A Writer's Paradise

Galley proofs

Got some galleys from that there Asimov's magazine.

Now I just have to summon up the ability to read through the story again without, y'know, barfing.

Some people I know feel that selling a story is a huge validation and they lovingly read and re-read the work after an acceptance, gloating over their brilliance.

That would not be me.

I might re-read the acceptance letter for validation, but the story, the one that's going to go out there and be seen? That's the big chance for the world to learn of my fraudulence.

I have not ever actually yet re-read anything I've published once it's been published (with the possible exception of "Shotgun," but that story is only 187 words long). Getting through galleys has been, until now, bearable because I know it's my last chance to make sure embarrassing things don't slip through, but, now, ugh. There's just too much exposure in Asimov's!

Well.

The good news is that I possess a modicum of professionalism and will be looking at the galleys soon. The bad news is, I'm going to have to work myself up to do it.

Sales Spreadsheet

So, when I updated my sales spreadsheet... I couldn't help but notice that I've sold over 30,000 words of fiction now. At an average price of $.03 a word.

The best money-per-word sale I've made was the 186-word story to Flashquake for $15. That worked out to something like over $.08 a word.

Ah, spreadsheets. Those darn Mac/PC commercials make it sound like spreadsheets aren't fun or something!

The Roman and the Regency is up!

The Roman and the Regency is live at Quantum Kiss! Huzzah for there being a speculative fiction romance market!

The Slog

You finish a story. You get it critiqued. You briefly lose all hope. You fix it anyway.

You polish the story. You send it out. F&SF first, because there's no better intersection of turn-around time and pay rate.

You wait a week. You tell yourself it won't even get past JJA. You tell yourself GVG will publish it. You can't decide. You know it's good. You just don't know if it fits in with the F&SF psychology.

You get the letter. You know what's inside before you open it. Acceptances don't come in slim SASE's. You open it anyway. Got to enter those initials into your accounting... It's a JJA. It didn't grab him. You look back over the MS. So, he didn't read past about page 5, maybe earlier? Hm. Does it still look any good?

You send it to Asimov's or Realms of Fantasy or Cicada, whichever is most appropriate. You wait a long time. Rejection, when it comes, may be personal or form, yellow or blue, but it comes.

You send it to Strange Horizons next because it's really an SH kind of story, you were just hoping to maybe have a nice print copy, to break another barrier. You wait a month. You hope you'll wait two. Two is a good sign, from them. But in thirty days, you get a rejection. One editor liked it, but two editors didn't. You sigh. The psychology is right, but everything else is wrong. You probably got some advice in this rejection. You consider it from every angle. Pull for rewrite?

It's only been to three markets, but it's been on the road for almost five months. Five months is a long time in terms of your increasing writing ability, but it's not as much of a dent in your rewriting ability. You carry on. For one thing, one comment is not worth a rewrite. For another, you have other projects, and all you should be giving this story is a push out the door on a regular basis.

You select another market. One of the newer pro-rate markets that's not SFWA eligible, perhaps, or a SFWA-eligible market that's a long shot. Rejection. You try Writers of the Future, because, hey, you're still eligible, and it's a guaranteed three months you won't have to think about this one. Rejection: quarter-finalist. You spend an hour on Ralan, Duotrope, Story Pilot, trying to find an anthology or a market you've missed. You make a list. You eliminate half of them because the story is too long, or the market has not quite the right sensibility--too light, too horrific.

You gamble on one of the high-prestige, low-rate publications, like Electric Velocipede or Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. The story languishes past the expected turn-around-time. You dither on querying. Eventually, rejection comes. You got close. Just not close enough.

You figure maybe the problem is the story. You take it off to a workshop. You change it a bit. You send it out again. You get rejection after rejection--fewer successful rejections than your first go round. Did your original, flawed story work better than this one that's been ironed out? How is that possible?

Three great markets are closed to submissions indefinitely. You'd like to try one or all of these next, but you can't. You poke around the semi-pros, which you're almost out of. You poke around the paying markets. You've read some, or even most, of these publications, at some point, but it's been a while. You don't know what it's like to work with any of them, though, not even on a rejection level. You may as well close your eyes and point.

