I'm pleased to announce that Healer will be published on Acidic Fiction in the near future.
Jillian is tired of being bound to her healing gift. When a desperate mother with a critically wounded child invades her room, she discovers that her gift is both a curse and her salvation.
Healer came into being four years ago. I don't recall the exact circumstances except that it was around the time I got my first acceptance on a short story and I'd figured out that those came far more often than on novels. So I'd started writing more shorts.
Why did it take so long for Healer to find a home? Shortly after completing the story, NaNoWriMo 2010 hit and I was thrown into novel mode. When December came around, I sent the story off to a few sets of eyes who looked it over, made suggestions, and then those suggestions were implemented or not depending on how much I agreed with them. With high hopes, I threw the story into submissions.
After a couple form rejections, I was disheartened, set the story aside and started working on others, along with revising a couple novels. The story languished in my back burner file for a long time.
Over the next couple years, as more of my shorts found published homes, I came to the realization that a rejection merely meant that I hadn't submitted to the right market. Unless the story really did need lots of work. I will admit to occasionally being wooed by sparkly new stories and sending them off before they are truly ready. That fact often becomes apparent upon the third form rejection when I read through the story to find out what these editors are missing about my beautiful, awesome story. "Ooooh", I say as I remove my beer goggles and back away slowly while reaching for my back burner file.
When I eventually did take Healer out of the file, dusted it off, and reworked the rough parts, it was ready to head back out into submissions. And here we are. Acceptance.
In summary: Rejection doesn't mean your story sucks, it just means you haven't found the right market. Unless your story really does suck, in which case, fix it, and then get it out there and find the right market.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Shorts: The submission game
With a handful of short stories in submissions at any given time, the process does begin to feel like a game, or maybe a lottery, while performing a constant a juggling routine. Keeping track of them can be a big job. The Grinder has made life a lot easier. It's free. Go make yourself an account right now.
Once I have a short written, edited and ready to go, I go to manage pieces and enter the title, genre and word count. From there, I can run a search. In that menu I can pick what kind of pay scale I'm looking for, and specify only magazines that accept electronic submissions, because I don't do postal submissions. I can also specify whether I want magazine that accept sim subs or reprints. Then it's just one more click and the wonderful and almighty Grinder generates a list of magazines for me to dive into.
This is where the process becomes a little more intensive, because I need to click through to any market's page to find what exactly they're looking for. Each market gets their own page and it contains a lot of very useful information: A blurb of what they're about, links to their submission guidelines and website, what genres they accept, word counts, and the most useful of all, all the submission stats.
The Market Response Data is my favorite area. You can see how many other people using The Grinder have submitted to this market in the past twelve months. How fast (or slow) the response times were, and how many ended up as dead letters. Beware the markets that have lots of dead letters.
This area also shows how the market responds: whether they often issue form rejections or if you'll perhaps get a personal one (should you not get accepted, because yes, that is the desired response). You can also see if they often issue rewrite requests or never do and their acceptance rate. Then, at the bottom of that list of stats, you can see how many people are in the waiting pool with you. Sometimes it makes the wait more bearable to see that there are 44 other people also trying not to stare at their inbox.
At the bottom of the market page, there's a nifty chart that illustrates the response times and where your submission is within that. Some markets have pretty clear peeks where you can see the first readers kicking stories out. Others vary greatly. You can play speculation games with yourself while you wait for a response. Having passed all the peaks to the plateau before the zone where there are a few green lines, does this mean you're submission is on the editor's desk? Or did your submission simply get lost?
If you've been submitting stories for a while and watching the market responses or new market list, markets can begin to all sound familiar. Thankfully, any submissions you've done with that market will show up at the very bottom of the page. No one wants to accidentally send multiple submissions. You can also see what the stats were for your previous submissions to help gauge whether you'd want to try that market again.
Another great passing-the-time feature is the My Market Response List. All the markets that you currently have submissions out with show up in this list. You can easily see when markets are currently processing submissions and whether you have a valid reason to be stalking your inbox.
The home page of The Grinder also features the daily activity of all the listed markets, both rejections and acceptances. It helps take the sting out of rejections when yours is one of eight that day. It's like virtually commiserating with others.
However, that commiserating stage should be short, because The Grinder picks you right back up upon reporting a rejection with the great search suggestion: Find a new home for this submission? Why yes, thank you. Let's get right on that. This story isn't going to sell itself tucked away in a folder on my hard drive.
Should a story sell, there is also a place to enter your earnings. The Grinder keeps track of that for you too. So many stats to ponder while waiting to hear back on submissions. Yes, I should spend that time writing, but there are stats to make one feel special and stats to make one feel not so bad as one of many. It's all in how you need to look at it on any given day.
Once I have a short written, edited and ready to go, I go to manage pieces and enter the title, genre and word count. From there, I can run a search. In that menu I can pick what kind of pay scale I'm looking for, and specify only magazines that accept electronic submissions, because I don't do postal submissions. I can also specify whether I want magazine that accept sim subs or reprints. Then it's just one more click and the wonderful and almighty Grinder generates a list of magazines for me to dive into.
This is where the process becomes a little more intensive, because I need to click through to any market's page to find what exactly they're looking for. Each market gets their own page and it contains a lot of very useful information: A blurb of what they're about, links to their submission guidelines and website, what genres they accept, word counts, and the most useful of all, all the submission stats.
The Market Response Data is my favorite area. You can see how many other people using The Grinder have submitted to this market in the past twelve months. How fast (or slow) the response times were, and how many ended up as dead letters. Beware the markets that have lots of dead letters.
This area also shows how the market responds: whether they often issue form rejections or if you'll perhaps get a personal one (should you not get accepted, because yes, that is the desired response). You can also see if they often issue rewrite requests or never do and their acceptance rate. Then, at the bottom of that list of stats, you can see how many people are in the waiting pool with you. Sometimes it makes the wait more bearable to see that there are 44 other people also trying not to stare at their inbox.
At the bottom of the market page, there's a nifty chart that illustrates the response times and where your submission is within that. Some markets have pretty clear peeks where you can see the first readers kicking stories out. Others vary greatly. You can play speculation games with yourself while you wait for a response. Having passed all the peaks to the plateau before the zone where there are a few green lines, does this mean you're submission is on the editor's desk? Or did your submission simply get lost?
If you've been submitting stories for a while and watching the market responses or new market list, markets can begin to all sound familiar. Thankfully, any submissions you've done with that market will show up at the very bottom of the page. No one wants to accidentally send multiple submissions. You can also see what the stats were for your previous submissions to help gauge whether you'd want to try that market again.
Another great passing-the-time feature is the My Market Response List. All the markets that you currently have submissions out with show up in this list. You can easily see when markets are currently processing submissions and whether you have a valid reason to be stalking your inbox.
The home page of The Grinder also features the daily activity of all the listed markets, both rejections and acceptances. It helps take the sting out of rejections when yours is one of eight that day. It's like virtually commiserating with others.
However, that commiserating stage should be short, because The Grinder picks you right back up upon reporting a rejection with the great search suggestion: Find a new home for this submission? Why yes, thank you. Let's get right on that. This story isn't going to sell itself tucked away in a folder on my hard drive.
Should a story sell, there is also a place to enter your earnings. The Grinder keeps track of that for you too. So many stats to ponder while waiting to hear back on submissions. Yes, I should spend that time writing, but there are stats to make one feel special and stats to make one feel not so bad as one of many. It's all in how you need to look at it on any given day.
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