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 (just the) "Writers of the Future" Entries WotF: Finally a Finalist! September 16, 2008 I'm currently one of eight finalist in the Writers of the Future contest, 2008Q3 (quarter ending June 30, 2008). I'll find out in the next month or so whether I've won. Got the call last night from Joni Labaqui, and she posted the results a few hours later. How do we feel about this?  ...except with less beard because I don't have a beard these days. This is the story I was working on and hoping to finish when I had my mild traumatic brain injury last December (err, welcome, new readers!). The story was probably 80% completed then, and with medicinal amounts of caffeine and working in short bursts, it took me another six months to finish. I first entered WotF in December 1998. This was my 20th entry over the past 9.5 years, and my first time ever getting past the first reader/coordinating judge (formerly Algis Budrys, currently K.D. Wentworth), who reads and sorts everything, and passes only the finalists on to other judges. My current tally is... 8 nonplacers 9 honorable mentions/quarterfinalists 2 semifinalists 1 finalist (or better!) And I believe I'm one "pro" sale away from being disqualified for the contest.
 "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.)
2008 Submission Log Weeks 13-17 April 25, 2008 A bit behind, but only a bit to report... Submissions 511-514 Writers of the Future (my 19th sub there) Fantasy (5th) Cabinet de Fees (1st) Apex (3rd) Rejections 371-375 Clarkesworld (82 days) Polyphony (83 days) Mineshaft (101 days on 3 poems) Of Interest Still couldn't close the deal on the story I was writing for Writers of the Future at the end of December, so again I send them a slightly older story last quarter. High hopes that I'll be well enough to complete it (and a few other things) by June. Twenty-six pieces currently in circulation. Been a few weeks now of nothing in, nothing out. A few submissions have been pending for longer than the average bear, which can be a good sign (held a bit for rereads/consideration, etc) or a bad sign (post office taken over by Visigoths so the subs/rejections never arrived, etc). Or it could mean nothing. And I'm saying nothing. This has been a good use of your time.
2007 Submission Log: Week 52! The Year is Dead! Long Live the Year! January 10, 2008 Submissions 469-475 Murky Depths (my 3rd and 4th subs there) SFReader.com Contest (2nd) Mineshaft (1-3rd) Writers of the Future (18th, yes, 18th) Rejection 334 Weird Tales (my 6th) Of Interest: I put out 148* submissions in 2007, a personal record but nothing to be admired. As I talked about here, it's been more an act of desperation than one of dedication. Glad to have gotten through it with what little progress I was able to make. Feels unreal to still be talking about 2007, when the whole year is (literally) fuzzy in my mind. I'm already into the first submissions, rejections and acceptance (I'll share tomorrow) of 2008, and I'm dizzy just writing what I've written so far for this entry (recovering slowly, but recovering; again, more later). I spent about three hours trying to focus on an interview questions yesterday for the Shimmer story and almost gave up. But then I thought: the first interviews I ever read were with 80s musicians coked out of their skulls; how unintelligible could I possibly be? Mineshaft's in Durham! How come nobody told me? Due to a clerical error on my part, my Writers of the Future entry count is up by two this quarter instead of one. The entry went MIA when I switched tracking methods a few years back, and I was all "this is my sixth or seventh" entry and I went ahead and marked it as a sixth. So my new tally.... Pending: 1 Nonplacers: 7 Honorable Quarterfinalists: 8 Semifinalists: 2 Finalists: 0 Superfinalists: 0 What's a superfinalist? How the hell should I know, with crappy numbers like these? In the interesting-to-nobody-else-but-me department, this does mean I've entered an average of twice per year for nine years. That's once a year at first, eventually upping to quarterly as my eligible days start to number. I have some hopes for 2008, the year my writing/submitting life turns ten (November) and my submission count will likely hit 500. Not a lot of hopes. But some. Don't ask me how long it took to write this. Gonna go lie down now. * Corrected from 147. Two lines in my tracking file got combined. I know nobody cares but me, but if it's worth tracking, it's worth tracking correctly.
2007 Submission Log: Weeks 35-37 September 23, 2007 Submissions 420-427 A Public Space (my first sub there) Asimov's (my 17th and 18th) Durham Emerging Artists Program (1st grant proposal for a comics project) Realms of Fantasy (my 9th) Writers of the Future (my 16th) Hardboiled Horror (my first) Weird Tales (my 6th) Rejections 300-304: McSweeney's (4th rejection, just over 6 months) F&SF (20th rejection, 13 days from JJA) Clarkesworld (4th rejection, 14 days) Writers of the Future (Honorable Mention, 15th non-winner) 2000 AD (5th rejection on 6 subs, 68 days) Of Interest: Actually quite pleased to receive my 2000 AD rejection. After no response to my fifth submission, and my sixth one going out just a week before their London offices were flooded, I was starting to think it wasn't meant to be. No comments this time, though, so there's still plenty of reason to be disappointed... Sending out a second story to Asimov's before the last one's back, which is a first for me. Odd that I didn't think to do this when their responses were running 3-4 months last year, instead of now, when I can probably expect a 4 week rejection for the first of the two stories this week. And the latest Writers of the Futre tally: 6 washes 7 quarterfinalist/honorable mentions 2 semifinalists and one pending. Back to work.