You pick something that has published a friend, or at least someone you've heard of. You wait. Rejection. Have you tried--? Yes, you have.

You pick a market back up in the pros, one you've heard iffy things about. Astonishingly, they are fantastic, supportive, and almost buy the thing. Your faith is renewed. You glean any hint of a high-paying or high-prestige market that you've never tried, and continue shopping. Fourteen markets, fifteen markets, sixteen markets. It's really not that many, is it, but now the story is two and a half years old and has been rewritten once, and you're beginning to wonder how so many people could almost love something and never actually love it. You make up tortuous clichés about courtesans who are passed around--and stop immediately. Bad clichés.

Some of the markets you first sent this story to are now gone. Folded up and run away in the night. Kaput.

Another hour is given to checking up on markets, between Duotrope and Ralan. It reminds you of that part of Farmer Boy where the kids go down into the cellar to look at the sugar barrel and say, "There's some sugar left. If we scrape the sides--".

There's a very low-paying market that has published a lot of people you like, but you have no idea what the general sense of prestige to this place is. The other option is to wait until that indefinitely-closed market opens back up. At this point, it's either wait indefinitely or start settling for a lower pay rate. A dilemma. A definite dilemma.

What do you do? Wait or sub?

Here cometh the Anthropologist in Exile

Brit Marschalk of The Town Drunk informs me that "One Million Years B.F.E.: Diary of an Anthropologist in Exile" will be up at her publication on November 18th. Yay!

Brit is teh cool; we worked together on the erstwhile Lenox Avenue, where Brit was the web wizard who made a very cool submissions system, and where I learned how much I don't want to read slush for the rest of my life. I've never met her in person, but someday... she seems like good people, and not just because I've been longing to have a light-hearted but not necessarily punny market available to me and my kind.

In any case, if you just can't stand to wait until November 18th... (I write this as deadpan as possible. Just so you know.) ...you can check out the audio form of "One Million Years B.F.E." at Escape Pod.

And if that's still not enough, check out these hilarious LJ icons made by splash_the_cat:

Okay, so the Binford one is probably only hilarious to anthropologists who know what a Mary Sue is...

Things I learned today

1) My specimen for the The Field Guide to Surreal Botany was accepted. I'm deeply stoked--this is probably the coolest idea for an anthology that I've had an idea for in turn. Given also that I have this big ol' shelf of herbals and field guides to medicinal and edible plants, I'm going to have a dilemma in shelving this one: does it go on the ego shelf or right next to Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs?

(This solution is easy, however: the complementary copy goes on the ego shelf, and I buy a copy for the botanicals shelf.)

2) Not nearly as, you know, relevant to my writing blog, but still deeply satisfying: the way to enjoy my English breakfast tea with milk (which seems to curdle in my magical "keeps tea hot for five hours" tea-thing (is it a thermos or a mug or a cup?) is to use Silk soymilk. Tastes close enough to real milk, and anything is better than curdling.

This was very important to get resolved before morning hot tea season reopens.

3) A simple acceptance goes a damn long way to curing some forms of malaise, even forms completely unrelated to writing. I found myself walking around the office doing "jazz hands" at one point. This was a significant contrast to my early moping.

So, that's what I learned... carry on!

Dead Languages

Looks like you can read "Dead Languages" now (formerly known as "Bound by Spells") by subscribing to Farthing. I'm not sure how you get an individual issue short of showing up in the dealer's room at WorldCon, but I'll be sure to find out. I may have to send a representative to World Fantasy to pick up some extra copies for my family, since they all still seem interested in owning my stuff.

But anyway, it's cool! There I am, in print, and first story, no less. Now I have to not think about all the mags we read and discussed last year at WorldCon... Fretting does not become me.

Sold!

I just sold the story formerly known as "Bound by Spells" to Farthing! (Yes, there is a title change in this story's future.)

This story has in it, among other things, vampires, Santa Claus, leather bustiers, and a healthy dose of "fat is a feminist issue."

This story is also about some student film-makers working in faux Ann Arbor. I wouldn't mind if someone who has had more experience working on student films vetted it for me at some point... my "experience" comes from having lived with a film student for two years. So. Earn my eternal gratitude!

