Two short story rejections and counting. Three more pending. Stephen King lost count of how many rejections he got before he finally sold a short story, but it was at least a hundred.
Although my primary concern is finishing my novel, Mindfire, it's difficult for me to monomaniacally focus on it when I have other unrelated ideas floating about in me 'ead. So I've been writing a number of short stories lately, in the 1k-3k word range—flash fiction seems to be quite popular these days, and a lot of paying markets are seeking stories in that length range (or even shorter!).
So I alternate between writing the novel and writing short stories. Some of these I'll post for free on the blog (such as The Destiny of Kajiyama Shen), some of these I'll self-publish (such as The Demons of Lashtë and Chalice and Knives), and others I will put through the rigors of submitting to paying markets.
It's this last that is the simplest approach, and yet the most difficult. For an unknown author, the editors of these markets (short fiction magazines and so on) have to really like the submission in order to publish it. Even if you do a lot of research—reading all the back issues to find out what kinds of things they publish, and tailoring stories for the individual market—a story that most folks would enjoy reading, if they had a chance to, might get rejected because that particular editor just didn't happen to get grabbed by it.
That doesn't mean it's not good enough to get published anywhere; maybe the twentieth market you submit the story to will accept it, and you'll never know unless you keep trying. Since the list of (e.g.) SWFA paying markets is both finite and relatively short (about 30 markets currently), it would be reasonable and feasible to submit a given story to every market on the list (or at least the appropriate ones; some only accept SF or fantasy, not both).
From a probability standpoint, having a lot of stories to submit helps, because prose fiction markets don't tolerate simultaneous submissions. Each story can only be submitted to one market at a time, and it might be weeks before you hear back. In the meantime, that story can't be submitted to anyone else. So if you write another one, you can be shopping that one around as well. Each story in the pipeline increases your chance of selling one.
Do the math: If each story has a (let's be generous) 1% chance of being accepted on each submission, and there's 30 paying markets, then a given story will have a (1 - 0.9930) ~= 26% chance of being sold, if you were to submit it to all the markets. (For a given story, this might take a year or two, if each market takes a couple of weeks to respond.) Shop enough stories around to all the markets, and one of them might get sold.
You could get lucky and sell a story on your third or fourth submission. Or it might take hundreds, like Stephen King. The only thing you can do is not let yourself get discouraged, and keep at it: "Never give up. Never surrender."
Showing posts with label persistence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label persistence. Show all posts
11 February, 2012
17 October, 2011
First draft completed
Last night around 00:15 I completed the first draft of my novel in progress. 164,396 words in the draft, although considerably more words were written along the way (five chapters were rewritten from scratch, and numerous other small edits were made along the way, of course). It was 87 days since I started the novel, on the evening of July 22, for an average of 1,889 words per day, which I'm quite happy with considering that I can only work on it for at most two or three hours a day, on a good day.
This is the longest piece of writing I've ever completed. The tiny demons of self-doubt made a few sallies during that time, but I managed to suppress them. However this is only the first draft (well, the prologue and chapters 1-4 are on their second full drafts... actually, so is chapter 23, come to think of it, which I wrote from the wrong character's POV the first time around).
Now the hard part begins: rewriting chapters 5-32 and the epilogue from scratch again, incorporating all the new developments I came up with along the way. There's entire organizations I invented for background, who aren't mentioned until 2/3 of the way through now (because that's when I came up with them), and they need to be integrated into the story, for the sake of world-building and flavor. I'm pretty happy with the main story and character development, and it ends in a good place: this is the first novel in a planned trilogy.
Rewriting entire chapters from scratch is painfully difficult, but it is necessary. Once I've got all the story beats in place properly, the final phase will be to go over the prose with a fine-toothed comb, making sure it flows, and that every paragraph, sentence, and line of dialogue is as compact and interesting as possible. 164k words is a lot longer than the average novel, as I understand it, but I don't think there's any unnecessary elements. (Although I'm sure I'll come across some as I'm rewriting.) There are, however, quite a lot of elaborations on things that could stand to be trimmed down.
This is the longest piece of writing I've ever completed. The tiny demons of self-doubt made a few sallies during that time, but I managed to suppress them. However this is only the first draft (well, the prologue and chapters 1-4 are on their second full drafts... actually, so is chapter 23, come to think of it, which I wrote from the wrong character's POV the first time around).
Now the hard part begins: rewriting chapters 5-32 and the epilogue from scratch again, incorporating all the new developments I came up with along the way. There's entire organizations I invented for background, who aren't mentioned until 2/3 of the way through now (because that's when I came up with them), and they need to be integrated into the story, for the sake of world-building and flavor. I'm pretty happy with the main story and character development, and it ends in a good place: this is the first novel in a planned trilogy.
Rewriting entire chapters from scratch is painfully difficult, but it is necessary. Once I've got all the story beats in place properly, the final phase will be to go over the prose with a fine-toothed comb, making sure it flows, and that every paragraph, sentence, and line of dialogue is as compact and interesting as possible. 164k words is a lot longer than the average novel, as I understand it, but I don't think there's any unnecessary elements. (Although I'm sure I'll come across some as I'm rewriting.) There are, however, quite a lot of elaborations on things that could stand to be trimmed down.
