Living the Fictional Dream

Remember the queryI mentioned to y’all a while back? Short story shorter, I had a story that looked like it would fit an anthology, but it was a reprint and they only wanted new material. I queried, and they invited me to submit it. A couple of days ago, I got an email from the publisher that my story is on the short list for consideration of being included in the anthology.

That doesn’t mean acceptance is guaranteed or anything, but the moral of this story continues to be — it never hurts to query. The worst they can say is no, and you might end up with good results you never truly expected!

A few weeks ago, I came across an anthology listing for which one of my stories was perfect (the concept was fairly unique). The only catch — apparently they did not take reprints. Though, the guidelines were a little confusing — nothing about reprints either way was listed on the page for that anthology, but on a different page all together. So, I decided to query, just in case.

Later that same day, I got a reply that said they did not accept reprints. A bummer, sure, but understandable. Then, a few weeks later, I got another message inviting me to send my story in for consideration!

I still don’t know if they will like my story, but they obviously decided they liked the sentence description of it in my query enough to look at it. That’s something!

The lesson I learned — if in doubt, go ahead and query. The worst they can say is no, and you never know if something good will come out of it.

There has been a lot of talking in the writers’ corner of the blog-o-sphere lately about professional markets, professional rates, and whether it’s worth it for a writer to send his or her stories out to lower paying markets.

Some editors have said it’s not worth it to target for-the-love markets just to get a credit in your cover letter, because no credits are better than meaningless credits.

Personally, I’m not so sure about that. Time and time again, I’ve seen writers that I know get that first credit and, after that, the acceptances start flying in (at least in comparison to before that first credit).

It happened to me that way, too. I spent 10 months submitting story after story, all of which were flat out rejected. Finally, in November of 2007, my story was accepted into Sporty Spec: Games of the Fantastic.

Then, after I started sending out stories with that forthcoming publication in my cover letter, I got several more stories accepted in quick succession (A Thousand Faces and Every Day Fiction were the next two acceptances, though it took longer for my stories to appear in some markets than others.)

Maybe it is not the credit, but some kind of critical mass. Maybe the reason the first acceptance comes is because the writer has finally reached a publishable point in their growth as a writer. I wouldn’t disbelieve that notion.

Then again, maybe there is something about that first credit that marks you as serious about the work, even if it is just in an editor’s subconscious. Or maybe it’s a combination of the two.

Either way, I know that I’m happy to have credits with smaller ‘zines on my cover letter, and I think that I’ve learned a lot from the markets I’ve been published in. I’ve learned about relating to editors, editing my work, proofs, and standing up for my story when there are technical difficulties. In addition to all that, I’ve gotten to see my stories in print (both electronic and hard copy), and I’ve made writer friends who have taught me a lot in their own ways.

Over all, I’m happy. Sure, larger paychecks would be nice, but I never believed I would earn money doing this, so I’ve never been overly concerned about that.

The key, I think, to keep moving forward with your writing career is not to stay on the lower levels for too long. I do think you hit what you aim for, and the better paying markets are the ones with the most readers and the ones with the most prestige (which, to me, are more important than money). If you never aim for those markets, you can never be published there.

To quote one of my favorite movies, “Your odds go up when you file an application.”

As soon as I had a few small credits under my belt, I started targeting the larger professional markets with my stories. I still haven’t cracked one, but I continue to hope. And my rejections for some of them (as I mentioned in a previous entry) have gotten a little more personal, so I think I’m making progress.

If I were giving advice to a new writer starting out, I would say aim as high as you want. But, if the pro markets reject you at first, target some of the smaller ones until you get that first credit or two. Learn how things work. Earn a publishing credit or two. But never stop aiming high. If you only tarket token and for-the-love markets, that’s the only place you’ll ever be published. If you aim higher and you work on honing your craft, I think you have as good a shot as anyone else at getting there.

My writing group had its annual planning meeting earlier this week. This meeting is when we select what projects and activities we want to pursue during the year ahead. Most of the time, it’s the usual stuff — crits, meetings, write-ins, the prompts contest… This year, we decided to add something new to the mix.

In lieu of our usual themed short story collection challenge (which was cancelled for lack of participation this year), we are going to try to work on writing stories for and submitting stories to the professional markets.

I’m really excited about the idea. I’ve been sending stories to some of the professional markets for a while now. I got a couple of personal rejections with compliments of my writing style from one market in that category (well, it’s a pro market if your story is under a certain word count… so it’s not one of the big three or anything), which was thrilling to me, but all the others have been the typical form rejections. It would be awesome if I could finally break into one of the bigger markets.

Not that I don’t love all of the smaller ‘zines that I’ve been a part of. I love each and every one of them. I’m grateful that they published my stories, and I’m happy to have been a part of them. The ones that have print versions, too, are in a special place on my bookshelf.

But, wouldn’t it be awesome to get both the larger paycheck and the larger readership that comes along with publishing in a professional market?

