Technical Difficulties

Tried going down to one oxycodone last night, vis-à-vis the RLS. It did not work. I am disheartened. Also draggy and exhausted and probably a Very Slow Loris Indeed.

On the plus side, PT is going well. My physical therapist is very encouraging. I'm down to one crutch, and we have hopes that I will be able to dispense with crutches entirely sometime next week. This would be a TREMENDOUS boon.

I'm doing better on other fronts: more energy, less nausea. The writing is kind of rocky, but not dramatically outside normal parameters. "Thirdhop Scarp," the Booth story I've been working on since approximately the dawn of time, is now 16,000 words long, and it's not what you could even call close to being finished. It is obviously a novella, which explains why it would not work when I kept stubbornly trying to make it a novelette.*

I did not want to write a novella (which would be why I kept stubbornly trying to make it a novelette), as there is practically no market for them, but the story does not care. And I would much rather it be a good, even if unsaleable, novella, than a bad (and therefore even more unsaleable and also embarrassing) novelette.

Actually, at the moment, what I want is for it to be a finished novella. We can work on "good" later.

Writing. Still, blessedly, not performance art.

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*Definitions by word lengths here, courtesy of SFWA. Personally, I hate the word "novelette," but if we're going to make artificial distinctions by word length (which, obviously, we are), we have to call them something. I have a tendency to write novelettes, particularly, though not exclusively, with Booth, and I admit, I do not think of, for instance, "The Wall of Clouds," as a short story.

Also please note, while I'm being cantankerous, that "novelette" is another English word, like "cigarette," "kitchenette," "Rockette," etc., that provides a useful clue as to the pronunciation of my surname. You don't say it "novel-ay," do you?

The list I'm looking at is:

1. Elegy for a Demon Lover*
2. National Geographic on Assignment: Mermaids of the Old West
3. Sidhe Tigers
4. The Yellow Dressing Gown

That's a total of 9,055 words; to round it out, I'm adding:

5. Darkness, as a Bride

So you'll be getting 10,250 words of spoken fiction from me: two Booth stories, two Artist's Challenge pieces, and a fifth story about monsters and love.

When you'll get it is another question. At the moment, I have a cold; I'm hoarse and coughing, which is no state to do a podcast in. So, you know, I'll do it as soon as I can, but don't wait underwater.

Also, a question: would people prefer I do one podcast with all five pieces, or five individual podcasts?

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*33 votes--the clear winner

So.

The Goblin Emperor is safely Someone Else's Problem for a while, and I have no idea of what novel I'm going to write next (except, of course, for A Reckoning of Men with matociquala, but we're not doing that until she's cleared at least some of the carnage off her decks*). Partly this is because The Goblin Emperor is a standalone. Partly this is because Cormorant Child, the novel which would be next up if writing was a purely rational, efficiency-oriented profession, has a lot of the same thematic issues and concerns as The Goblin Emperor, and I want a break from the problem of kingship. (Honestly, who do I think I am? W. Shakespeare?) Also, Cormorant Child still won't tell me what its shiny sfnal set-piece in Chapter Two is, and I think that means that there's something back there that isn't quite done yet. Collaboration between two authors is much easier than collaboration between an author's conscious and subconscious. Unlike my subconscious, Bear uses her words.)

I'm okay with everything on the novel board being TBA. Because it means I've got something for which I have been yearning for at least a year and a half: time to write short stories.

I wrote three and a half short stories last year (using the term "year" pretty loosely, as I can't actually recall whether Bear and I wrote "Mongoose in 2009 or technically 2008). "White Charles," "After the Dragon," "On Faith" (Shadow Unit 3.00), and "Mongoose." Now, my finished-to-published ratio there is looking pretty awesome, but, however gratifying to my ego, that's not actually my point. My point is that I wrote three and a half short stories last year, and that's a woefully sparse output.

I have two finished short stories which won't sell, "Coyote Gets His Own Back" (my beloved zombie coyote story) and "Imposters" (a Ghoul Hunters story), and two which sold in 2006 (to two different markets) and have yet to see the light of day. But essentially, along with having barely any new output in the past couple years, I have no backlog, either. In one sense, this is good, as it means all those stories from the (halcyon) days (of yore) when I had fifteen circulating at once have either sold or been trunked, but it makes me feel like I'm not doing my job right.