It's Official

Excluding the anthology that still seems to be available, the first three markets that I sold to are no more. Well, actually, I just remembered that no money changed hands for AstoundingTales.com, because I was a freshman writer then and wasn't sure what I was getting into. Regardless, Kenoma is gone entirely, whence came my first check, and Fortean Bureau is no more, though the site is up for now. (I hope it's up forever. I'd be willing to provide hosting to that end, in fact.)

There is definitely a part of me that's pleased no one can ever easily read "Her Kaleidoscope Eyes" again. It was really rough, in spite of being the best I could do at the time. Someday I'll put it up in the Trunk, but I'm actually more fond of what's in the trunk already. "Charmed Lives" needs a polish, and might be worth shopping as an audible reprint. It's definitely one of my stories that works better when read aloud. But this is all short-story navel gazing as far as you're concerned.

I'll really miss Fortean Bureau, though, for its consistent goodness and weirdness.

Copyright

I have worked with copyright from a number of (mostly fair use-related) standpoints for over ten years now. I spent years interpreting copyright compliance policies for

• a fee-based information service (leave nothing to chance and pay for everything via the Copyright Clearance Center)
• library reserves services (a thornier knot, but I ultimately believe that reserves should be a considered an extension of the classroom)
• interlibrary loan (still thornier, but I use this chart of when works pass into the public domain often. It should be noted that though 1923 is a magical number, it's not exactly a Scroll of Indemnify: "Happy Birthday" was published before 1923.)

All this means is that I just about have no patience whenever I see people (writers) (in flybys on blogs and mailing lists) flip out because they don't understand when their copyright goes into effect.

Like it matters.

Like they'll be alive when their copyrights expire.

Granted, people are usually worried about whether the work is copyrighted before it gets that little © (a meaningless symbol, really; a work is copyrighted with or without it; the word "copyright" is just as important as ©; and frankly, anything "fixed in a tangible medium of expression" is copyrighted nowadays), plus the date of publication. For all intents and purposes, if your book says © 2004, that date is when the copyright took effect, but we all know you didn't (probably) write the novel in 2004. You probably fixed it in a tangible medium of expression a long time before 2004. This is where the system works for you (the author), and gives you even more time on what is turning out to be a hellishly long span of copyright, anyway.

In fact, there's pretty much no point where the system works against you (the author) anymore, unless you want to write and publish a derivative work, at which point, you're teh hosed. More or less.

So, anyway. I'm not sure why I get so riled by people asking (and they aren't even asking me!) whether or not to put a copyright notice on a manuscript they're sending to editors or agents, or when I see someone has copyrighted their LiveJournal... I guess to me, it bespeaks

• lack of education on the matter (it's copyright already! we know!)
• lack of couthness from the rest of the world (I mean, seriously, someone *stole* the poem off of "Gothic Gardening" because... they think anything on the web is not fixed in a tangible medium of expression? Because they're... morons?) (I guess we don't know it's copyright, already!)...
• or if it's a third thing, the fundamental disconnect here: a copyright notice doesn't keep people from stealing anything--it just makes it easier to take the thieves in court (but it's not required to do so, and the professionals already know the copyright status of your MS. Doubting this makes you look like not-a-professional).

No, I do know why I get riled. Because this is about the only question in copyright issues that's easy.

Is my work copyrighted?

Well, you wrote it down? Then yes, it's copyrighted.

That's all. End rant.

Synopsis and the Crapometer

Everyone seems to have heard of Miss Snark, except me right up until yesterday. Miss Snark, if you must know, is an anonymously blogging literary agent, who blogs with elan (no, I don't know where the accent on that goes*) and with, er, snark.

Miss Snark has loads of Really Good Advice, including Miss Snark's Ironclad Rule about persistence: You may give up querying agents on a manuscript after 100 rejections. But, well. Most days, I wouldn't really care to read another agent blog, no matter how snarky, and that's due to the information governor on my brain: There's only so much I can absorb about this business at one time. When I feel I need to absorb something, I go looking for it, because the best advice in the world is completely unprocessable for me until I'm ready for it. And I suspect you already know I didn't need a Miss Snark to tell me to be persistent on rejection.

