Day: September 5, 2010

Getting back on the horse

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

It sucks to get a rejection.  It’s part of a writer’s life, but not one of the nice parts.  It sucks more when that rejection is a slip of uninformative paper or part of a mass email.  Even the personalized ones can suck when they say you missed it by [ ] that much.  So what do you do when the rejection comes in?  Put the story out to another market.

At least that’s the idea.  Keep it circulating until it finds the right editor on the right day who ate the right breakfast and blinks at the right times so he/she doesn’t miss the brilliance of your story.  If it sits in a drawer or on a hard drive, no one can discover that brilliance.  Sadly, I have done a poor job of doing this very simple necessity.

I only have about six finished and unsold short stories in my portfolio at the moment.  (There are others I keep chained to a radiator in the basement, but they will never again see the light of day.)  Just six to keep up with.  When I left for WotF two weeks ago, only two of those stories were out to markets.  Sad.  Pitiful.  Inexcusable.  Inconceivable!  (You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.)

So that is remedied now.  Yesterday I reported sending a story to Lightspeed.  Today I hit the post office’s automated shipping center (R2D2’s ancestor) and got a couple snail packages out to two of the baddest slush piles on the block: F&SF and Analog.  The story I sent to F&SF (TRM…for those who don’t know, I use initials instead of story titles after a mild disqualification scare with my WotF winner, though now I doubt leaking titles will injure me) needed some brushing up.  I managed to fix two major dangling plot issues with one tidy knot before stuffing it in a big manila and sending it to Gordon to reject.  The Analog candidate (TOL) was the one Andromeda Spaceways held for so long and had very nice comments from one editor, so I sent it out as-is despite some dislike of the ending.  I like the ending in a minimalistic way, but I’d be happy to entertain a rewrite request.  I also sent a story (GB) to Clarkesword, rounding out my six stories in circulation; not sure how realistic that fit was, but we’ll see.

I’m hoping this offering appeases the karma gods of rejection enough to let me hear from those two older subs.  64 days from Asimov’s seems a long time, but they’ve surely increased their volume a lot since opening to electronic subs (which mine was).  Anyway, I need to write to keep my mind off of it.  Watched pots and all…

Before I close, I’ll analyze my procrastination.  TRM needed work and I knew it, so maybe that’s why I didn’t send it out.  TOL was a bit of a heartbreak, having been on hold, and maybe that’s why, but that’s a rotten excuse.  Gee, this story came so close to selling that I’m not sending it out where it could actually sell.  I am aiming higher on the totem pole now that it’s back out, so maybe that intimidated me.  A good reason to always start at the top and work down.  GB was a hard fit anywhere, so maybe I just didn’t want to take a chance.  Another really dumb excuse, though it works equally well for TWHDotGMP.  Bottom line is that I know better than to sit on manuscripts; I know I have pro level talent; I know all six of these stories are good in different ways.  I’m bad for letting BS (that’s not a story title, it stands for…what it usually stands for) get in the way of my career.  I’m fighting against that now.  I want to be a professional writer, and to be honest it’s been very hard going back to school after spending a week in LA pretending I’d already made it.  It’s going to take some lifestyle changes, but I will become a successful SF writer.  So if you’ll excuse me, I have to go type.

Not Quite Writing

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 4 Comments

I’m still experiencing an overwhelming desire to write.  Alas, I’m still not doing it.  I edited a story (TWHDotGMP) and sent it back out to Lightspeed who won’t want it and will have it rejected by Monday at the latest.  They may be into quirky humor, but I’d be surprised.  Technically I’m always surprised when I make a sale.  It’s not the standard response to a submission.

I’ve just finished a read through of my YA novel, or as much as I’ve got.  I’ve dumped the last ten pages or so and I’m attacking it again.  It was a move I made about the time I stopped working on it.  Now that I know where I’m going, I’m convinced it was the right move.  I made editing notes as I read because I can’t help myself, but for now I’ll pick up where I chopped it.

I have to get this story rolling faster than I have.  The first couple conflicts hit bam-bam, then the story just kind of drifts on inertia.  I’ll likely have to go back and smack someone with a tire iron or something to break up the dullness of my milieu-building.  But not right now; now it’s time to move forward.

Today was the last day of the county fair where my wife was exhibiting, so my time should become more flexible meaning more potential writing time.  And I need to use that time for writing.  I’m thinking about cutting my television time down to just meals (yes, we heathens eat in front of the idiot box) and exercise time on the elliptical machine (which is currently time that does not exist).  That should have the double-edged effect of decreasing television time and increasing workout time.  But to do that, I really should get my wireless headphones fixed so I can hear over the woosh-woosh-woosh of the machine.  But I digress.

I slept late today, until about 10:30, and I feel much more alive for it.  Basically I’m whittling away excuses to avoid writing.  I never appreciated how many I had and used.  There’s always more: papers to grade, cleaning to be done, cats to shave, 80s movies to reenact…but it’s time to push them all aside and write.  Tomorrow.  🙂

[ADDED]: As of about 1:30, I’ve tightened up some loose threads in another story (TRM) and I’m sending somewhere before I get to bed.  Why can’t I let things go until morning?  At least they’re getting done this way.