2007 Submission Log: Week 25 June 22, 2007 Submissions 395-396: Stories to Shimmer (my 2nd) and Writers of the Future (my 15th). Though with the finalists posted a few weeks ago on the WotF blog, my story is already at the next market. Rejections 273-274 Honorable Mention from Writers of the Future (2007Q2), rejection from Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show (just over 3 months). Of Interest: "Honorable Mention" is WotF's new name for quarterfinalist, which I think is a smart change. I remember when I received my first QF, having to to clarify with other writers whether it meant "You are a finalist and we'll let you know what happens when the judging is over" or "you were a finalist, but it's all over. Attaboy." And it breaks my baboon heart to read the excitement of recent entrants/quarterfinalists who go from elated to crushed as a veteran entrant reluctantly clarifies. Also a smart move (IMO) is the decision to not list the quarter judges for the contest in the QF/Honorable Mention letter anymore, since Honorable Mentions and Semifinalists don't make it far enough to be read by anybody but the first judge. So the current WotF tally for me at 14 entries is... Non-placers: 6 QF/Honorable Mentions: 6 Semifinalists: 2 Finalists: 0 Placers: 0 ...with the fifteenth in the mail this week, because apparently I need someone to publish and send me a copy of a book called "Dude, Writers of the Future's Just Not That into You."
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: 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: Weeks 12-13 March 31, 2007 Subs 365-368: Fourth story to McSweeney's. Fifth story to Strange Horizons (8th sub there overall). Fourteenth story to Writers of the Future. My first short film sub to the Wholphin ("the McSweeney's DVD"). And I might have another Whophin sub shortly, as the director of a film I co-wrote and performed in a while back just put the finishing touches on it. Rejections 252-3: Four days from Jim Baen's Universe. A few months from AHMM's Mysterious Photo Rejection 254: Thirteenth wasn't the charm from Writers of the Future. Quarterfinalist. Have to admit I had higher hopes for this one than I've had in a long time, if we can pretend no impartiality about my own work. At any rate, this brings my current tally to... Non-placers: 6 Quarterfinalists: 6 Semifinalists: 1 Finalists: 0 Placers: 0 ...since I started submitting there in Dec 1998. I entered annually at most for the first few years, but I've stepped that up to nine out of the last ten quarters, if you include my 14th submission sent this week. I've sold one of my quarterfinalists to Asimov's and another to a semipro market back in 1999 or 2000. I've retired my semifinalist story (which was my milestone 150th rejection overall). It's one of those things where, long after exhausting most potential markets for it, I've decided that it's a far cry from my best work and getting it published even somewhere obscure would be more of an embarassment than a pleasure. It's possible that's why I've never made it past the first reader there; the story she liked the most of mine is the WotF submission that I liked the least. Ah well. I'll keep at it until I'm disqualified. Probably will never sell to Analog or The New Yorker either, but what are you gonna do? In other news, I'm torn about working on long work vs short work. The little success I've had in the short fiction "proving ground" (especially the failure of my short fiction that I feel is superior to what I've already sold) keeps me vacillating between questions: (a) Do I need to spend more time here before "graduating" to longer stuff? or (b) Is short fiction just not my bag, baby? Anything to keep me from asking the obvious: Does anybody even want the kind/style of stories I'm writing, no matter how good or bad they get? And if editors don't believe in my stories, and now I don't believe in my stories, then what am I wasting everybody's time for? I've heard many times how long it takes to get a writing career going. I've heard many times how long it can be between one's first and second pro sale. But with life and my inner and outer critics clearly winning every battle, I'm not sure how much longer I can do this.
Rejections 210-212, Subs 322-323 December 22, 2006 25 Day rejection with comments from Strange Horizons. Non-placing rejection from WotF for the quarter ending Sept 30 (this quarter's sub already sent) New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest non-selection and new submission. And my fifth comic script submission to 2000 AD went out this week. I may not get any more subs out until the new year, but I've already topped last year's number of 67 (though almost half of last year's were poetry subs, compared to mostly prose fiction this year) with 69 as of this week. I believe 1999 (in which I submitted mostly nonfiction) is still my record year, but I don't have that number handy.