ERGO, my goal for this next chunk of 2010 is to write some damn short stories. And to aid me in this endeavor, well, I think we need a list:

( behind the cut, first lines and commentaries )

And now, having laid this all out, I'm off to take the Elder Saucepan to the ophthalmologist. Perhaps all the driving (45 minutes each way) will help this roiled muddle clarify.

Hey. A girl can hope.

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*A writing career is like a pirate ship. Discuss.

90,000 words! 20,000 to go! That February 1st deadline is practically looking, you know, doable.

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Also, since I observe it's that time of year again, for the benefit of anyone who might be thinking about the Hugos or the Nebulas or suchlike--my publications in 2009, let me show you them:

NOVEL

• Corambis, Ace Books.

SHORT STORY

• "White Charles," Clarkesworld Magazine.
  
• with Elizabeth Bear (matociquala), "Mongoose," Lovecraft Unbound (ed. Ellen Datlow).

... and that's it. One of the things I am most hoping for, once I've finished The Goblin Emperor (and now that the Doctrine of Labyrinths is no longer kicking my ass to the curb), is that I'll be able to start writing and finishing short stories again. Because I really miss the little blighters.

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Oh, and Friday the Thirteenth comes on a Wednesday this month.

John Scalzi and Cat Valente have been talking about short fiction rates (as an outgrowth of John's muck-raking posts about a market which pays 1/5 of a cent per word*), and since my experience as a short story writer has been quite different from either John's or Cat's, I thought I'd weigh in with the view from here.

I should say three things up front:

1. I am both a novelist and a short story writer. (Whereas, in the grossly over-simplified version John is a novelist who sometimes writes short stories and Cat is a short story writer who sometimes writes novels also a novelist who writes short stories. Apologies to Cat for misrepresenting her!)

2. I am not dependent on my writing as the principal source of household income. So, I don't have to sell short stories, nor do I care very much about how much I'm paid for them. I write short stories because I love writing them; I publish them (or try to) because, well, I'm a professional writer. It's part of what that means to me as a career.

3. I do not get commissions anywhere NEAR as often as either John or Cat; my short story career has been all about submission, rejection, submission, rejection, submission, rejection. And, I should also add, I don't write to specification very well. Temperamentally, I'm much more suited to writing the story and THEN finding somewhere to send it. Even when people ask me for stories or invite me to contribute, I most often fail miserably to produce. ::looks guiltily in several directions::

My first ever sale, "Bringing Helena Back" (5,000 words) was to All Hallows: The Journal of the Ghost Story Society, which pays two contributors' copies. I sold another story, "Drowning Palmer" (10,000 words) to them (and, in fact, have sold a third, although I don't know if it's ever going to get published). I submitted to them knowing that they were a non-paying market, and I did so for a couple of reasons. One is that Ellen Datlow recommended them (and later she picked "Drowning Palmer" for the Year's Best Fantasy & Horror XX, so I actually got paid for that one in the end); the other is that those two stories, being ghost stories of a very particular type, were not placing at paying markets. "Bringing Helena Back" had racked up seven rejections by then, which is not the most rejections I've ever gotten on a story, but it's certainly the rounds of the pro markets. You aim for the Moon first, but there comes a point where if you want the story to be published, you have to start aiming for the roofs. And some of those roofs are really stars, as for example:

My second sale was to Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, "Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland." 5,000 words, $20. I sold two more stories to LCRW, again with the $20 flat rate. One was 1,400 words and one was 300 words. So that ranges from 0.4 cents a word to 7 cents a word. I've sold to places that paid $10 and contributors' copies, and I've sold to places that pay pro rates, but I have to tell you, most of my sales have been to semi-pro magazines for substantially less than SFWA's 5 cents a word.

Let's balance that against the other side of the ledger: the number of rejections my stories have racked up before they sold.

0 rejections: 3 stories, all three of which were pretty much deliberately pitched at the market which bought them. Two of the three were sales to Strange Horizons.
1 rejection: 5 stories
2 rejections: 4 stories
3 rejections: 1 story
4 rejections: 5 stories
5 rejections: 5 stories
6 rejections: 1 story
7 rejections: 2 stories
8 rejections: 2 stories
9 rejections: 1 story
10 rejections: 3 stories
12 rejections: 1 story
15 rejections: 1 story
17 rejections: 1 story

(That fifteen-rejection story, btw, is "Letter from a Teddy Bear on Veterans' Day," which is one of the two or three things I've written that I am most proud of.)

