How To Lob A Turnip

[truepenny]

Writers lead lives of unparalleled glamour.
    --Caitlín R. Kiernan

---

I've got to deal with my short story subs today, and I thought--going along with matociquala's plan of maximum transparency, minimum mystique--I'd show y'all the process. (My cunning ulterior motive is that this may actually motivate me to do rather than merely whinge about.)

So. I've been submitting short stories seriously since 2000. (Dilettante forays in the '90s do not count.) In that time, I've sold 22 pieces (counting flash, short stories, novelettes, novellas, and one poem) and racked up more rejections than I want to think about--but I just counted, and it's 184. The most rejections on a story that's still making the rounds is 15. Thet oldest unsold story has been getting doors slammed in its face since October 2000.

I currently have 7 stories out, and 6 stories moping around the house eating ice-cream straight out of the carton and whining about how they can't get work.

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The first thing about submitting short stories is that the more you have out, the less emotional wear and tear you suffer. When you only have one short story, it's like a Fabergé egg: you agonize over sending it; you haunt the mailbox waiting for the editor's reply, becoming more and more fraught as the weeks pass; you weep wretched buckets of tears when it's rejected. And each rejection is a separate wrenching horror.

When you have lots of stories out ("lots" here being anywhere from, say, five, up to infinity), the process loses a lot of its drama. You have other things to think about. You learn to roll with the punches; you learn not to take each rejection quite so personally. It gets easier, in other words, to get back on the horse.

The idea here is not to write five mediocre stories instead of one good one, but not to wait until you sell the first story to write the second one. If I'd done that, I'd still only have one short story to my name, unsold.

The second thing about submitting short stories is that it helps to have a system. My system is index cards, with the name of the story and the word count at the top, and then notations that look like:

out: 06/27/06          back: 08/11/06
Strange Horizons

My index cards let me know both where a story has been submitted to and, for the stories that are out, how long it's been with a particular editor. My index cards are also why I can tell you how many rejections I've gotten in the past six years.

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My process consists mainly of making lists in my notebook.

Step 1: Go through the index cards and list the markets where I have stories currently in submission. Today, that list is: Paradox, Aberrant Dreams, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Cicada, Asimov's, Æon, Interfictions. Two of those markets need to be queried.

Hang on a minute.

...

Okay. Queries made.

Step 2: List the stories that need to go out, with sublists of the markets they've already been to.

DARKNESS, AS A BRIDE (1,200 words)

Strange Horizons

ChiZine

Talebones

IMPOSTERS (4,600 words)

Subterranean

Lone Star Stories

Ideomancer

City Slab

Strange Horizons

LETTER FROM A TEDDY BEAR ON VETERANS' DAY (4,000 words)

Zoetrope

Fantasy & Science Fiction

Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet

Scifiction

ChiZine

Flytrap

Talebones

Alchemy

On Spec

Æon

Flesh and Blood

New Genre

Postscripts

The New Yorker

A LIGHT IN TROY (2,000 words)

Polyphony 5

Strange Horizons

Scifiction

Fantasy & Science Fiction

Zoetrope

NO MAN'S LAND (2,500 words)

Scifiction

Strange Horizons

Asimov's

Æon

Flytrap

Fantasy & Science Fiction

UNDER THE BEANSIDHE'S PILLOW (375 words)

Talebones

Lenox Ave.

ChiZine

Fortean Bureau

Vestal Review

Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet

Realms of Fantasy

Fictitious Force

Ideomancer

Step 3: Decide where to send each of these 6 stories.

(Step 4: Send email submissions and prepare printouts and envelopes for land submissions is interlarded with Step 3.)

This is, obviously, the hard part.

My principal resource (aside from six years in the trenches :P ) is ralan.com. ralan.com keeps very well up to date with what markets are currently closed to submissions. This is important, because genre markets close and open like night-blooming cereus.

So, for example, ralan.com tells me that Baen's Universe is closed to subs. So are ChiZine and Fantastic Stories (still) and Fantasy Magazine and Farthing and ... you get the idea.

I submit regularly, if fruitlessly, to Fantasy & Science Fiction (and the slushbomb* is scheduled for tomorrow), so that makes one decision for me. "Imposters" goes to F&SF.

"Letter from a Teddy Bear" goes to Lone Star Stories, because I can only take one scary mainstream market at a time.

Hang on a minute.

...

Okay, sent. (The joys of living in the future.)

Printing "Imposters." I used to have a template in WordPerfect for cover letters, but I've discovered I can actually work faster if I just type the damn things. (Don't agonize too much. If you have credits, list 'em. If you don't, let it go. Don't answer questions that haven't been asked. Let the story do the selling.)

I almost, but not quite, have F&SF's address memorized.

Paperclips. Paperclips are key. Also an industrial supply of 9x12 envelopes.

2 down, 4 to go.

"Under the Beansidhe's Pillow" to Strange Horizons (and loud huzzahs for their new submission system).

This leaves three stories that I don't know where to send, and I think I'm going to go ahead and post this entry while I dither.

Tomorrow will see:
Step 5: Take land submissions to post office.

And then we wait until the carousel starts up again.

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*Do I think it'll change a damn thing? No. Do I think it's worth doing? Yes. Otherwise, Jed's being thoughtful over here.

Comments

[shawn-scarber.livejournal.com]

Okay, this is so bookmarked! Thanks for sharing this.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

What are the paperclips for? To keep the cover letter with the story? Or for your own filing purposes?