I hope that I have enough time to devote to this project over the next year, because, if it succeeds, I think it would take this hobby of mine to the next level. I wonder if Daddy will be willing to take on baby duty a little more often so I have time to write between coming home from work and bedtime…

So, I have this story that I would really like to see published somewhere (of course, I’d like to see all my stories published, but I think this one is a particularly good one). The big strike against it is it’s length. I’ve cut thousands of words since my first draft and it’s where I think it needs to be to tell the story, but it’s still around 8K.

Yesterday, I actually had some time to look through open anthology markets, and I found one that seems perfect, except for one thing. The theme of my story and the theme of the anthology match. And they will look at stories up to 10K. However, the problem is the genre. They want something with a horror slant, and my story is really more urban fantasy.

Should I send it to them?

Part of me says, “Go ahead and send it. The worst they can say is no, and who knows? Maybe you’ll get lucky, and they’ll love it despite the slight difference from what they wanted.” However, the other part of me says, “Don’t even bother. It’s not what they want, so they’ll reject it right away. What’s the point in sending something out for a sure rejections and tying it up so that you can’t send it elsewhere except as a simultaneous submission?”

Eh… I guess I’ll have to think on this a little longer…

The Sword & Sorceress market has opened again. Another anthology of sword and sorcery stories with strong female protagonists. I really love the idea of this anthology. I like fantasy, I especially like fantasy with strong female protagonists, and I enjoy a good action story (if it is well-written and has more than just action to sweeten the story).

This is one of those markets that it would be a dream to be included in. As such, I probably never will be, LOL! Seriously, this is a really tough market. I have submitted several stories to them in the past couple of years and gotten the form rejection every time. Not even good enough for a personal comment! Some of my writing group mates have submitted as well, and none of us have gotten a nibble. Competition at the professional level is killer.

Last year, while on vacation, my husband had me reading a series of short stories about two characters named Tarma and Kethry. These stories were some of the first works published by Mercedes Lackey, and I believe they first came to light in a S&S anthology or some other of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s publications. While reading them, I was really struck by the difference between publishing now and publishing back when these stories first came out (I think it was in the 1970s, if I remember correctly, but I’m lazy and not looking it up, so don’t hold me to that!).

In these stories, Tarma is a female warrier. All of her tribe is slaughtered by her, so she swears herself to the warrier goddess, takes a vow of chastity, and devotes herself to getting vengeance for her tribe. After that is complete, she devotes herself to helping women in trouble who have no one else to save them.

By Tarma’s side is Kethry, a sorceress of astonishing power who has a magic sword that can lead them to other women who are in trouble. The pair forge a solid and real friendship and spend their lives saving the world together — both on their own and as part of a mercenary fighting garrison. Kethry’s children help Tarma re-start her lost tribe among the horse people, and in their later years they run a school to train both boys and girls in the art of fighting and magic.

If you have some time to kill, I would recommend these stories. I found them very interesting, and over time I really grew to love the characters.

However, it’s that “over time” part that really marks the difference between then and now in the publishing world. Nowadays, there is no time for building an audience, especially in the short fiction market (though, I think that is also more and more true for the novel market, as well). A short fiction author is lucky if readers don’t give up on their stories within the first few paragraphs. As a reader myself, even I’ve been guilty of this. If a flash piece doesn’t grab me at least a little bit at the beginning, I’ve been known to bail on it, even if it was less than 1,000 words. I just don’t have enough time for reading something I’m not that into.

But back then, you had the luxury of time. If you were a good writer, your stuff would get published and your audience was allowed to grow. When I first started reading the Tarma and Kethry stories, I remember thinking, this is an interesting premise, but if this story were submitted to a market today, it would get rejected. There isn’t enough punch at the beginning, not enough of a hook. To really get invested in the characters, I had to read the first two or three short stories in the anthology — back when they were first published, these stories weren’t even in an anthology all together, so you only had one at a time to read.

So, as I ponder if I have any ideas worth working on and submitted to the S&S market this year, I think back to Tarma and Kethry and realize how much things have changed. Its a faster and more competitive world out there for writers, and snagging readers is more difficult, so we have to be at our best all the time, and even then our stories may not get accepted.

However, I don’t want to end this post on a down note. I really want people to take away from this that I’m discouraged about writing or publishing, because I’m not. I just try to approach it with a realistic mind set and no false hopes.

If I never become rich and famous in this game, that’s fine. I mean, I wouldn’t turn down rich and famous, but I don’t expect it. I just want to write, and I know that’s something I’ll be doing forever, no matter how many stories I have published (or don’t have published).

I was rejected again today from a fiction podcast. I wonder what it takes to get into one of those markets. I’ve been trying for months now, and have not cracked it yet. I had a story in the “maybe” pile for a while once at one of the more minor venues, but even that one was eventually rejected.