But this is actually one of those lovely moments of serendipity: I bopped over to Miss Snark, read her FAQ and found out about the crapometer, the latest incarnation of which appears to be (cue dramatic music) synopses. Basically, Miss Snark had about a hundred synopses sent to her and she analyzed each one on her blog.

The wonder of this is really not so much the analysis (though that's a dandy thing, too) but the fact that there are a hundred examples out there on the web, just... waiting. Sitting there, prepped to lead by example (good example or bad). The second wonder is... she's already done this with queries and first pages.

I'm actually have written onto my writing to-do list: sit down with Crapometer Number 1 and go from there.

Unfortunately, the Blogger search function isn't the greatest, so I think the easiest way to go through all the synopses is to take the base Crapometer URL: http://misssnark.blogspot.com/2005/12/crapometer-1.html, and replace the number with the next one in sequence.

Anyway. Here's to a weekend full of crap.

* I think it's the a, but I don't know how to html an accent grave, and I'm tiiiiired.

Puuuuush

I feel like I just moved a very small mountain. At last, everything complete that I haven't given up on (and that I could find a market for) is back out the door. And it only took two evenings of concerted effort. And that was just for 7 stories.

Oh, yes! This is why we do it in dribs and drabs children. It is too hard to do it all at once. Let this be a lesson to me.

I consider that I'm starting my New Year's Resolutions a month early--and that resolution is to get back on the horse about being attentive, diligent and persistent in regards to short story submissions.

I would like (fingers crossed, kiss the sky) to finish two short stories, like, now, and they're ones I talk about all the time so I'm not even going to bother to name names, and I have no freakin' clue how to finish either one of them. I think for the one that's fun and space opera-ish, I need to find the deeper meaning, but I've written myself into a corner and now I'm stuck. As for the one that's creepy and fairy tale-ish, there is more corner writing, and I don't know how to move my characters around the board now without it devolving into standard quest fantasy, which is SO not how this story is meant to go. They need to go to the land of the giants to obtain some peppercorns. There's a tailor, a weaver, a sorcerer and a farmer's son, and I am absolutely lost in this story, LOST I tell you.

I am all beginning and almost no middle. I am also Jack's anticlimactic slash-dab ending.

Gr.

Tributes

In case you are one of the few who would care but hasn't heard, SCIFICTION is going away at the end of this year. There is probably a slightly larger group who hasn't heard but would care: there is an opportunity to write a tribute essay (or paragraph) to one of the stories that has appeared in the magazine over the years.

As soon as I heard about this, I had an ode to Elizabeth Bear's "This Tragic Glass" all written out in my head; when all of this is over, I may yet write that ode. But someone else has dibs on that story, so I chose Severna Park's "The Three Unknowns." I hope to write something over Thanksgiving.

They're hoping to get over three hundred people involved in this--so there's plenty of room. It would be lovely if every story was represented. If you are shilly-shallying because you don't think you've got the cred or the whatever... well, stop.

And to think, the way I mourned the passing of Lenox Avenue was by putting a lampshade on my head drinking a toast. This idea is much better.

Playboy

Hey, it has actually come to that point in my career where I have submitted a story to Playboy! Not because I've written a particularly sexy story... this is more an issue of realizing it's a good-paying, professional market that I have previously overlooked.

Of course, my trek to find the right address was as close to epic as an address-trek can get. At one point when I checked the address on the Playboy website (at home), everyone (in the ads) was fully clothed--and the next time (at work) there were NIPPLES EVERYWHERE and I was scrambling to shut the browser because, well, work. Sometimes you just can't look up addresses at work. This is one of those times.

Anyway, interestingly, the website offers a submissions address in Chicago... and The Rumor Mill and Ralan say that the submissions address is in New York. I gambled on the experts this time. I will not often operate contrary to posted guidelines, but when The Rumor Mill and Ralan agree, it's time to consider it.

"Star & Galaxy"

Looks like "Star & Galaxy" is up at Between Kisses.

Brief Thoughts

WisCon

I went, I saw, I made as little of a fool of myself as I possibly could.

No one gave me a triumph when I came home, but it's ok. Maybe next time.

Progress

Have not written anything since the last time I posted here that I had written something. That's a long time.

Process

But I'm revising my process and that's good. It might be brain time, after all. I hear some writers have it.