As you might have guessed, I avoid paper clips, but am willing to have my mind changed.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

The paperclips are to keep the story, the cover letter, and the return envelope TOGETHER. This becomes vital when I have two or more land submissions, because I am clumsy and scatter-brained.

My index cards get the littlest size of binder clips.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Binder clips are my friends!

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

They're like duct-tape. And the Force. They hold the universe together.

[pabba.livejournal.com]

Very neat insight into your process. Who'd you end up querying?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Two markets I hadn't heard back from for a long time.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Theoretically, I have a list of short story markets to which I submit in order of how much they pay. (In practice, I have a list of short story markets to which I submit in order of whether they let me submit in email. Baen's Universe is top of both lists. In practice, also, I hardly ever write short stories and I'm hardly ever sufficiently satisfied with the ones I do to send them out, so this all stays theoretical.)

Anyway, for what it's worth, this start-with-the-best-paying- markets thing, I'm sure this is what somebody at some point told me to do, or I read it somewhere, and the reason for it is that the best paying markets deserve the first crack at the good stuff, and lower paying markets only deserve it if the better paying ones pass on it, and this rewards markets that pay more. (The other good thing about it is that you don't have to think about where to send anything, because there's an order, though you still have to check closed markets and anthologies.)

You clearly don't follow this theory, as I see a story up there submitted to The New Yorker after Talebones.

As Eric Flint thinks that people don't write short fiction because it doesn't make economic sense, and Charlie Stross has recently said that short fiction is for advertising and experimenting, I wondered whether you're not thinking about money at all, or whether the difference between a couple of hundred dollars and twenty dollars doesn't mean anything, or what principle you're working on when you select a market.

(Also, bonus question: What's scary and mainstream about F&SF?)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Ooh, sorry, critical clarity failure. It's not F&SF that's scary and mainstream; it's The New Yorker, which is the last place I submitted the story that's now going to Lone Star Stories. I should have said I can't cope with two scary mainstream markets in a row.

I tend to submit things in order of where I would most like to be published, with a secondary ordering of where I've submitted the story already, where I've got stories subbed at the moment, and which markets are currently open.

(There's also a tertiary ordering on the highly subjective basis of did I feel insulted by market X's rejection letter and/or response to my query?)

I used to do the ordering by pay rate thing, but several factors have changed my strategy.

1. There's only so many markets that pay SFWA pro rates.
2. Several of them publish only or primarily science fiction, which I almost never write.
3. I've only made two sales, ever, to an SFWA defined pro market, and both of those were to Strange Horizons, whereas I have legions of rejections from F&SF, Realms of Fantasy, Asimov's, etc. etc.
4. I have had really lovely experiences publishing short stories with small presses--including All Hallows, which pays only in contributor's copies but (a.) puts out a really beautiful magazine and (b.) was my first ever sale.
5. You just aren't going to get rich selling short stories. See #1.

I write short stories because I get ideas for them, and because I enjoy the challenge. I submit them because I'm a glory-hound. *g* And I agree with Charlie. It's a way to keep your name out there.

But, no, I'm certainly not doing it for the money.

[j-luc-pitard.livejournal.com]

As a novice going for a career change at age 40... Thank you!!! This is the most informative posting I could ask for. I've just received my first rejection (from Adams at F&SF). It was a lark to send the story to them first as I'm an unpublished (except for one poem) author, but I figured why not?

I like the index card idea and I have to start using notebooks. I am currently all computerized, but there has to be a good way. Perhaps including a folder for CDs of files along with printouts of notes? That sounds do-able. Your tracking system rocks and your comment about getting rejection letters helps me. My immediate reaction wasn't to crumple as I thought it might be, but to put on my editor's hat and tear the story apart to make it better. Now I just have to get past my passive aggressive nature and finish my re-write. Then I was going to submit it elsewhere and cross my fingers.

I respect your writing and appreciate this posting more than you know!!

Fascinating

[adelev.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting. I am not a writer (though I did submit one short story to one magazine once) but I find details about the process such as these fascinating. Question: I notice some of the stories have been submitted to a lot of different places. Do any of the rejections explain why they are rejecting or give suggestions or is it mostly "not right for us at least not right now, please try again later." I guess what I'm really wondering is whether you revise the stories at all between a rejection and submitting again. Thanks again!

Re: Fascinating

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It depends. Recently, I've mostly been getting the "not right for us" rejections, in which case there's nothing really to do but shrug and move on. If the rejection letter offers a criticism I agree with (and that experience can be a special bolt of agony all its own--because, of course, if I'd thought of it myself, I wouldn't have sent the story out without fixing it to begin with), obviously I fix it. If it offers a criticism I don't agree with, or am doubtful about, I send the story out again. Often, the next rejection letter will cite the exact opposite as the reason for turning the story down. If several editors make the same criticism, I'll reassess the story. Sometimes I find I agree with them. Sometimes I find I don't.

This is all so very subjective, on both ends.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this. It looks a lot like what I do, only with, you know, more sales. Except that I do tend to make my way down the list of appropriate pro-paying markets before going anywhere else.

[gauroth.livejournal.com]

Good luck! I like what I've read of your short stories just as much as I like your novels. I hope your submissions are succesful - a selfish wish, as I want to read more of what you write.

love - Maggie

[waterowl.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip about keeping down emotional wear and tear down. Being a computer geek, I myself keep a spreadsheet of my submissions.