 |
 |
|
 (just the) "Writing Life" Entries My Brain Is Your Stock Market August 8, 2008 So my "good days, bad days" answer to "how are you" doesn't cover it anymore, now that I'm seeing some patterns, getting a handle on the specifics of my symptoms. I've just come out of a two week slump which was starting to make me think I was doing worse than ever. It's now been seven months since my head injury. I'm reading/flipping through Gail L Denton's Brainlash again. This year, it's the only book I've been able to (slowly, missing much) get through, cover to cover. I'm reading it again because (a) the library only had an earlier edition, and now I've got the latest one and (b) I don't remember what it said the first time around. While "good days, bad days" is generally true, there are also good weeks and bad weeks for my brain, and good and bad brain days within (and relative to) both of those. But, according to the books, this is normal, and I should view bad weeks as "resting on the road to recovery" rather than backslidery. Fair enough. So my brain's like the stock market. Fluctuates day to day, and even has longer periods of decline. But even taking into consideration the down-months and even down-years (talking about the stock market here, hopefully not my brain), there should be an overall uptick. So here's where I am, roughly...
Continue reading "My Brain Is Your Stock Market" Filed Under: Brain Injury, Journal, Pity Party, Writing Life  "Dry Frugal with Death Rays," now at Futurismic August 5, 2008 My story Dry Frugal with Death Rays is live as this month's featured fiction at Futurismic! It's an absurdist (or at least absurd-ish) SF office romp loosely inspired by (a) a Bruce Jay Friedman short story called "The Punch" and (b) Joseph Heller's Catch 22.  This is my first story written post-Clarion to see print and my third submission to Futurismic. And, while not an SFWA-qualifying sale, I _believe_ this puts me at one sale away from Writers of the Future ineligibility. Thanks to Jen, James Maxey, Abigail Ferrance-Wu, Jud Nirenberg, and Bill Ferris for giving the story a critique last year. Couldn't have sold it without ya.
400TH REJECTION CONTEST (2008 Submission Log Weeks 25-27) July 4, 2008 (scroll down for the "Guess my Rejection" contest) Submissions 530-544 No brain power for links, maybe I'll add 'em later. Weird Tales (9th) The Colbert Report (1st) Drawn & Quarterly (2nd) The Believer (1st-5th) Abberrant Dreams (1st) Writers of the Future (20th!) ChiZine (7th) Supergrrrl Adventure Comics (1st) Asheville Film Festival (1st) Light (5th-7th) Rejections 393-397 F&SF Haiku Contest (date not available) The Believer (8 days on three poems) Asimov's (15 days) Hold Request From Fantasy, 18 days. Here's hoping. Acceptance 74, Tentative Acceptance 75 Sale of "Dry Frugal with Death Rays" to Futurismic, 42 days. Tentative acceptance from Supergrrrl Adventure Comics (1 day) pending a rewrite. This is a new, nonpaying zine from Rachel Edidin and Jen Vaughn. Pulled, Folded, or Otherwise No Reply 67-70 Cosmos (story), Interzone (story), Murky Depths (2 poems) Of Interest Yes, I entered the McCain greenscreen challenge thing. Don't know what I was thinking other than I needed to finish a project I could actually finish. A couple of bad PCS weeks, last month. Completely flaked on catching the F&SF issue announcing the winners of the haiku contest. Mine was an obvious joke anyway; glad it only had an audience of one (the editor/judge). Wow, 20th sub to Writers of the Future. It's what I was hoping to submit the week I got in the accident, so I _think_ it's finally submission ready, six months later. Brain injury aside, this story had more technical challenges than anything I've ever written, and it's been brewing at least since April '05 when I pitched it to a friend as a comic. Guess my 400th rejection, win a prize! Hey, time sure flies. First (up to) THREE PEOPLE to correctly guess where my 400th rejection will come from wins:
Currently at Rejection #397. Current outstanding subs:
And, okay. If all of the above end up as acceptances, and my 400th rejection has yet to even be submitted, I will be so happy that once I recover from the shock, I'll do my best to give everyone who enters a prize of some sort or another. (EDIT: And if something I've yet to submit--not listed above--ends up as my 400th rejection, prize goes to whoever guesses #401, and so on.)
