Back of the Envelope

Good news! I received my first rejection today. Yes, I did say "good news" and "rejection," and yes, those two do go together. I expect to be getting a lot of rejections, and of course I'd rather get an acceptance, but a quick rejection means that I can quickly get the story submitted elsewhere. What's more, it was an encouraging rejection, with a personal note from the editor with some comments both praising the work and explaining why it didn't make the cut. Vaguely, in both cases, I admit, but such comments are not only helpful, they do a lot to set the response apart from all those dull form letters I usually get. Because of that, I'm likely to submit more stories to that publication, including things I probably wouldn't have considered submitting anywhere. In fact, because of his cordiality in the past (this isn't the first work of mine he's rejected), I dared to ask him if he'd look at another story of mine, even though it's longer than the usual length of stories his magazine accepts. He's agreed, and after some polishing and reformatting, I should have it ready to send via snail mail this weekend. At the least, I should get another polite rejection.

And yes, I am being vague, since these were private e-mail conversations and I don't want to post them for the world to see.

All in all, I've made three submissions thus far, and I intend to make two more by the end of the week, for a total of five this month. Once those go out, that's all the material I have that's submittable, at least until I get my next rejection, and it's time to start revising Eyes.

Not for me, or for my blog, but I'm considering changing the names of one of my stories. I've always been a little uncertain about Eyes in the Shadow (read it here), and I've been thinking that Eyes of the Shadow might work better. For one, it's a more accurate name, as the focus of the story is on the red eyes of the shadow-thing. For another, it gets me away from the "Something in the Something" naming scheme that I've found myself using way too often. What do you think?

On New Year's Day, I said that my resolution for this year was to get published. You may be wondering how I intend to do that. After all, I can submit all the stories I like to all the magazines I want, but there's no guarantee any of them will publish me, no matter how good I think I am. Yes, I realize that, but I do mean to aggressively seek publication this year, and to that end, I have a plan.

So here it is, Donald's twelve seven step plan to publish a story:

1. Get as many stories as possible into a publishable state. I have three stories which I think are in such a state right now, two of which you've seen and one which you haven't. I also plan to get Eyes in the Shadow into a publishable state, along with Fire and its sequel, by the end of the year. That in itself is pretty ambitious, and I'm not entirely certain that I'll succeed, much less have time for blogging and participating in the Storyblogging Carnival, but I intend to try.


2. Buy the Writer's Market. This volume lists magazine after magazine which accepts fiction submissions. I bought a copy on Monday.


3. Buy lots of 9x12 envelopes. I bought a hundred of them on Tuesday. I really only intended to buy, like, twenty, but the next size down from a hundred was about ten, which cost $2, and 100 cost $5, so I went with the hundred.


4. Prepare stories for submission ASAP. Preparing a story first involves checking out the magazine's website, reading some of its stories if possible, and making sure that the story I want to submit meets its submission guidelines. Then I have to write a cover letter and format the story to fit its requirements. This can take a while, but there's also a bit of re-use, first for submitting a story to multiple magazines, and then for submitting multiple stories to the same magazine. I plan on preparing three stories just this month, one each week--which gives me a week to spare.


5. Mail stories using those 9x12 envelopes as soon as they're prepared. I may wait until all three stories are ready, minimizing my trips to the post office.


6. Have as fast a turnaround on rejected stories as possible. It typically takes two or three months to find out if a magazine accepts a story, although one can be rejected within two weeks. The idea here is that when I receive a rejection--and I imagine all three stories will be rejected more than once--to have the story ready to submit to the next magazine and get it submitted within the week I get the rejection. Of course, if the previous magazine gives me useful feedback I may want to improve the story first, but useful feedback is pretty rare.


7. As more stories reach a publishable state, make inquiries/submit them as soon as possible. Both Eyes and Fire are novel length, so directly submitting them is not the correct process. For some smaller publishers which I think might be interested (Dark Cloud Press for Eyes), I may make direct inquiries. Otherwise, I need to find an agent.

So given that I have five stories to submit over the next year, how many submissions do I think I'll be able to make, i.e. how many chances to win? Well, there are a number of factors slowing me down. A two month reply time, the fact that most mags don't accept simultaneous submissions, and some magazines which only accept submissions during certain time periods, severely limits me. But then, there are a limited number of magazines which might be interested in my work anyway. For one of my stories, I've only found four magazines which might be appropriate, two of which I've already tried. For another one, I figure it might be appropriate for somewhere between five or seven magazines. The third one is more general, and I might be able to find dozens it'd work for, but I intend to enter it in a contest with a four month response time first. While I don't know whether I'll be able to get them published, I figure I can at least exhaust the possibilities for two of the stories.