This is the part of short story publishing that neither John nor Cat addresses, because neither of them--for radically different reasons--has any particular experience with it. But I think it's a more common experience than either of theirs. You submit, you get rejected. You submit again, you get rejected. After two or three rejections, you're out of markets that pay pro rates (especially, I may add, if you are writing horror). So you move onto the semi-pros, not because you don't value your work, but because you do. Because you want to see it published, so other people can read it. It's no good sitting on a story after the pro markets have rejected it, in a sort of You'll all be sorry when I'm dead! spirit.

"Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland," that story that got 0.4 cents a word from LCRW, is my only award-winning story. It is also my most reprinted story, and was my first story to be translated. "Drowning Palmer," which I did not get paid a cent for, made the last Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and you BET I'm proud of that. Most of the Booth stories went for semi-pro rates or less, and yet The Bone Key is quite possibly my most successful book and was nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award.

Now, I'm not saying that John is wrong in asserting that writers should value their work and should only submit to markets that also value their work. Because I think he's right. But I don't think that Gavin Grant and Kelly Link, paying a flat $20 for stories in LCRW, don't value my work. In fact, I'm pretty damn sure they do.

It's a balancing act. If you're too picky as a fledgling short story writer, you won't get published. You will simply drown in the slush. But if you're not picky enough--there are some sales I wouldn't make now, because I'm older and wiser, but the only one I really regret is to Naked Snake Online, which not only offered $5 for a 10,000 word story (0.05 cents a word, that), but then never paid me the $5.

But there's a difference between markets that don't pay well (or at all) and markets that are trying to exploit writers. That's the difference you need to learn to see, and it isn't necessarily blazoned forth in the pay rate. All Hallows may not pay, but they love ghost stories as much as I do.

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*ETA: I am not in any way, shape, or form arguing with John's denunciation of Black Matrix.

"White Charles" is live at Clarkesworld Magazine, as is "Non-Zero Probabilities" by N. K. Jemisin.

ETA: also, "White Charles" is Clarkesworld Magazine's podcast this month, read by Kate Baker and available right there on their front page, so you have your choice of medium.

Go! Read! Enjoy!

And tell me what you think, if you want to.

yuki_onna has a really smart post about why writing is work.

matociquala has a really smart post about a different aspect of why writing is work.

I do not have a really smart post about anything, because my brain has collapsed like a flan in a cupboard. But I do have a sale! A drabble, "Extract from 'Horror in Pierre Lucerne: Suburbia, Alienation, and the Rejection of Community,'" to The Magazine of Speculative Poetry. I am so happy about this I could . . . well, I don't know what, but I'm happy.

I have lost the index card on which I kept track of the submission history of the zombie coyote story. Now, as I never throw anything away (just ask my poor long-suffering spouse), I know it's here somewhere. But, on the other hand, as I never throw anything away . . .

This is hardly the Fall of Carthage, as tragedies go, but it means that I no longer have a record of where I have and have not subbed that story. And since it was teetering on the verge of being trunked, that means there's an awful lot of markets to which I can no longer say with certainty whether I submitted it or not. (Memory like a steel wossname, yes.) And this in turn makes me feel grumpy and incompetent and who told me I was fit to be let out on my own?

words since last report: 558
words total: 3,833
word goal: unchanged at 5-7 k, looking more like 7 than 5
tyop du jour: n/a
darling: The half-elf pushed her blue dreadlocks back behind her shoulder and flicked her ears to make her earrings chime. "You can do better than a werewolf, sweetie."
mean things: Misinformation and pornography on the internet.
quirks: Quentin keeps getting propositioned by girls he isn't interested in.
reason for stopping: Bedtime!
exercise: I rowed. See previous rock.
work outside the box: Laundry.
the internet is full of things: This article is absolutely true.

afternoon = doldrums of creativity

words since last report: 1875
word total: 2455
word goal Still 5-7k, looking pretty good.
tyop du jour: n/a
darling: n/a
mean things: A lecture on Wordsworth first thing in the morning.
quirks: This werewolf, who still looks not unlike Claudia Black, wears t-shirts that say things like MY DOGMA ATE YOUR KARMA.
reason for stopping: Like I said, doldrums. Also, I think it's time to take a cool bath.
exercise: Walkies!
work outside the box: Provender provided.
feline assistance: None, although mirrorthaw is being assisted by the Inspector of Saucepans.