"Shooting Dogs for Fun and Profit" free at ChiZine October 9, 2007 My story "Shooting Dogs for Fun and Profit" is up at ChiZine/Chiaroscuro. As a comedy piece, it should be a bit more amusing than the story behind it, below: I don't give a lot of thought to genre when I'm writing. Or if I do, it's more comedy vs drama rather than science fiction vs mystery vs non-genre or anything. There've been times I've written an entire story specifically for a market only to discover that, in the process of turning an idea into what I think is a workable story, I'd taken out the very element that would have made it appropriate for that particular market (no speculative element for an SF publication, no pirates for a pirate anthology). Even after years of writing and reading genre fiction, I spent the first half of Clarion failing to figure out the expectations of genre, and the second half failing to figure out my expectations of genre. I've never made it any further than the addage: good stories are good stories. So I've come to haphazardly put works into categories only after the fact, which probably contributes to my difficulty in placing my favorite work, and is probably why regular readers of non-genre fiction enjoyed "Outgoing" so much more than regular readers of science fiction or fantasy did (and why it's no great gamble to recommend "Shotting Dogs" to people who don't typically like horror; it's the horror fans who'll be wondering what the hell they're reading...). "Shooting Dogs for Fun and Profit" was a ten-minute play I submitted in 2005 to the Actor's Theatre of Louisville's National Ten Minute Play competition, which I try to enter every year. It didn't place, but this summer I dug it up because a filmmaker friend was looking for pieces we could shoot in a weekend. I realized there were still things I liked about it. So I'd meant to send it to another short play competition, but misread a deadline as "postmarked by" instead of "received by" because I'm silly like that. At the same time, I was trying to come up with a story for James Van Pelt's Hardboiled Horror, a crime-horror crossgenre anthology. It occurred to me (two years after I wrote it, of course) that "Shooting Dogs" had elements of both crime and horror, but I'd never thought of it as anything other than a comedy. So I kept most of the dialogue, and filled in some gaps, completely Hemingwaying it at times with... "DIALOGUE, DIALOGUE." He stood. His eyeballs itched. "DIALOGUE, DIALOGUE." ...an example which thankfully didn't make it into the submitted draft. So I felt like a hack. But prose can take many forms, and some stories are all about the dialogue. Why try to make "Shooting Dogs" something that it's not? I finished the prose version of the story at the end of June, plenty of time before the anthology deadline, which meant plenty of time to sit on it, work on other things, and come back to it with fresh eyes (which might mean a completely different thing in horror than it does in writing in general; I'll have to be careful). But the ChiZine/Chiaroscuro short fiction contest closed in a few days, so I figured why not let it sit in their slush pile instead of on my hard drive? And I forgot about it, except to wince when the Michael Vick/dogfighting allegations were dominating the news in the months between the ChiZine deadline closing and the announcement of the winners. I thought: okay, there goes the chance in hell I had of placing in the contest, and I'll need to change the title (which is figurative--no dogs even appear in the story) before I send it out to Hardboiled. But I never got the chance. It won third place in the contest and became my second SFWA-qualifying sale. And, for what it's worth, I offered it up to Mr. Van Pelt as a reprint, but it wasn't a good fit for the anthology in the first place, alas. Ah well. I've got nothing to complain about, and clearly I've demonstrated that I'm not the best judge for where mys tuff belongs. Now of course, I'm wondering whether we can really film it on a weekend...
