doggedness

[truepenny]

Two turnips (short stories) lobbed out.

Leaving me with my three Weird Sisters, three 10 k traditional horror novellas that nobody loves but me. *sniff*

On the upside, that's ten stories out and circulating, which is about five more than I could even imagine when I started submitting things back in 2000. (My three-year anniversary of submitting short fiction is October 5th.) And both those original submissions have sold. Huh. I guess that's a good sign.

Submitting short stories requires complete estrangement from the ego. That's the thing that's hard. You can't let it knock you on your ass when something gets rejected, even if it's the best thing you've ever written and the editors are all cretinous slobbering hyenas. (Which is how the more primitive levels of my psyche react to each and every rejection letter.) There's a rhythm to it, a kind of beat of not-thinking that's really really easy to lose. And once you start thinking, it's a very short and very slippery slope to that Eeyorish state of Why bother? No one will buy it. No one cares that it's your life's blood on the page. Probably they'll just make paper hats out of it and laugh. How Like Them, and you might as well be eating thistles.

It's also true that this particular tango gets easier with practice. But you have to keep dancing.

Comments

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Submitting short stories requires complete estrangement from the ego.

I can only manage that in short stretches. Then I get flashes of painful hope. And anger ('what's TAKING them so long?') and despair ('I suck. No, really.')

Good thing my productivity is low. I don't know how I'd manage if I had ten things in circulation, instead of one. (well, two, but I'm pretty sure by now the other was a rejection.)

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I'm managing to more or less ignore the story I have in submission at present (expected back sometime in October). But sometimes I can simultaneously believe that a story is taking such a long time to come back because they're seriously considering it and it was lost in the post and never got there. Not either/or, I can believe both at the same time.

I don't think I've ever had more than 1 thing out at a time, or perhaps 2, one short and a novel. The novels take so bloody long that I must have submitted a short at some point while I had a novel with a publisher.

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

I haven't submitted anything in years. Of course, I haven't written a marketable short story in years, either. I blame Marion Zimmer Bradley for up and dying, actually, because I was convinced that my first sale would be to her.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I use a samurai technique. Any story that goes out the door is a dead man walking.

"A man who has accepted his death can accomplish remarkable things."

That way they only hurt when they've been out long enough that I start to hope. I hate hope. Hope is painful.

Like the one Infinite Matrix is sitting on now is killing me where I stand. (113 days, and I know it's a good one. Even Kelly Link liked it.)

But yeah. If you can get through the rejection, you can get through anything.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

I've only started submitting short stories (I'm more of a long-form writer). I just got a short story rejected and turned it around again. My attitude is usually something like Back out the door with you, Ms. Story! And get accepted this time, you hear?

But I was fortunate -- my first rejection came with a nice personal note -- a positive rejection (if there be such an animal). And I had only allowed myself to expect the form letter of doom, so I felt almost as good as if I'd actually gotten the story published. ;)

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Whenever I have something at SH and it goes past the average, I like to think they're calling each other up and reading parts of it out loud to each other and laughing themselves sick.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Misia, you are cool. The coolest, even.

But if you want a reminder to start submitting when your draft is done, I can do that for you. :)