Slush

Lenox Avenue is reading for a themed issue: Mechanical Oddities. Send those stories along, a'ight?

OWW

So far, my new resolve to do one crit a week has been adhered to. It's been a week. I've done one crit.

TV

So addicted to reruns of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which I didn't watch the first time they were on, largely in favor of Babylon 5. I'm in the 5th season. Most individual episodes feel deeply flawed. The overall arch is not as detailed or as compelling as other shows I've loved. But the gestalt is working for me all the same.

My Favorite Authors

Robin McKinley was GOH at WisCon. She was very beautiful and self-deprecating. Some people seem annoyed by the self-deprecating thing, but frankly, after sitting next to Ellen Klages at a panel, it makes perfect, perfect sense. There's always someone out there who makes you feel blown away, a merest twit, just by being their normal self. It's a fact. (And I do hope Ellen took my bumptiousness as the hero-worship it was, and not actual bumptiousness.)

Bully for Me

I sold "Star and Galaxy" to Between Kisses.

More Editing

Mom was here on her way back down to North Carolina, so much of my yesterday was spent chatting with her or making the house look slightly more inhabited by people instead of monkeys.

The rest of my yesterday, and already some of this morning, has been spent responding to editors about my story, which has been tweaked and retweaked and better be darn near perfect soon.

I've already spent many, many times more effort conversing with the editor on this one story (the first one of mine in a pro market) than I have with all my other stories combined (semi-pro and not-close-to-pro markets). It's fascinating. It's revealing. It makes me happy, because always before when I'd sell a story and it would be published, I would wonder: "Is this *it*?"

It's also revealing because it makes me realize how much fine-tuning I really should be doing before sending the story out. Not that I didn't believe I had been doing all the fine-tuning I could before--but now I know I need to add more time into my editorial process, and really get in there.... read the stories aloud, in the absence of actually acquiring an uncommon word counter. And other stuff I haven't quite figured out yet. I'm still writing from instinct, and that's ok. I think I should continue to do so, actually. I don't know that I should be editing from instinct, however.

In other news, I got a few really excellent critiques on "The Library Seed" over at the OWW, and I'm impressed with the clarity with which some reviewers are able to explain what they perceive to be going on in my story, both on a macro and micro level. I was dubious at first, but now I'm pretty convinced that it was a good move. I don't think I'd ever be able to workshop a novel in that system, but short stories are in their element there.

It's been a highly educational week.

Edits and Eagerness

Well, I didn't have a deadline so much as a, uhm. Urgency-line. I guess? Anyway, got mail from my editor(s) at SH, which redirected what was turning into a lackadaisical editing session into a very driven editing session.

And that was hella cool, from what I was doing to why I was doing it. Maybe after another few sales (knock on wood), I won't be all starry-eyed and eager to please? But I doubt it. Hell, if I haven't lost my enthusiasm for all the other things people have told me I wouldn't keep it for, I'm not going to lose it for this sort of thing, either.

I mean, I still like to drag a booktruck around the library because it's feels so official. If I don't lose the happy in steering a six-wheeled, three-shelved, squeaky wooden contraption around, how am I gonna lose it for this, which is infinitely cooler?

Of Cats and Commas

Lo, for though it has long been in the "forthcoming" section, it looks like "Huntswoman" is finally going to see the light of day. Karen et al. at Strange Horizons sent me the edits, and I assume galleys will come soon after. In related news, I learned I had a severe outbreak of the commapox in that story.

In less thrilling news, I was sitting here typing this with laptop on my left leg and my right knee bent and up. Merlin-the-cat decided that would be his perchin' knee and jumped onto it, where he kept his very unstable perch with his claws until I shrieked in pain and threw him off. He immedietely curled up in a ball and began to purr.

Cats. Commas. Man.

The Fine Art of Querying

I'm talking short story queries here.

As you know, Bob (well, actually, many of you don't, and not a few of you don't care, and a few more of you actually know way more about this than I do, so who the heck am I actually talking to?), when you submit short stories to genre publications, you do not query about it beforehand unless there is some reason you can't comply with the guidelines. Note, in about 80 submissions, I have queried about an exception to guidelines once. I figure that takes care of me for the next 80 submissions, too. Asking to be an exception to guidelines strikes me as potentially bad form--though less bad form than sending in exceptions to guidelines without querying.

