Friday, November 28, 2008

Idolatry Grows Up

My most rejected piece - Idolatry - has again gone out to market, to the Three Lobed Burning Eye (Don't you just love the magazine's name?).

Including missing a place in the writing competition it was originally targeted at, it has four rejections to it's name. Rewrites this time round has added 25% to the word count so she now comes in at nearly 2500 words.

She has a new ending - different even from what my beta readers have read as I had a flash of inspiration as I was submitting it (honestly, as I was pasting it into the web based submission form, I reread it to check I hadn't missed anything - and then the ending came to me so I rewrote it - probably not the best idea, but we'll see.) She also contains a lot more detail, and quality is in the detail. Fingers crossed.

End of the working week here, and also the last day for assignments to be submitted for the year. I hope all my fellow students in the Advanced Diploma of Arts for Professional Writing (it's a mouthful isn't it?), managed to get everything submitted. I'm a little annoyed I haven't received my last assignment back yet. I sent it a week ago now. The resub had better pass now as time to do another resub has gone. I won't be happy if this costs me more money.

Thinking happy thoughts - it doesn't matter that the assignment hasn't been returned yet as I'm going to pass anyway. There will be no need for any further work this semester.

Speaking of most rejected pieces got me to thinking about my submissions. Most of the stories doing the rounds at the moment have been knocked back two or three times. Idolatry four times. I also found I have had a story knocked back from Weird Tales already this year, so if System Failure does get rejected, it'll be the second from that market this year - I don't feel so out of place with everyone else now. (That's somewhat twisted I think!)

So that's it for now. Tomorrow I will bat in a game of cricket for the first time in 8 months. Please wish me luck - it can't hurt (and I'm going to need more than my fair share).

Good luck with your submissions

BT

3 comments:

  1. I've gotten rejections from Weird Tales (3 times I think) and TLBE once. They are hard markets to break into. I wish you luck.

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  2. I'm at 0 for 2 with Weird Tales, with a third simmering in the slush pile. :) Good luck.

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  3. Four rejections / rewrites prior to acceptance on "Hell hath no Fury" is my record so far.

    Hang in there. I bet you will get it published eventually.

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