On Submitting Short Stories

[truepenny]

I've had kind of a lull in short story production/publication the last couple years (mostly, I think, due to Corambis, but there's some other stuff in there, too, some writing-related, some life-related, insofar as the two can be separated), but I'm getting the machinery going again, and I thought I'd write a post about how I manage the submission process.

I've got four stories out as of today--"Coyote Gets His Own Back" at Tor.com, "The Devil in Gaylord's Creek" at Fantasy Magazine, "Hollywood and Vine: A Still Life with Wolves" at Apex, and "Learning to See Dragons" at Clarkesworld. When I was on top of my game, I had anywhere from ten to fifteen stories circulating, and I'd like to get back near that if I can. It makes me feel more like a Real Writer, even on the days when things aren't going so well.

I've sold forty short form pieces (counting stories, poems, and the things in between) since I first started submitting in 2000 (my first sale was in 2002). Plus three short stories with matociquala ("The Ile of Dogges," "Boojum," and "Mongoose"), and I'm not counting the three stories I've written for Shadow Unit, because that's more a co-op thing.

Point 1: Most of getting short stories published is persistence and obstinacy. Those forty stories have racked up one hundred eighty-three rejections, plus there's another twenty on stories that I pulled from submission to be original to my short story collections and an unknown number on stories I've either trunked or posted various places around the web. Round off to 200 rejections vs. 40 sales; that's an average of one sale for every five rejections. The most rejections on any successfully published story is seventeen, and there are three stories--"Sidhe Tigers," "Straw," and "The Yellow Dressing Gown"--that connected on the first pitch (with Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Strange Horizons, and Weird Tales respectively).

Also, most of my short story writing career has been in the semi-pros. I have never sold a story to any of the "Big Three" (Analog, Asimov's, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) and although I keep trying, I'm not beating myself up over it either. Semi-pros can be wonderful markets--LCRW being the shining exemplar.

Point 2: The way to be (a.) successful and (b.) not insane as a short story writer is to keep stories circulating, as many as you can. Don't wait for the first one to sell before you write the second one. It took six years for my first story to sell, and I sold twenty-three stories in the meantime. Also, the more stories you have out, the less you invest in any individual submission, and this is a great help when the rejections start rolling in.

Point 3: You have to have a system. Short story markets vary dramatically in their response times, and some can sit on stories for months on end. You have to keep track of where and when each submission went out, so that you know when to query, and you have to keep track of the markets that have rejected you, so you don't submit the same story to a market twice. Believe me, as the number of stories and number of rejections mount up, it becomes a paralyzingly easy mistake to make.

I'm sure there are writers who use spreadsheets. I'm an old-fashioned girl; I use index cards. One index card for each story, with title and word count at the top, and then a list. Picking a story relatively at random, here's what the card for "Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland" looks like:

---

THREE LETTERS FROM THE QUEEN OF ELFLAND        5,000 words
OUT: 07/10/2001                                                             BACK: 07/17/2001
F&SF

OUT: 7/23/2001
Realms of Fantasy                      QUERY: 03/20/2002--ms lost in transit
                     RESUB: 03/21/2002                                 BACK: 05/06/2002

OUT: 05/23/2002                                                            SALE! 08/11/2002
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet

---

It's not a perfect system: I have lost at least one index card over the years, so I have no idea which markets "Coyote Gets His Own Back" has been to. But it's infinitely better than no system at all, and I get a sense of accomplishment out of handling the fat stack of index cards that represent stories sold. It's good to have a tangible marker of progress, especially in something so Sisyphean.

Point 4: ralan.com is a wonderful resource for finding markets, keeping up to date on the state of those markets, and for staying organized as you submit.

Point 5: Be professional. Follow submission guidelines. If you want an example, my cover letter goes like this:

---

Dear [editor]:

Please consider the [enclosed|attached|following] [#] word [novella|short story|flash piece|poem], "[title]," for publication in [magazine].

My first four novels were published by Ace. My next novel, The Goblin Emperor, will be coming out from Tor under the pseudonym Katherine Addison. My short stories have appeared in Weird Tales, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, and Strange Horizons, among other venues, and have been reprinted in a number of Year's Best anthologies. I have published one short story collection, The Bone Key, and another, Somewhere Beneath Those Waves, is coming out next year, both from Prime Books.

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

[me]

---

Before I had publication credits, I left that second paragraph out entirely.