(For the record, I had a story that exceeded Arabella's word-limit by a significant margin--1,500 words past their 4,500 word limit. I queried; they said yes, send it, but please do be aware that it will come under harsh scrutiny (my words). If it had been any other sort of story--ie, non-romance, which has a very, very, very tiny short fiction market, and I didn't feel I could afford to cut Arabella out of my efforts without even trying.)

So, querying in short story-land tends to come after the fact--after the submission--n'est-ce pas? "Dear editors, you have had my short story for 635 days, please send me an answer now." Except, more politely.

It's a very careful balancing act, the knowing when to query. The immediate suspicion is that either the submission or the response went astray--and indeed, that's covered the bulk of my experiences which have required querying. But there's always that chance that some other nefarious forces are at work. Grad school, I know, came into play once during a particularly long interlude... "Heretic's Day Out" languished on an editor's desk under a pile of grad school papers, and only got rejected at the end of the term--or something. I never really was clear on what happened. (In any case, I sold it to the very next market I sent it to, so I never did feel very bad about not querying on that one.)

In general, though, I keep an eye on turn-around times. I'm sensitive to turn-around times in part because I worked (and technically still do) in document delivery. I have no idea what slush-reading is like, but I do sense the ebb and flow of papers washing across a desk. I know how perfectly innocent-looking papers can build and build and build until you have a tsunami of wood-pulp and rags bearing down on you. I know what it's like to be the one holding onto anonymous piles of paper, while there are individuals out there lusting to have in their hands just one tiny twentieth of a ream sent to them. The paper hoarder is clearly the social criminal; you may as well be hoarding meat in the Kalahari or gold in Anglo-Saxon Britain.

No, actually I keep an eye on turn-around times 'cause it's the only real way to know where you stand. It's the only way to prepare oneself for the oncoming rejection. Even if you love and embrace rejections as I do, it still takes a level of mental vigilance to continue not to take it personally.

So, when a magazine says on their website that they turn stories around in two months, and if not two, in three for sure... Ok. The mind opens up to the possibility of rejection at two months, and by three, is downright antsy when no word has come. And that's what I mean by "keeping an eye on turn-around times." I don't know how the rest of the writing world does it, but I comb through my circulating list every day or two, just to get a feel: "will this rejection be coming soon? Will this one?" (Note: I do not dare look for acceptances. That way lies madness. Acceptances should be pleasant surprises.)

But stated web-guidelines are only the first step on the road to query. After that, I start checking other places: The Black Hole, for one, which lists real-life stats on turn-around times. Of course, that's not quite enough information to go on, most of the time--it's usually anecdotal evidence at best.

The next step is hitting up the rumor mill. You can do that literally over at the actual Rumor Mill, or see if Ralan has made note of anything, or check The Write Hemisphere. And so on.

Let's run a real-life example or three.

I sent "One Million Years BFE" to Interzone on 7/19. That's overseas, but they kindly will send an e-reply to save you postage, so at least the transit time is cut in half, and doesn't need to factor into the equation unduly. Ralan says their response time is "2 months max," which you'll notice it was at the end of September, if you are extremely generous to the slackitude of the combined efforts of the US Postal Service and Her Majesty's as well. Their actual guidelines states "four weeks but please don’t query submissions until at least eight weeks have passed." I would be in my rights to do query now, but...

What does the Black Hole say? Well, they report a couple rejections from this spring that mostly fit the 4-8 week window. Hm. Anecdotal evidence at best: 2 items from this spring.

(crinkles brow) Wasn't there some sort of biggish publishing merger or something recently? Could that be causing a delay? Or... oh, let's just keep looking. The ten minutes I spend browsing is ten minutes I could use to compose and send a query, but you know, there's nothing quiet like detective work.

I head over to Write Hemisphere and use their search box. I remember reading an entry about Interzone there and thinking "That may be relevant." I was, of course, well under 8 weeks at that point, and had no suspicion that I would be going over... Well, WH doesn't want to load right now, but when I did this earlier today, I found a link to an Interzone "ask the editor" style board where a number of people started asking about their submissions--a very informal style of querying. The editor was gracious in responding to them, but the general consensus on the board was that there was a bunch of stuff still going on with the merger (or something; I'm doubtless misremembering), and things were taking a leetle longer to get through slush than anyone expected.

