writers as I'd like to be treated. A little rough sometimes, always honest, letting everyone know exactly why. The rejection has nothing to do with you or your children or your way of life. Only the piece of writing you sent me. You and it are different. I wrote about what you wrote. Anyway, if you're not too blustered by this note, and you ever feel like submitting anything again, please do.

Eyeshot's Evil Empire

I like fragments, but these don't quite do it for me. 
Please don't respond, saying something about hoping an extra-sharp greased ostrich beak rammed in my bum would "do it for me." Send something else please.

Hi. I like the formal thing of the outgoing message, but it pretty quickly seems like a contrivance because you include dialogue with quotation marks, formal contrivances of fiction etc . . . if it were all one voice-driven rant, i'd like it better, especially if the voice mentioned WHY it was leaving such a long rant-type message on the answering machine. Also, the whole-catching-lover-with-friend thing is grounds for immediate rejection -- we get a few of those a week. If the voice caught the lover with something else, something impossible, caught her having sex with a hot-air balloon flying around her bedroom, using an impossible object (like a 15-foot trumpet) for a dildo on her, etc, then we'd have something. So . . . I can't accept it, but if you ever revise it, I'd like to see it . .. .And if not, thanks for submission and please send more soon. 

Eyeshot's Sad Smoke Signal

Thank you for submitting this story about motherfucking pretentious nazi hamster fuckers . . .  I liked the dialogue but when you got all expository-like about malls, I totally lost interest. Sorry. This could be a good story if it were shorter and more controlled, but you probably just pasted it from somewhere else -- it's probably about molly ringwald, right?

Hi - What is this character doing out at the bar with the boys and why should anyone follow him through a night of mojitos and glances and all that for 3390 words just to learn the guy has a girlfriend or a wife or a female something in his bed? Why? What's your intention? What's the point? Is the surprise at the end enough to make it (ie, the reading) worthwhile? There are some nice parts and the dialogue's smooth and it's all rendered realistically and natural but when the ending comes, it seems at once tacked on and yet also the crux to the story - I dunno - It's weird here right now: you have a NYC cellphone number so if you're reading this today, friday afternoon, you know it's humid or just sorta weird out like it wants to rain but won't and I was out too late at a bar that serves mojitos and then another place with a giant shimmering camel on the wall and my head's sore and I came home last night to an empty bed and I see how it would have been a different night if all along I knew my bed was occupied. But I can't post this, although I'd be glad to look at anything else you'd like to send, maybe something considerably shorter?

Eyeshot's Crushed Cousin of the Julep

Thanks for submitting this. It's a nice story that, I think,
serves its purpose and probably does what you'd like it to do. It's a meditation-type thing that reads really well and naturally and seems to have some basic merit that way. But it's not for us. If you read the pieces on Eyeshot, you'll see that most of them are a little more agitated or churning or unquiet or nervous or scatological or juvenile or free associative etc. I think the sensibility of this story is too mature, too solid, too trustworthy for us. Again, I like it fine and think it does it's job but it's sort of like a collection of impressions that don't leave a lasting one - that's all I can say . . . It could probably be published most anywhere: good luck.

Eyeshot's 4-Second Memory

I liked the way it started but the words were kind of like passing clouds after awhile, and I wasn't paying attention to them as well as I probably should have, and as more clouds passed it got more and more overcast until I couldn't see the words anymore because I'd clicked the reply button and started writing this response. It's a good idea but doesn't seem like it's executed with the vibrancy and ugency or whatever that's required to keep people scrolling all the way down their screens, know what I mean?

So you're in India? That's amazing. That's great. I love that. It's fantastic when people from all over the world submit. Or maybe you just have this Indian e-mail address and actually live in Edison, New Jersey? Well, because I wanted to accept this, thinking that it'd be cool to add to the collection of non-American, non-Brooklynites on the site, I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, but after awhile I wasn't inspired to keep scrolling down, although I kept on, eventually making it all the way down to the nubile Brahmin girls (yaozah!). But I can't accept the submission. It seemed too slow and sort of plodding for the site (for the Internet in general where attention spans are three seconds long) -- I liked the way you used the language and found the cultural things semi-interesting, but also familiar and not so riveting. 

