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Back to Journal  « Inconsequential Art at Chapel Hill Comics | 2007 Submission Log: Week 18 | Hope: New Orleans in Diamond Previews » 2007 Submission Log: Week 18 May 9, 2007 Including my 100th submission since I graduated from Clarion nine months ago! Submissions 374-380 Stories to MF&SF (my 17th), Futurismic (2nd), and Realms of Fantasy (8th). Poetry to Sport Spec (1st) and Tin House (2nd-4th). Rejections 260-264 Asimov's (sent 1/17). Gizmodo. Sporty Spec (3 days). ASIM (Sent 2/13, Hold request on 2/17.) Powers Letter Column Writing Contest. Some nice comments in the Asimov's rejection. Of interest: Don't want to jinx anything, but I might be over that "post-Clarion writing depression." Only took nine months and 101 submissions to do it, but here we are. I've been shocked at how many writers I've met at Clarion and beyond who say that, more often than not, they actually dislike the act of writing. It shocks me because they're pursuing this as a career just as I am (and in many cases are far ahead of me in their careers), and I guess I don't differentiate my enjoyment from my compulsion when it comes to storytelling. But for me, Pre-Clarion, I would enjoy the act of writing and be pretty pleased with my final results about 60% of the time. There'd be challenging, awful days, but plowing through the tough times and finding solutions to the worst problems generally left me with a feeling that it was worth my time and effort. Some of the bliss would wear off after a few days, of course. But that, too, was a plus because it would give me enough perspective to revise. Now, post-Clarion, particularly with prose, I can probably count on one hand the number of days I've felt good about my work in either enjoyment or satisfaction, much less both. And I write almost every day. But the last three prose stories I've written have been positive experiences overall. This isn't to say they came easy. They just didn't hurt so much, most of the time. And I don't hate what I've written yet. Some Clarion graduates (including successful authors I admire greatly) have said they waited a year after Clarion before they started writing again. I totally get that. I've been at this since 1998 and the only worse writing-year I can remember is after my father died in 2000. So my strategy has been to plow through, and write my way though it. If it's paid off, maybe my reward will be three months of that 60% bliss I was hitting before the workshop. I'll take that. Now let's see if I can't translate that into a sale or two. How's everyone else doing? (I mean besides my classmate Sarah Kelly who just made her first pro sale: a novelette to Analog, no less!!) Filed under Clarion, Clarion, Futurismic, Happy Fun Log, Journal, Realms of Fantasy, Tin House, Writing, Writing Life  
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Alex Wilson writes fiction and comics in Carrboro, NC. His work has appeared/will appear in Asimov's Science Fiction, The Rambler, Weird Tales, The Florida Review, Futurismic, Shimmer, ChiZine, FutureQuake, Pif, and Dragon. Locus Magazine has called him a "promising new writer," and Publishers Weekly also has nice things to say. Alex runs the audiobook project/podcast Telltale Weekly and the writer wiki Guidevines. He publishes the minicomic/zine Inconsequential Art. He is a 2006 Clarion graduate.  
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