Ok, well. The editor has publicly asked for patience, and heck, I hate composing query letters.

Similar circumstances dog the footsteps of "Sun's East" which is at Amazing Stories right now. They are getting a new editor; there was a public plea for turn-around clemency, which I found on the Write Hemisphere. So, I automatically tacked another month, maybe two onto that one.

There is always the dreadful possibility that my submissions were still never received; or that they've been read and rejected and the correspondance went astray. It's certainly happened (though that seems to be more likely due to bad email addresses I've typed in than any vagaries of the post office. Yes, I'm less reliable than the post office!). However, at this point, if they had been e-subs, I would have caught the bad addresses, most likely. Though, email addresses also have a way of changing rather lickety-split, and I've sent subs to bounce endlessly around dead-end ether before (ok, just once).

I've lost subs to hard-drive failures and I've lost responses to overeager spam filters. Interestingly, each problem has been unique, and I've never replicated a disaster yet. Statistically, I think that makes sense. On a personal level, it's just irritating. It is completely vexing to keep giving a market the benefit of the doubt only to find out that there was no need to give them such benefit, that they never got your manuscript. Again, that's happened only a few times out of the 80ish submissions I've made. In the end, I suppose it's worth the wait, though... query only when all hope is lost. That may come from the horrors of having to wade through a paper tsunami to find that one piece of paper that someone would have gotten on time if they'd just been patient. It may come from the fact that I hate writing letters. It may come from being afraid to piss editors off with my nagging.

In any case, it's a learned kind of patience, a sort of art for the unambitious. And now you know how I do it.

Acceptance, and Back to Work

Acceptance number 2 of the month: AstoundingTales.com wants "Her Kaleidoscope Eyes."

Man, that better not be all my luck used up for the year. Sure, I know... it's not all luck... but it's some luck. Enough that I should be concerned. You know, in between updating my bibliography and smiling a little smile.

And settling down with the novel, which doesn't actually know if it wants to be settled down with right now. Er, look at me, anthropomorphizing and projecting all in the same sentence. I don't want to settle down with it right now. Brain too fried. Short stories too jabbery.

(sighs) (shakes head) I really, really don't know when I became a short story writer more than a novelist. It certainly happened while I wasn't looking.

Story for Sale!

Story for Sale! Sold! "Shotgun", to one flashquake, forthcoming in their September issue.

Carry on.

Resubmitting

Well, after a good night's sleep, I'm back on the resubmitting bandwagon. I can't honestly decide where that line between trying and trunking gets drawn, but I guess, like art or pornography, "I'll know it when I see it." One of the hardest lessons I learned last year was persistence. It's a fresh enough lesson that I can't just let it go.

I'd rather try too hard than not hard enough, anyway.

Rejection on "Sir Michael" as well. Not many markets left for that one. Trunking may happen sooner, rather than later.

Hm, hm... rejection resignation settles in one more time, before the fact.

Sent another new shiny-new story out.

Realized that I'm exactly 2 months from having sub'd "Sun's East" to Brutarian, which is their stated turn-around goal. They average out to 37 days on the Black Hole, and the most recent reporting was a 5/10 sub that came back on 7/8. So... 5/17 to 7/17, right?

It's funny, I rarely worry about stories while they're out, and I never really think to check up on them early. And yet, a subconscious twinge always prods me, and I go get hovery about two or three days before I consciously realize that the stated turn-around has arrived. Go my subconscious. Or something.

The Satisfaction of Knowing

Thanks to Bookselling This Week, thank goodness, finally had some news about the Ursula Nordstrom Fiction Contest. Sarah Holmes won with Letters from Rapunzel. I look forward to reading it.

Interestingly, there were only 300 entries. (Doesn't seem like that many.)

Less interestingly, I still don't have an actual rejection in hand.

Ooh, look: press release. That's what I found when attempting to find out of Sarah Holmes has a home on the web.

Good news...

I just sold "Reparations" to Fortean Bureau.

This... yeah... I'm so excited! This one means a lot to me. I've been reading FB for a while now just for itself, as well as because M'ris and Stella have been published there. It's very good company to be in, in my opinion...