The Year Our Brains Turn Around September 29, 2007 Two milestones this week, both relating to January first: We've hit a milestone of good health news relating to that cryptic family medical emergency (detailed as much as I'm gonna here and here) that's been weighing on us since New Year's morning. Yeah, I know the last time I said something positive about it, things took a rotten turn, but there's evidence instead of just hope that I'm right this time. And less importantly, my 100th submission of the year went out last Saturday, making this my most productive year as far as sending my stuff out into the world--less than nine months in. Yes, the latter is an effect, heavily influenced by the former. I've trained myself (wisely/stupidly/both) to respond to shitstorms by working harder, punching through. So 100+ subs in 9 months--including a relatively high number of new works--has been as much a feat of desperation as of dedication. In truth, it feels like I've been treading water all year, working almost exclusively on shorter work (when I aimed to spend the bulk of the year on book length stuff), barely keeping up with the business side of Telltale (and consequently far behind on the creative side of things), and all but letting Guidevines and my own site fester. And I've been sloppy, both in decision-making and in sending out works to top tier markets before they were ready. I'm not convinced more solid revising standards would've made sales out of the rejections (even the near misses), but it's unfortunate that just as editors are starting to recognize my name from one submission to the next that the work they're identifing with me has been so sloppy. In person I've behaved little better. My extroverted energy has been so spent that I often don't know what's coming out of my mouth until I'm saying it--sometimes not even then--and I find I can't figure out how to end a sentence or an idea (including on a Trinoc-coN panel, I was embarrassed to admit the other day). So to everyone, I apologize. Personally, I owe a lot of people emails and calls and I'll get to them, though this week I might not be answering the phone at regular hours as I retrain myself how to sleep (and I'll talk this later, probably). Professionally, Telltale gets a kick in the ass, then Guidevines, then the novel. This has been a messed up year, and I'm determined to use the last three months of it to keep from having to write it off completely.
Trinoc*coN 2007 Con Report September 27, 2007 I must say: being a guest is a lot easier than being an attendee. Sure, I've enjoyed previous conventions. I've learned a lot, gotten full value for my entertainment dollar. But I've usually felt little more than a witness, a consumer at these things--or worse, the guy at the party who doesn't know anybody else, and who can't help wondering... if he doesn't belong here, among people who share his interests and passions, then does he belong anywhere at all? And of course (I say this as if I'd always known it) the interaction is the best thing about a convention, even (especially?) for an introvert like me. And I'm not just talking about schmoozing with peers and peerless. Especially at this stage in my career, I have more in common with the casual attendee than with any professional. But here too, the guest badge acts as my icebreaker, my introduction to anybody and everybody (fan, pro, furry). It doesn't mean I know the guy who's throwing the party or anything, but it means somebody in one of the bedrooms might have vouched for me. And for introverts at parties, we need all the validation we can get. So... great meeting the other writers and attendees (see my panel schedule for most of the namedropping I'm expected to do), along with some of my fellow Codex members (Alethea Kontis, Edmund Schubert, and Gray Reinhardt) who I'd only known online, Gravy Boy writer Marty Blevins (who I'd met on an online comics forum), Luna and Andreas Black who I knew through mutual friends Jason Erik Lundberg and Janet Chui, and of course the active fans putting the con together in the first place.  Gray, Stephanie, Edmund, James, Ada, and Alex. (Alethea's holding the camera, obviously.) On my first panel, the conversation never let up. I talked a bit toward the top, and later watched for the pauses to interject my thoughts. When they didn't come, I shrugged and listened as the conversation went into different directions. It was very liberating. On the second panel, I got enough small laughs from the room that I figured out what I had to offer on a panel of my betters. By the fourth (and last), I realized that the most challenging--and satisfying--part of being on a panel is setting up one of the other panelists with a punchline or otherwise brilliant spike. Thankfully, I only had one or two times when I opened my mouth on a panel and had no idea where my sentence was supposed to end, though I'm sure I made an ass of myself more often than I remember. So yeah. I'd do that again. But I think this means I won't actively pursue attending too many other conventions until I've got the credentials to attend them as panelist. The icebreaker is more valuable to me than how I get there.  