Perhaps it is just that, since they take reprints, they have so many good stories that they can’t accept very many? Or maybe there is something about my writing in particular that does not lend itself to the audio format.

Hrm…

Have any of y’all ever been accepted or published by a fiction podcast? Any tips to share for making one’s writing more accessable to an audio format?

I would think that a story would need to have a tight plot to fare well in audio, and that favoring action over lots of character development and description would help. Audio seems to me a medium where keeping the story moving is a plus. But I’ve heard stories at some of the various podcasts out there that go the complete opposite, emphasizing the less active elements of a story. I would also think giving characters distinctive voices would be helpful for podcasts.

This is obviously a question that I will have to ponder as I cull through my reprints to decide if any of them are worthy of podcast submission.

Well, I finally got off my duff in the past few weeks and started submitting stories again. Of course, now that means I’m in total waiting mode, wondering when those editors will ever get back to me about my “masterpieces”! And, sadly, the one I’m most anxious to hear about is at a market with a response time of four months! Yikes!

Waiting is never easy — it’s probably one of the most difficult parts of this whole writing-submitting-publishing process (aside from the inevitable rejections, of course). I will say, though, now that I’ve been doing this a while (when I started to attack this in a serious fashion, I sent my first story out in February 2007), the waiting is a smidge easier than it used to be. Maybe it’s cushioned by the fact that I know I can get some acceptances, whereas, before I’d ever been published, it was always uber-anxiousness.

Have you ever had a market that you just couldn’t figure out? You think you’ve nailed what they want in a story, and yet you still get rejected?

One of the reprints I submitted last night was to a fairly big name podcast market. This particular market emphasizes fantasy fiction, and it’s one that, from the first time I learned about it, I’ve wanted to write for.

Everyone always says to figure out what a market wants, you have to read (or in this case, listen to) past issues. Well, I’ve done that. I’ve listened to quite a few issues.

Theoretically, any type of fantasy is fine, but I’ve noticed that the market has a bias more toward stories with a more literary style. Stories that I would label magical realism instead of fantasy (a slim difference, true, but one that can be seen).

But, this market does publish stories of a more typical fantasy nature, too. On occasion.

Since audio markets take reprints, when I first discovered the market, I peppered them with all my previously published fantasy stories, one after the other, as soon as the rights returned to me. No takers. None of them even garnered more than a form rejection.

So, I calmed down a bit and decided to wait until I had the perfect story. There was one out there — I just had to wait until it completed it’s run in its current publication, per the terms of the contract. Somewhat impatiently, I waited. I consider this particular story one of my best — perhaps the best, or at least in the top two.

And then, finally, it was time, so I bundled it into an email and sent it of, feeling sure that this was the one.

It wasn’t.

So I haven’t sent them anything else until last night. I had another fantasy story that I really thought was right up their alley. They’ve published other stories with a similar feel to them (not the same plot, but just that quality). And since the story was written in the second person, I thought it would be perfect for audio. Now, granted, it was flash and this market, while accepting some flash, goes in more for short story length. But I thought there was a shot…

But again, no. (At least this market is super fast about sending rejections!)

**sighs**

Part of me starts to wonder if the editors at this market are biased by previous publications. I mean absolutely no disrespect to any market when I say this, because I love and enjoy every single market that I’ve been published in. But perhaps, if you’re the editor for a market that regularly receives reprints that were originally published in professionally paying publications, you get used to that and don’t want to seriously consider a story originally published in a market that publishes stories for merely a token payment or **gasp** for free.

I suppose, though, the truth is that my work, no matter how much I like a particular piece, just doesn’t resonate with the editors of this publication. Considering how much they will pay for a story, they probably get tons of submissions (which makes the 1-day response rate all the more impressive!). The more a market pays, the more fierce the competition to get into it is, and as much as I might have liked those particular stories (and as much as the editors of other publications liked them), maybe my writing just isn’t on the level yet of getting into a professional publication.

So, what this means to me is that I need to work harder. I need to hone my craft and keep putting it out there in the world. Writing is one of those things that you can’t improve on without practice. You have to have a germ of talent and a glimmer of an idea, but the rest of it — it’s practice and honing.

It’s good to have a goal, right?

It’s been a good day in the writing arena. No, I didn’t actually write anything (fickle, fickle muse!), but I made other progress on my writing to-do list.

Last night, I submitted two stories — my first ones for 2009. This afternoon, in what has to be the fastest response on record (woo-hoo, Frank!), one of them was accepted. “Dinner for Three” will appear in a future issue of A Thousand Faces.

“Dinner for Three” could loosely be considered a sequel to “Bridge Club” (Editor’s Choice in ATF issue 6), so it’s fitting that it will appear in the same magazine. Also, I just love ATF because of its awesome superhuman fiction — if you haven’t read the latest issue, you should give it a go.

Then, this evening, I pulled out two more reprints and submitted them, as well. Go me! Making progress in 2009.

Have a great night everybody!