How To Lob A Turnip
Aug. 17th, 2006 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyWriters 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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
---
*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.
--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.
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.
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.
---
*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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-08-17 08:20 pm (UTC)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.