continuing industry

[truepenny]

A new draft of "A Night in Electric Squidland," 6,700 (much better) words.

Two submissions prepped to be walked down to the post office tomorrow.

One of my queries from yesterday has sparked a response--sadly, taking the form of a rejection, and whereas this editor and another, widely disparate editor both rejected the story on the same grounds, and whereas those said grounds are kind of integral to the story, I think this one is getting trunked.*

So at the moment we're holding steady at 17 stories in submission and one getting weighed like a jockey before a race.

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*The problem is that it's too much like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I realized, in thinking through my indignation, that all the ways in which the story is not like BtVS are things that really only I know about, because they'd take a novel to explore properly. A 5k short story can only hint at them, and you can only really pick up on the hints if you know what they're hinting at, which brings us back to the part where that's stuff only I know about. So I either need to abandon the character and the world and the project, or I need to think about it at novel-scale instead of short-story-scale. Or, you know, first one and then the other.

Comments

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

There's a really interesting discussion in here about how to know what the right length for a story idea is. Now, of course, what you have to do is write the novel, and then let people read both so that the discussion can take place. Piece of cake, right?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Oh totally. Like falling off a log. *g*

[graygirl.livejournal.com]

I have 11 stories out and about; three have come home to roost and another two are brand new and still in crit. Oh the writer's life for me...

[heresluck]

The problem is that it's too much like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I realized, in thinking through my indignation, that all the ways in which the story is not like BtVS are things that really only I know about, because they'd take a novel to explore properly.

Well, color *me* intrigued.