The story means a lot to me, too, but that's not news to anyone really...

Oops.

Neither wrote yesterday nor wrote here. My writing cadre says it's ok, jet-lag and all that. But mostly I'm just disappointed in myself. Nevertheless, I shall carry on.

Also, looks like the poems are up at Dark Moon Rising.

Surprise!

Well, Dark Moon Rising accepted four poems for their April 2004 issue. Color me flummoxed. And also completely out of submittable poetry.

No pay, but it's poetry. I never once expected to get paid for poetry. I only submitted them because they (the poems) looked sad and lonely, to see all their prose siblings running off to the big game.

Well, that's the last time I'll be suckered by that ploy! Especially since I'm not producing poetry anymore.

The poems in question are "Descent," "Of," "Otherwhere" and "The Work of Time."

Yeppers

"Charmed Lives" is up at Kenoma for February.

Peg is my TOC buddy!

Good Day

Kenoma e-zine will carry "Charmed Lives" in their Feb. issue. I'm mailing the contract back today.

Please note for the record: this is the first time I've gotten paid for something I've written.

Please also note, and congratulate me on, my calm whilst making this announcement.

Rejection

The basic links to all the rejection hub-bub... the original post by Teresa Neilsen Hayden, and Elizabeth Bear's take with links to others' takes.

My first rejection was from myself.

I was on staff of the high school literary magazine for one year before I became editor. In high school terms, that's paying your dues. And it does tend to give you an odd sense of what "paying your dues" means in the real world.

With a double-blind submission process (I guess that's the right term), I never saw my own work; likewise, my staffers and co-editor didn't know it was me when they rejected one of my poems. Nevertheless, getting a rejection letter from myself, however nominally, is pretty surreal.

You know, I did take that one personally.

And for a while since then, I've taken rejections personally. It's not a conscious choice. All the folk saying that they've never taken it personally must have completely different personalities from mine, or have different background that taught them something that beginners don't usually know.

And that's the issue, isn't it? Beginners don't know. There aren't any (are there?) books out there that focus on rejection and behaving professionally (none widely advertised, anyway). Some beginners may be lucky enough to have a mentor, but most don't, not really.

My pattern used to be: write a story. Send it out. Receive rejection. Discard story. Wait a year. Repeat.

That's a suboptimal pattern. But that's how seriously I took the rejections. Just because I didn't know any better.

Note that I didn't go ranting on the internet back in those days. I'd speculate, in fact, that for every person who goes ranting on the internet, there's at least a couple like me, who just withdrew like a turtle in a hailstorm.

Those are my issues, though. The editors who rejected me in no way suspected that this would happen from their (frequently kind) rejection letters. I'm sure, in fact, that they'd be appalled, just as appalled as they are at the rejected writers that rant on websites. Not that they (the editors) created that reaction, but that anyone could have that reaction. Now, I think it's an appalling reaction. I shake my head when I think of it. It was a pretty damn ridiculous reaction.

But I say that, years later, knowing what I know now, with my whopping 30-some rejections (hardly anything). What got me past the point? Mentors. did the research and actually got involved with on-line writing communities, and I peered over her shoulder while she did so. She met , who had a professional sale under her belt when I met her. Both got rejected--and lived. Proof of life is a powerful thing.

Even then, it took diligent practice to learn how to deal with rejections. I even wrote a ranty thing on a website about one once, but in retrospect, I think it was proof that I'd grown. I'm more of an introvert than I appear, so managing not to collapse inward on myself at the first hint of rejection is growth. Likewise, not getting out-of-hand angry about rejection is also growth. Necessary stages.

My guess about all the brouhaha is that a) there are a lot of authors who don't persist long enough to get through the stages, or b) some authors get stuck in stages. My other guess is that there are few people brand-new to the business side of the writing world who have enough objectivity to by-pass the stages altogether.

Yep. That's what I think today.

Who knows for tomorrow.

Buy This Book!

Look. Here it is. http://www.cafeshops.com/oww_scholarship.9564292.

My first story is in that. Er, published story.

My first story is locked away where none of you can find it. It's about a princess and a dragon named Draggie.

This one is not.