Morning Read

Some people read the newspaper in the morning, and I should be one of them. I keep telling myself I'll get into the habit, but I never do. I read blogs instead.

This morning I was over at J. A. Konrath's blog and found this timely bit of advise. I've been reading around the place how so many of us writers are pressed for time, lead hectic lives, can't find a sale, etc, etc.

I think JA's comments are very true and we need to be able to let go.

I thought this comment interesting: "Is it time to abandon a piece after ten rejections? Or a hundred rejections? Six months? Three years?"

Lets take for example two pieces of mine that have been doing the rounds. "Too Late the Rain" was written originally back in mid 2007, so it's been around for over a year. It's evolved in that time and on each significant rebirth, it's gone out to market. It has garnered 4 rejections (I think - I don't have my spreadsheet with me to check). Mobile has only been around since the middle of this year - around four months. It has gathered 2 rejections of its own.

When do I lay these stories aside and admit they aren't as good as I think they are?

Is the number of rejections and the time the story has been around have any bearing on it? I send a story via email to market and the slushers/editors take 3 months to get a rejection back to me. I spend a month reworking it and then send it out again. 3 months later I gain another rejection. That's seven months gone already.

I still believe there is a market for everything. The quality of that market ranges from the best to a backwater, I'll accept anything and everything crappy e-zine. I'm hoping to go no lower than respected publications that currently don't pay such as Ripples or Eclecticism, but before I send to these markets, I want to exhaust the possibilities out there.

I run the market hive for AHWA where I maintain 100 markets for dark fiction. There are more out there but these are 50% dark fiction only markets and 50% SpecFic markets that accept dark fiction. Only a dozen or so are non-paying markets and they are only the highly thought of exposure markets.

I think around 60% of these markets would consider anyone of my stories at any given time. A young adult market isn't going to print something like "Too Late the Rain" but it might print "Mobile" - so I guess I keep sending out my work till it gathers 60 or so rejections each.

I should have a skin as tough as metal by then.

Here's hoping we both find homes for our work, sooner rather than later.

BT