Point 6: It's not your job to reject the story. It's not your job to say, "No one's going to want to buy this." It's the editor's job to decide she doesn't want to buy your story, just as it's the editor's job to sit up straight at her desk and say, "OMG I want to buy this!" Don't do the editor's job for her. Do your job. Write, submit. Write, submit. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Point 7: Be professional about rejections, too. (This can be really hard, and I know it, which is why it's worth saying.) Don't argue with the editor. Don't dwell morbidly on the rejection, or try to practice rejectomancy to figure out why they really turned your story down. Accept that the story wasn't right for the market, find some zen, and send the story back out the door.


Persistence and professionalism. And write the best damn stories you can.

Comments

[jackdaniel.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I needed something like this to get my motivation started again.

for response times

[marycatelli]

I recommend the black hole.

[allichaton.livejournal.com]

I use Duotrope (http://www.duotrope.com) to keep track of my submissions, and I love it. It keeps track of things like how long your submission has been out, the average response time for the market, and the market's "query if you haven't heard by now" time. I have my default settings arranged so that it filters to only the submissions I'm still waiting to hear back on, but you can filter it just about any which way you choose.

http://bit.ly/fWpfdl (http://bit.ly/fWpfdl)

I'm terrible at organization, so having something like this to do it all for me is a godsend. :)

[marycatelli]

hmm.

Is there a way to get at the raw data for the response times?

The reason why I like the black hole is that you can see it has an average response time of two weeks, and then click on it and realize that no one's got a reject in a month and a half.

Happens. Slush readers quit. Everyone has to work all out on getting an issue out. Someone has the flu. And if they have an inventory the slush pile is the easiest thing to put off. I used to ask around when a market was uncommonly sluggish, and I would always find that they were sluggish for everyone. Black hole's quicker.

[allichaton.livejournal.com]

There are a whole bunch of submission/response stats for each market on its page -- for example, here (http://grab.by/grabs/17201680de9ef887817b4ab12d1f76b8.png) is the "Response Times" section for Writers of the Future. You can see under the "Other Information" section that it tells you when the most recent response was. Also, there's a custom RSS feed that shows all incoming responses for markets that you currently have something on submission to, like so: link (http://grab.by/grabs/2f2fc634c50c0d169d8239585e433454.png)

[britmandelo.livejournal.com]

This is a very nifty post. Thank you for writing it.

(I'm experimenting with spreadsheets because I lose notecards and/or any other loose paper with alarming speed.)

[orrin.livejournal.com]

I've always used notebooks to keep track of my submissions, laid out about the same way you do your note cards with one page per story. But I can definitely see an advantage to the notecard system, which would be the ability to move stories from submission to acceptance piles or whatever.

Once again, thank you for taking the writing/submitting/everythinging process and making it clear and useful. No one does that better than you.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

For anyone reading this who comes upon the 5:1 ratio, thinks of their own ratio, and collapses in despair:

My rejection to acceptance ratio, while I have not calculated it, is almost certainly higher than 5:1. And I've sold over 70 short stories, including cracking one of the "big three" truepenny refers to and having a Year's Best reprint.

So if you're staring at a pile of rejections that's looking like a lot more than 5:1, it's still not time to decide that you are a hopeless case.

(Some of that is that I insist on sending stories to a particular big-name editor who shows no signs of ever liking anything I write. This editor has had more than one slush reader who liked a story of mine and pressed my case, to no avail. I should probably move this editor farther down the list, but hey, big-name editor, might as well make them say no as assume it. It's not like the rejection to acceptance stat is published when you die.)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Ooh, good point. Thank you!

[lady-tigerfish.livejournal.com]

Good advice, all of it. Thank you <3

Also, you have short story collections out? How do I get my paws on them?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I have one short story collection out, The Bone Key (http://www.prime-books.com/catalog/details/18/5/general/the-bone-key.html), although I understand copies are getting pretty scarce on the ground. HOWEVER, it's going to be rereleased in 2011 to coincide with the publication of my second short story collection, Somewhere Beneath Those Waves.

[noblehunter.livejournal.com]

Bone! Key! Rereleased!

SQUEEE!

SQUEEE!

[bluestalking.livejournal.com]

Heeeeey, I like everything in this comment! :D

[lanerobins.livejournal.com]

A timely post! I was just chewing myself out for letting short stories languish in my filing cabinet. And I like your index card system. It seems simple and straight-forward. I have a spreadsheet that is unwieldy and I stopped using it as a result, which just made things worse.

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

Thanks. This added to the kick in the pants I've been giving myself, and reminded me to send out short works as well as novel queries.

[bluestalking.livejournal.com]

Thanks, this is both helpful and deeply reassuring. :D