Rejection 186 - WOTF September 30, 2006 Quarter-finalist noficication/rejection via email on Thursday to my 11th entry to the Writers of the Future fiction contest. That makes five non-placers, five quarterfinalists, and one semifinalist. This was the last story I wrote before Clarion. I'll probably want to do some hefty rewrites before I send it out again.
Submissions 277 and 278 June 19, 2006 Fiction subs to McSweeney's (my 2nd or 3rd) and Writers of the Future (my 11th). Unless I can round up a batch of poetry before Friday, these should be my final submissions before Clarion.
Rejection 174 - WotF June 9, 2006 On my tenth story sent to Writers of the Future, for the quarter ending March 31. Non-placing, and there was a hand-written note that said "Send more soon," but I'm betting that's going to be a common thing on entries this quarter and not a message specifically to me. This was the fastest response I think I've ever gotten from WotF. So out of ten entries over the last seven years, that makes five non-placers, four quarterfinals, and one semifinalist. I'm starting to think I just don't write the kinds of stories that get past the WotF first reader, since I've yet to get past her to the other judges. Also: the novelette I sold to Asimov's only made it to the quarterfinals (Asimov's was the second place I sent it), so even when my stuff doesn't suck completely, she's still not digging it. Wonder if I should rethink my intended story for submission #11.
2005Q3 Quarter in Review September 30, 2005 Wonderful quarter. Still 12 hours left, but so far so good. Here's how the writing's coming. Prose - The Writers of the Future Strategy! Got a Writers of the Future semifinalist placement with my eighth story submission there, the highest I've placed in the contest yet after four non-placing entries and three quarterfinalist stories since 1998. This was also my 150th rejection. Haven't received my critique yet (which all semifinalists are promised), but I'm hoping I didn't repeat any mistakes in my next entry if Kathy Wentworth was kind enough to point them out. My ninth submission to WotF (just mailed out last night) is my longest--and I think best--fiction work to date. It's also a milestone in that this makes 2005 (the WotF year begins the quarter ending December 31 of the previous year) the first year I submitted entries every quarter. Yay discipline! Sent my first submission to Analog in over five years. I've been slow recently to submit to professional SF markets other than Writers of the Future--I'm still such a slow prose writer that I only finish one prose SF story at most per quarter anyway, and that one goes to WotF.
Continue reading "2005Q3 Quarter in Review" Filed Under: Comic Stripping, Journal, Prose and Poetry, Writers of the Future Twice in the Rain, Two Rejections, 200th Sub, New Play, etc. March 17, 2005 
Lotsa stuff to cover. When I'm not writing entries, that means I'm busy or stuck under a heavy object. But this entry's got it all--theatre, film, writing, and more! Let's start with the writing:Rejections #113 from Raven Electrick (sub #197) and #114 from Writers of the Future (Sub #187), came in, both for fiction works. The Writers of the Future entry was my second quarterfinalist story, which, according to Terry Bramlett when I asked her last year, puts it in the top 2% of subs [later heard it as top 15%]. Not what I was aiming for, but I shouldn't complain. I think this was my fifth or sixth entry to WotF. I've tended to enter once every four or five quarters since I started subbing in '98, even during my multiyear submission hiatus after my dad died. I'm going to try to enter every quarter this year, since I'm targeting it as my next writing-career milestone.
Continue reading "Twice in the Rain, Two Rejections, 200th Sub, New Play, etc." Filed Under: Acting, Carrboro Area, Journal, Prose and Poetry, Vanity Smurf, Writers of the Future Rejectee/Rejector March 20, 2004 (Selected republication of old entries from the pre-Movable Type journal...) Earlier this month a young writer with a bare website applied for the [now defunct] Procreatives link exchange program and, when membership wasn't approved, sent me an email to ask why, since she was a writer and thought her site was appropriate. "I'm constantly trying to improve my website," she wrote, "so your reason may help me out." The reason was because there just wasn't much on the site, which is one of the reasons listed as a likely reason for rejection. I wrote back: You are correct that, as a writer, your site is appropriate for the exchange in terms of subject. You are just limited in site content and bibliography. After you've had a few things published, please feel free to reapply.And since there was mention about an upcoming book to be published by a vanity press publisher known to prey on new writers, I expressed my concern and spent a few minutes digging up some links for her to read about the publisher. I then recommended that she visit Terry's and Vera's websites (two authors on the exchange), saying she could do worse than follow in their footsteps. There we go. Constructive criticism just as she asked for, right? Helping a young writer out, right? Well, obviously not.
Continue reading "Rejectee/Rejector" Filed Under: Journal, Prose and Poetry, Writers of the Future |
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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. 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 |
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