industrious mole

[truepenny]

Today I have made four submissions, four queries, and one withdrawal, and started "A Night in Electric Squidland" over to the tune of 1,200 words. (This is the problem with the 'discovery draft' method of composition. Once you figure out what you're doing, you have to go back and rewrite the story so that it looks like it was what you meant to do all along.) I now have 17 stories out and circulating, with an 18th almost ready to go. I would be more impressed by myself if I were making sales, frankly, but you can't make sales if you don't make submissions, so I figure I'm doing my part. Seniority currently belongs to "Sundered," which is on its 13th submission, and I have a couple of stories that are on their first, poor sweet naïve little darlings.

Selling short stories is all about persistence and patience, and it gets easier the more stories you have out, because it's harder to obsess when you have seventeen ingenues than when you only have two. Also, volume helps in the process of desensitizing oneself to rejection letters, and one becomes less prone to trying to consult the illegible footnotes in the Rejectomancy Handbook.

Ego's a hard thing to handle as a writer. If you don't have sufficient ego, you won't submit at all. If you don't have a fairly sturdy ego, you'll cave in under the weight of your accumulating rejection letters (especially the ugly ones, and yes, MZB, I am looking at you, de mortuis notwithstanding). And if you don't have a well-armored ego, you will make the classic mistake of taking every rejection personally. But too much ego, and you become incapable of learning, and incapable of admitting that the editor may be right in what he or she says about why your story is not working. You have to stay aware of what your ego is trying to tell you, and you have to be careful about how you listen to it. Because it's all about the dynamic equilibrium, and if you don't stay vigilant, you're going to get stuck.

I keep reminding myself of something Alan Rickman said: "I do take my work seriously and the way to do that is not to take yourself too seriously."

Comments

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

My unfavorite rejection letter was the Asimov's lowgrade one (which I hope the new editor will replace.) "Your story was probably rejected for one of the following reasons: You ripped off the idea from Star Trek...."

[namastenancy.livejournal.com]

Great post; I'm a painter, not a writer but the points that you make are valid for any artist in any medium.

MZB - ah yes.. The lovely woman spread charm and delight where she went, didn't she? I had a friend whose writing she blasted into outer space. Unfortunately, the friend was so traumatized by the dear lady that she stopped writing for ages. It's almost heresy that she wrote so feelingly about the Goddess and behaved like a demon from hell.

Pshaw!

[fancythat2.livejournal.com]

Ahhhh, the art work critique. Is that a great warm up to prepare the way for rejection letters or what? ;-D

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Your industry is most impressive.

And if you would ever want another beta-reader for, oh say, something with shoggoths in it...

[fancythat2.livejournal.com]

I love Alan Rickman!

I keep reminding myself of something Alan Rickman said: "Cut his heart out...with a spoon!"
"...and cancel Christmas!"

Hee.

[graygirl.livejournal.com]

Rock on with your productive self! (I kept a page from a reject from MZB, on which she wrote "Doorknob!" Apparently I was trying to be too clever in hiding that info, but that one little word has seriously helped my writing through the years. :))

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

... Do you mind explaining the reference? I'm curious!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

You and mollya are the two people on livejournal I think about almost every day, as I think about what you are like and how I want to be like you "when I grow up".

[katallen.livejournal.com]

Yes.

I figure at least I've been training my ego rather than needing it broken ::grins::

[iagor.livejournal.com]

"Because it's all about the dynamic equilibrium, and if you don't stay vigilant, you're going to get stuck."

True. But then you can have a balanced ego and be completely unable to write a saleable short story. Like me :)

I only submitted one story to MZB and her rejection was mild. It said, "Almost there."

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Writing short stories and selling short stories are two entirely different propositions.

I'm only talking about the selling part.

[mroctober.livejournal.com]

Amazing how many of us have a MZB story.




Thankfully I lack a MZB's husband story!



::turns back to reading::

[dancingwriter.livejournal.com]

Uh-huh, I've got one of those MZB letters tucked away in my files, too. Judging from what other folks are saying, I guess I got off easy. Except that her reason for rejecting my story was "I don't like to publish stories on this subject"--and lo and behold, there in the next issue of the magazine was a story on that very subject!

[raqs.livejournal.com]

so how do you find, and rank, places to submit to? you don't have to answer, it's just what i'm thinking about. once a story has done the five or six markets i actually know about, i'm never sure what the hell to do with it. and the books all say (and the submission guidelines all say) that you should know what kinds of material that market wants before you submit. which is very good advice, and critical i'm sure, except i don't want to subscribe to twelve different magazines i'll never read all of.
i'm just thinking.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I use ralan.com (http://www.ralan.com/) and Storypilot (http://www.storypilot.com/).

[raqs.livejournal.com]

ooo, thanks!