Alex Wilson, George R R Martin, Scott Nicholson, and Alexandra Sokoloff. The easy-to-understand reason is Clarion. Though it's semi-tradition that a student might do little to no writing in the year following the workshop, for me the thing I've dreaded is writing/talking _about_ writing. Which also makes the blog difficult, by the way. So being a guest at a con for the first time exactly a year after my Clarion graduation, talking about writing for three days straight... that was kind of all I had in me. Doing a meta-essay on the meta-discussion was unthinkable. But I think the bigger reason is how I haven't been able to wrap my head around how Jamie Bishop's absence from the con was so difficult for me. FWIW, it still doesn't make total sense, so if the remainder of this entry is confusing, it's not you; I mean: I get that I'm sad over the loss of a friend. I get that he was a regular Trinoc-coN attendee and a number of the guests and other attendees knew him primarily or exclusively through the con, enough so that our mutual friend Jason wrote a nice remembrance in the program. And I get that when someone dies it's a different kind of missing than when someone lives on the other side of the world now (Jason and Janet were about the only two people I knew/met the only other time I've been to Trinoc-coN, and they now live in Singapore, an absence felt in a different--but no less real--way). But... there's no sense of place to connect Jamie there. To my knowledge, the convention hasn't been held at this particular hotel before, so the echo of his presence seems artificially removed, like I'm visiting a replica of his apartment (which, by the way, I kind of have. We have friends who've lived at and invited us many times to Jamie's old apartment complex, and the apartment layouts are identical). And more significantly, I was never at Trinoc-coN or with any of these people who also knew him at the same time he was, so his association in my mind with the convention comes almost exclusively from our numerous conversations about it, all the way back in Carrboro. It was Jamie who encouraged me to first contact the con/ask to be a guest, successfully convincing me that (even before any significant writing sales) I might have something to offer on a panel or two. Which--on top of the other confusion--feels like a very selfish way to remember a friend. So I'm still processing that part of it. Eh. This turned out to be quite vague and introspective for a con-report. Ah well. That's what I get for putting it off for two months. I'll try to do better next year, if they'll have me. Thanks again to Alethea for being smart enough to actually pull out her camera (and for letting me post her pix). My camera was quite unhelpful in my pocket all weekend.
Sale! "Squatter's Rites" to Weird Tales September 25, 2007 Via email (from poetry editor/creative director Stephen Segal), 52 days. "Squatter's Rites" is a poem that tells a quick ghost story in 12 lines. Weird Tales is a magazine that, in its previous incarnations, launched the careers of Ray Bradbury, Robert E. Howard, and H.P. Lovecraft. In its current, quite-strong form, fellow Clarion '06er Will Ludwigsen has a poem (and a few other writers I admire have stories) in the current issue. I'm in excellent company. Flattered and honored. I still remember getting my first rejection from Weird Tales (Guidevines wiki link) in my Ashland University mailbox almost nine years ago. This was my second sub--and first poetry sub--to the magazine under its recently-changed creative masthead. Phew, I needed that.
My Interview at the Comicon Pulse September 21, 2007 A few months ago, writer Chris Beckett interviewed me for his Pulse indie-spotlight column "For Your Consideration." Went up last night. Strange and wonderful to see one's name in the top headline on the front page of the Pulse (until the next story's posted anyway, heh). Thanks, Chris!
And my 300th Rejection is from.... September 9, 2007 F&SF! Yes, following the pattern of my last ten or so subs there, JJA only passes every other one up to GVG. This one JJA sent back to me within 10 days. But good news for my next story, innit? For those playing last week's guessing game, I'm fairly certain I have both winners' emails, so I'll contact them directly.