Eyeshot's See-Through Sari

No. No. No. No. No. I'm not finding this funny. I am unequivocally rejecting this piece. Please do not send revisions. If you ever send me something else about Steven the Gay Man and his little tray of freaking whatever, I will delete the message unread. This is all especially disappointing since I read something you wrote today on uber.nu that I thought was funny, but this stuff you're sending me is not so funny . . . how do you think it makes me feel when you send your good stuff elsewhere and your unfunny stuff here? I apologize but i have to maintain stringent standards since my father reads the site each day and lets me know, depending on the enjoyment of each piece, whether he will continue funding my monkish life devoted to online literary pursuits for that day. If he likes he sends via PayPal $5 and I use this to buy wild-rice tempeh, jumbo eggs, and a vanilla coke. So no, no, no, no, no, a thousand times no. Try one of these: http://www.eyeshot.net/kindred.html

Thank you. We have had certain issues with prostitution in the past, however, and would prefer to avoid the issue. Sorry.

Eyeshot's Editorial Lapjack

At first I was thinking I'd accept this, ask you to edit the first line about the face shooting, then see if it was ok if we waited until late october to run it. But it sort of sputtered toward the end . . . . Maybe if the first line said "Halloween night, a month before he shoots himself, my brother Charles dresses as Death" - not explicitly stating that he shot himself in the face . . . and then toward the end it turns out he shot himself in the foot or somewhere not fatal? And how could Death be the most original costume? So I suppose I'm saying I like parts of this and would like to see a revision if you feel like working on it. I'd prefer if Charles didn't kill himself. I'd prefer if the ending were a surprise. And if you'd like to make some changes, I'd like to post it around Halloween. 

Eyeshot's Alien Astronaut

I just printed up your submission and read it. It's 10:15 PM. I was out too late last night, and I was too drunk. I warn you that I may not have been in the best shape to read a piece like this one. I am operating this website in a somewhat impaired condition. What follows is my reckless response: The style is good, but I don't feel there's enough drive to compel web readers to scroll down, not even through the first few paragraphs. There's something enticingly musty about the piece, almost librarian, if you can use that word as an adjective. It felt like a rainy day game of Clue. But I was not really able to apprehend it, which may have been your intention, since you subtitled it a "post apprehension murder mystery." I'll admit that I don't really know what happened. Even in my somewhat impaired state, I think I should be able to make my way through it and pick up on the basic happenings, the going ons: I'd like to post things that momentarily clear the eyes of the bleary. Maybe what you're trying to do is too subtle for me now, and with a few cups of coffee in the morning, I'd love it, but I don't think so. I'll go with my intuition, which is telling me to thank you and apologize and say things about regret. And also to insist that you send something else for consideration, since we like the form but not so much the content. And also that we would love to be included among your list of places where you've published pieces.

Eyeshot's Self-Inflicted Headwound

I sort of like the formal endnote thing, but the content's a bit of a downer. Suicide's a downer, isn't? It used to be, is it still? Do you know why everyone's sending stuff about suicide? What the hell? People must be trying to kill other people off? People must think that other people waking up/drinking coffee who are more or less happy would like to read really short "experimentally" constructed fictional bits about people who've killed themselves. Do you know why? Apparently people must want to read such short bits about people who have offed themselves? It's weird, right? All these people wanting to read such things! And I say, no - no, you people out there -  you can't get what you want! You'll have to look elsewhere if you'd like to read such things, although I don't think other sites have anything like what you've sent, which maybe is good, since maybe they'll accept it if you send it to them. Unfortunately, I am currently unable to validate your choice of vocation. Perhaps the skills you learn at your MFA program will do some good when you take a job as a professional copywriter? I don't know. But you will write more and more and send everywhere and soon, in a year or two decades, all will be fine. Persistence. Patience. Endurance. Resubmittance soon.

Eyeshot's Suicide Ain't No Solution

If the lion and the mouse were eaten by a giant swooping robot bird at the end, then excreted upon an american tourist / Hemingway fan who was hunting elephants, maybe, just maybe this would have a chance . . . but instead it's what it is. A fable that's a little wimpy, a little trite, but otherwise very nicely done and probably quite acceptable at sites that don't require the sudden appearance of swooping robot birds or the infiltration of everything at the end by Israeli secret police. Thanks for submitting. Maybe read a few more pieces in the archive before submitting again, which would be nice. Also please note that we have responded within in an hour of submission, thereby enabling you to send this piece out again in the same evening, as though none of this had ever happened.

Eyeshot's Swooping Robot Editor
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