10 October, 2011
How do you know when it's good?
How do you know when your work is good enough to publish?
It depends on your goals. Is your goal to be a published author, making a living at writing? Then you only need your writing to be good enough to get published, and to convince people who read it to pay you to write more.
That's my goal. My main goal. It would be nice to be a world-renowned author with lots of awards and attention, but I think that happens more by luck than even by hard work. Someone with the talent and skill and marketing sense and who can put in a colossal amount of hard work... still might not become world-famous. But as long as you keep writing, you've got a chance.
That's why my main goal is to get paid for writing. Because if I can get paid for writing, I can give up my day job, and then I can spend all the time I would have been programming, writing. And then I'll be writing 8-10 hours a day, instead of the 1-2 I have time for right now.
But to get paid for writing, you have to be able to write stuff people will pay you for. And you have to know if it's good enough before you send it off to be read, because if it's not good enough, your work will get rejected and ignored.
So when I ask, "How do you know when it's good?" what I'm really asking is, "How do you know when it's good enough that someone will buy it?" This isn't a hard and fast line; consider short story A, which would be bought for print by 5% of the potential buyers, versus story B, which would be bought for print by 30% of the potential buyers. Is it good enough? That depends on whether you can find someone in the set of buyers who will buy your work.
One indicator that it's good enough, or almost good enough, is that an editor or agent shows interest in it -- or if someone actually buys it. Then you know that professionals in the field consider it [almost] good enough. With a little more work, a little more practice, maybe it finally will be good enough.
The only thing you can accurately say about a work that hasn't sold is that it hasn't sold yet. Maybe it won't ever sell; maybe you just haven't found the right buyer yet. When it does sell, then you've got proof that you can write something sellable; but that doesn't mean you can do it again.
But if you're a writer, you'll sure as hell keep trying. I know I will. I will write until the day I die.
It depends on your goals. Is your goal to be a published author, making a living at writing? Then you only need your writing to be good enough to get published, and to convince people who read it to pay you to write more.
That's my goal. My main goal. It would be nice to be a world-renowned author with lots of awards and attention, but I think that happens more by luck than even by hard work. Someone with the talent and skill and marketing sense and who can put in a colossal amount of hard work... still might not become world-famous. But as long as you keep writing, you've got a chance.
That's why my main goal is to get paid for writing. Because if I can get paid for writing, I can give up my day job, and then I can spend all the time I would have been programming, writing. And then I'll be writing 8-10 hours a day, instead of the 1-2 I have time for right now.
But to get paid for writing, you have to be able to write stuff people will pay you for. And you have to know if it's good enough before you send it off to be read, because if it's not good enough, your work will get rejected and ignored.
So when I ask, "How do you know when it's good?" what I'm really asking is, "How do you know when it's good enough that someone will buy it?" This isn't a hard and fast line; consider short story A, which would be bought for print by 5% of the potential buyers, versus story B, which would be bought for print by 30% of the potential buyers. Is it good enough? That depends on whether you can find someone in the set of buyers who will buy your work.
One indicator that it's good enough, or almost good enough, is that an editor or agent shows interest in it -- or if someone actually buys it. Then you know that professionals in the field consider it [almost] good enough. With a little more work, a little more practice, maybe it finally will be good enough.
The only thing you can accurately say about a work that hasn't sold is that it hasn't sold yet. Maybe it won't ever sell; maybe you just haven't found the right buyer yet. When it does sell, then you've got proof that you can write something sellable; but that doesn't mean you can do it again.
But if you're a writer, you'll sure as hell keep trying. I know I will. I will write until the day I die.
05 October, 2011
Na NO WriMo
I did NaNoWriMo a couple of years. One year I wrote maybe 15,000 words, the next year I managed to get to 40k or so. It's a fun experiment, assuming your goal is not to actually produce a publishable novel. If you enjoy writing as a hobby, then I highly recommend it.
I doubt I'll do NNWM again. Since I'm intending to make this my career, NNWM itself would be a distracting sideline. Every month should (will!) be novel-writing month for me. I'm already writing an average of about 80,000 words a month now anyway (including square-one rewrites, but not editing).
You want to succeed? You want to publish? They say you have to put your ass in the chair and write, and that's true; but there's something deeper than that. Never give up. Tell yourself you will succeed. When the self-doubt comes calling, squash that little bastard. The other day, I thought, But what if I don't succeed?
No, I told myself. You will succeed. And so I will.
I doubt I'll do NNWM again. Since I'm intending to make this my career, NNWM itself would be a distracting sideline. Every month should (will!) be novel-writing month for me. I'm already writing an average of about 80,000 words a month now anyway (including square-one rewrites, but not editing).
You want to succeed? You want to publish? They say you have to put your ass in the chair and write, and that's true; but there's something deeper than that. Never give up. Tell yourself you will succeed. When the self-doubt comes calling, squash that little bastard. The other day, I thought, But what if I don't succeed?
No, I told myself. You will succeed. And so I will.
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