2007 Submission Log: Weeks 33-34 September 2, 2007 Any bets on who'll send me my 300th rejection? Guess correctly in the LJ comments and get a free set of Inconsequential Art #1 & #2, autographed if you want. One guess per person, and up to five people (the first five to guess correctly) can win. Editors currently in charge of these pending rejections are not eligible. Ends one week from today or when I receive the rejection, whichever is later. My outstanding submissions list is the first comment. Cool? Submissions 416-419 The Sun (my 4th) MF&SF (my 20th) Strange Horizons (my 12th) Clarkesworld (my 4th) Rejections 295-299: Glimmer Train (4 months, 3rd rejection) Tin House (96 days, 5th rejection) Realms of Fantasy (4 months, 8th rejection)* Asimov's (24 days, 16th rejection) Analog (37 days, 11th rejection) Of Interest: Very busy August, but also quite productive in writing and other areas. Hopefully that'll bear some fruit soon. Learned recently that The Sun is based in Chapel Hill. I received my first rejection letters from there in my Ashland University mailbox, and now I could probably walk to the office (don't know if proximity helps or hurts me, heh). Obviously that means I haven't sent them anything in at least five years. Time to fix that. *Those submitting to Realms of Fantasy (via slush anyway) would do well to keep an eye on "Slushmaster" Douglas Cohen's blog, especially when he mentions meeting with editor Shawna McCarthy to pick up new slush stories and to pass promising ones along. Doug has reported response times going down since he started there, though with my last two stories the response time has increased immensely--and it's actually a good sign. Here are the timelines of my last two submissions, my only two stories Doug (or any previous slush editor) has passed to Shawna. 09.16.06 - Sent to Realms of Fantasy 10.22.06 - Doug picks up slush pile to read 11.11.06 - Email from Doug; he's passing it to Shawna 01.03.07 - Actual pass to Shawna 02.09.07 - Rejection from Shawna 05.03.07 - Sent to Realms of Fantasy 06.03.07 - Doug picks up slush pile to read 06.17.07 - Email from Doug; he's passing it to Shawna 07.19.07 - Actual Pass to Shawna 08.31.07 - Latest Acquisitions announced; implied rejection The above makes a lot more sense now that I've been reading his blog. And this weekend he posted recent acquisitions among the latest "batch," so even before receiving a formal rejection, I've been able to determine that I'm free to send that story elsewhere. So: not a magic bullet that'll turn a rejection into an acceptance, but a tweak to the submission process which gives my story a few days it didn't have before.
2007 Submission Log: Weeks 31-32 August 14, 2007 Submissions 414-415 Two comics pieces to MAD Magazine about a week apart. Rejections 292-294: Weird Tales, story, 36 days. The New Yorker, gag cartoon, 32 days Actor's Theatre of Louisville, play, 285 days Of Interest: MAD Magazine just might be the first place I ever submitted anything, back when I was a kid (and before I started keeping track). IIRC they didn't actually _take_ subs back then, though. Don't remember whether I ever got a reply. Quite a different experience to be following the guidelines, though they still say they don't reply to every query. Still: the one part of DC Comics that actually considers script submissions. Until Vertigo answers a query, this is as good a bet as any. The one year anniversary of my graduation from Clarion hit a week ago. I'll say more about that later this week.
Trinoc*coN 2007 Schedule, What I Look Like Now August 1, 2007
I am soooo outclassed. (If this gets changed between now and Friday, I'll add an "Updated" to the header. Otherwise, look for last-minute tweaks near the registration desk. Visit the Trinoc-coN website for more info.) If you're in Raleigh, NC this weekend and would like to say hello, here's what I look like this morning, according to the self-timer on my camera:  But I might be wearing a hat this weekend. My hair is at that length where it'll stick straight up if I don't do anything, it'll look like a combover if I push it forward, and it requires a lot of "product" to keep back like this. (Though, looking at this pic, I should forget about figuring out what to do with hair now that I have it; I need to work on my smile.) Edit: Okay, yeah. It turns out I'm wearing the same sleeveless shirt that I wore in my intentionally bald photo from the first time I shaved my head in '04. It's comfy.
2007 Submission Log: Weeks 29-30 July 29, 2007 Submissions 411-413 First film to the Sundance Festival. Tenth story to Asimov's (my 16th sub there if you include poetry). Second story to Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show Rejections 289-291 From The New Yorker (poetry, 75 days via email), Strange Horizons (fiction, 13 days), and Shimmer (10 days). Acceptance 67! As already noted, I won 3rd place in the 13th ChiZine/Leisure story contest, which is my second SFWA-qualifying sale.
SALE/3rd Place Win in the 13th ChiZine Story Contest July 27, 2007 My story "Shooting Dogs for Fun and Profit"* will be published in ChiZine #34 later this year, having won 3rd place in the latest Chiaroscuro/Leisure Short Story Contest. Which means my second SFWA-qualifying sale arrives almost 14 months and over 150 submissions after my first one. Phew. It felt like even longer. (*For what it's worth, the title is quite abstract. No animals appear--much less are shot for any reason--in this piece.)
2007 Submission Log: Week 27-28 July 16, 2007 Submissions 400-410: Stories to Strange Horizons (11th), Shimmer (3rd), LCRW (5th), and Analog (11th). Comics to 2000 AD (6th script), The New Yorker (7th sub overall, 1st gag cartoon), and MF&SF (1st gag cartoon, 19th sub overall, 400th sub anywhere overall). Poetry to Weird Tales (5th sub overall, 1st poem) and the Journal of Impossible Things (1st-3rd subs). Rejections 280-288 From Mythic Delirium (34 days), Interzone (43 days), Analog (28 days), Asimov's (40 Days), a manga proposal for the Feminist Press at CUNY, Strange Horizons (14 days), and MF&SF (11 days from GVG, probably because gag cartoons don't go through JJA). Of Interest:
400th Submission today July 3, 2007 Took 8 years, 8 months, and 2 days from my first submission. It was a gag cartoon sent to F&SF (1st gag sub, 19th sub overall). Phew. Glad that's out of the way.
The SFWA Walk of Shame July 2, 2007 I debated joining the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America so early. With only one SFWA-eligible novelette sale, I could only join as a non-voting, non-nominating Associate member at this point. But I've been incorrectly confident for over a year now that my next two eligible sales were imminent, and those would allow me to become a full-fledge Active Member. So I figured I'd join in January and by the end of 2007 I'd renew as an Active after a hard-fought battle with the slushpile. But it wasn't to be! Yes, I joined. But my pro-rated membership was for only six months. All SFWA memberships are renewed mid-year. But that did not deter me; no, it did not. I signed up anyway! Because surely I could make two little SFWA-eligible sales in six whole months! I may not dedicate _all_ my writing time to genre stories, nor do I submit exclusively to SFWA-eligible markets, but what does that matter? I'm on the cusp of a career! But here we are, time to renew, and in order to do so I still have to check that Associate box. I feel like such a poseur. And I'm still wearing last night's clothes. But that's just how I roll.
2007 Submission Log: Week 26 - Halfway Point June 30, 2007 Submissions 397-399: Stories to Strange Horizons (my 10th), Weird Tales (my 4th, but first under current editor Ann VanderMeer), and the 13th Chiaroscuro Short Story Contest (my first, but I've submitted to Chizine before). Rejections 275-279 Strange Horizons (20 days on a story; no comments this time), Shimmer (10 days on a story; "just wish there'd been more spec"--meaning "speculative element") and Tin House (12 days on a batch of poems sent for the Winter issue; form letter) Of Interest: I forgot about this last week: Doug Cohen (slush editor for Realms of Fantasy) emailed me to let me know that my current story submission will be passed to Shawna, which makes two in a row for me (my only two times getting past Doug since he joined the fray). And I woulda hit 400 subs today, but I misremembered a playwriting deadline as "postmarked by" instead of "received by." Now I've gotta get all angsty and superstitious about what that milestone sub should be.
I'll be a Guest at Trinoc*coN 2007 June 18, 2007 So I'll be a guest at Trinoc*coN in Raleigh, NC, August 3-5. I haven't asked to do any readings (next year, maybe), but I should be on a few panels, maybe even with Literary Guest of Honor George R. R. Martin. Which, yes, would be cool. I emailed them shortly before the 2005 convention in Durham, asked if they needed anyone to fill a panel or two. It was too late in the game, and last year I was out of town for the convention. But just a few days before I was planning to contact them again, they emailed me and asked whether I was still interested. It'll be my first convention experience as a guest.
2007 Submission Log: Weeks 22-24 June 16, 2007 Submissions 391-394: Stories to M&FSF (my 18th), Strange Horizons (9th sub overall, but 6th fiction sub), Asimov's (15th overall, 9th fiction), and Analog (10th). Rejections 266-272: Two from MF&SF (28 days from GVG, 9 days from JJA), Futurismic (32 days), Flytrap (37 days), and the last of the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest non-placers which I'll be counting here (see below). Of Interest: Of my last six subs to MF&SF, it looks like every other one got to GVG, and often not the ones I'd expect, based on my judgment of the stories and my reading of the magazine. Decided to stop counting Cartoon Caption Contest entries as submissions, because I don't want it to get to the point where I've "subbed" there more often than I have anywhere else. Might still throw jokes their way, so long as I have stuff in the New Yorker's "real" slush pile. But it's a throwaway thing, on the off chance that my name will flash across an editor's eyeline, but it was never an important part of my submission strategy. Writers of the Future has posted its 2007Q2 Finalists to its blog at just 60 days from the entry deadline. Nice because this has freed up my entry-story to send it to another market, even before I got my rejection.
2007 Submission Log: Weeks 20-21 May 29, 2007 Submissions 386-390: Stories to Interzone (my 2nd), ParaSpheres (my 1st) and Tin House (my 5th). And two more entries into the New Yorker Gag Cartoon Caption Contest. Rejection 265: 62-day rejection from Strange Horizons, with a note about humor being subjective. Of Interest/Queries Corner: After ten unanswered queries to Marvel, I've received my first ever response! It was a form letter saying that I don't quite have what it takes to be an illustrator for Marvel yet. Which I agree with. Which is why I queried them as a writer looking to pitch some stories. But if that wasn't clear, then my writing chops really need work. (Or maybe it was just payback for this submission faux pas). So I have finally gotten Marvel to open one of my envelopes. I know this because the form letter came in one of my SASEs. Now how do I get an editor to read what I send them? It just might take ten more queries before I figure it out...
2007 Submission Log: Week 19 Part Deux: The Revenge May 16, 2007 As discussed earlier, I have begun sending out queries, so I'm thinking I should put some sort of tracking system in place, as I have with my slush submissions, "before I get overwhelmed." And why, pray tell, would someone who has almost 400 submissions under his belt need to bother about organization? What rookie mistakes could I possibly be capable of making after 8.5 years of this? I'll give you a hint: Who has two thumbs and just sent three queries to Vertigo editors at Marvel's mailing address?
2007 Submission Log: Week 19 May 14, 2007 Submissions 381-385 Poetry to Mythic Delirium (my first three; I believe this is the first time they've been open to subs since I picked up my first copy) and New Yorker (6th submission there), and--since I have something in the slush pile--why not resume throwing my name into the Caption Contest pile again (for the 14th time)? Still at 264 rejections, but I've got some miscellany to cover here: First: I noticed that I skipped rejection 259 in my last two Submission Log entries, which is a shame because it was a fun one. I wrote a humor story for the John Joseph Adams-helmed issue of Shimmer near the beginning of the year. I had some time before the deadline so I sent it to JJA in his role as slush editor at F&SF first. He passed it up to editor Gordon Van Gelder, which I believe is the only time he's liked one of my humor pieces enough to do so. It didn't grab GVG, so I queried JJA to see whether he'd want to consider it for Shimmer. "Yes, please," he said, and off it went. It made it to the final cut before getting the axe, but JJA said he liked it enough that if he had more room in the issue, it would have found a home there. Second: Though I received a quarterfinalist notification for Writers of the Future's 2007Q1 period in my SASE back in March, I recently received a semifinalist notice for the same story, along with a critique by first judge KD Wentworth, in a second envelope. If the critique, which specifically discussed my story, hadn't been included, I'd be inclined to think the semifinalist notice was the mistake of the two, but it looks like I can upgrade my current tally to... Non-placers: 6 Quarterfinalists: 5 Semifinalists: 2 Finalists: 0 Placers: 0 ...with my 14th entry awaiting a verdict for 2007Q2. Small victory there, I guess. Third: I began sending out queries last month. Not sure whether/how to tally them here. I figure queries are going to be a big part of my writing life over the next few years, so I better come up with a system before I get overwhelmed.
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!!)
2007 Submission Log: Weeks 16-17 May 1, 2007 A third of the way through the year. Submissions 369-373: Stories to Glimmer Train (3rd), Flytrap (my 3rd), and Sword and Sorceress (my 3rd). Filmish things to Gizmodo (don't ask; it didn't end well), and Wholphin (as writer, not director, which is exactly as it should be). Rejections 255-258: From Sword and Sorceress (about a day) and all the comics awards (when they announced their winners/finalists). Not at all surprising, but it's an honor just to be seen by the judges. Of Interest: Glad to see Sword & Sorceress starting up again. MZB's anthologies and magazine were among the first places I've ever sent my fiction starting in 1998. I never got any of Bradley's legendary berating rejections (just form letters and a few "is this supposed to be humorous?" rhetoricals), but then I probably wasn't worth her time. I actually enjoyed the writing of two new prose stories in a row this month. That can't be right.
Modern Conveniences January 28, 1999 (Selected republication of old entries from the pre-Movable Type journal...) The most interesting thing happened to me last night. I was on this email discussion list called Writers Unite, which actually has little in the way of stimulating discussion (I was considering unsubscribing but never got around to it), and, last weekend, the list owner decided in her divine authority to sign all her list members up for some other list she ran, called Horror Writers. As a former fanatic reader of horror writers like Stephen King, Dean R. Koontz, Clive Barker, and Brian Lumley, I tolerated this, even though it bothered me a bit that someone would sign me up for a list without my permission. The discussion on the new list is very mediocre, containing at best a few insightful comments and at worse (and as usual) a whole bunch of inside jokes and gags. There is also much bragging, as many of the writers and editors on the list sound well-published. Still, I find myself glancing at the messages at least briefly before deleting them and last night was no exception.
Continue reading "Modern Conveniences" Filed Under: Acting, Eggplant Literary Productions, Jackhammer, Journal, Poetry, Prose and Poetry, Submissions, Theatre, Writing, Writing Life First Post November 13, 1998 (Selected republication of old entries from the pre-Movable Type journal...) I've got good news and bad news for the first entry of this writing journal. The bad news is that I received my first rejection letter. I sent a creative nonfiction piece to a print magazine, and got turned down this Monday. I must admit, it gave me a small amount of satisfaction when I noticed a misspelling in the publisher's letter.
Filed Under: Eggplant Literary Productions, Jackhammer, Journal, Prose and Poetry, Rejection, Submissions, Writing, Writing Life |
|
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. Blog Archives 2008 - Clever Label TBA 2007 - BadYearNoCookie 2006 - Clarion! 1st Pro Sale! 2005 - Peers and Peerless 2004 - Telltale Launch 2003 - Dog bites, acting out 2002 - In my mind, I'm going... 2001 - Marriage, Macs, 1st Cons 2000 - Setback, Milestones 1999 - Engaged, Graduated 1998 - Creative Independence     Powered by MT 3.35 MySpace Profile Technorati Profile |
 |
|
|
|
Thank you for dining with Alex Wilson Studios LLC.