Write One, Sub One

[CharlotteAshley]

Does Beneath Ceaseless Skies tell everyone to "feel free to submit more work in the future", or am I special? Looking for today's silver lining...

 

[N. E. White]

...or am I special?

I hate to be the one to break it to ya...

Yes! You are special!!!

But not because BCS wrote "feel free to submit more work in the future". :/

 

[EllaihMoos]

That's the spirit! Go! Don't lose hope! Everyday is another chance, so don't give up on your dreams. I know through your perseverance, your dream will come true.

 

[CharlotteAshley]

I'm reviving this thread because I'm not sure where else to talk about the daily grind of short story submissions! Is anyone else actively submitting right now?

I have nine (9) stories currently out on submission, and another one being revised to go back out. I got my first-ever rewrite request last night, which is exciting. I know there's still no guarantee they'll buy the story when I revise it, but it's nice to know they're interested enough to see a revised draft. I've managed to rack up a staggering 18 rejections already this year (IT'S ONLY MARCH). C'est la vie, I guess!

I'm running into a market-targeting problem, though. I'm having trouble finding semi or pro markets that want lighter/secondary world stories. Wierd, right? I feel like most of the semi & pro markets out there are either out of my reach (Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Asimov's, Tor.com) or want "dark" stories. I see more and more markets for dark, magical-realist, contemporary stories, but nowhere for fun. Am I crazy? Looking in all the wrong places?

 

[SteveW]

...but nowhere for fun. Am I crazy? Looking in all the wrong places?

I had similar experiences last year when I was looking for markets to submit Dwarves in the boardroom. I found a few pod casts that seemed to welcome "quirky" based on their guidelines but I not to much else.

 

[CharlotteAshley]

I had similar experiences last year when I was looking for markets to submit Dwarves in the boardroom. I found a few pod casts that seemed to welcome "quirky" based on their guidelines but I not to much else.

That's a shorter piece, right? Have you tried Abyss & Apex? Goldfish Grimm? Lakeside Circus?

(If I could get my stories under 4000 words, I feel like I'd have a lot more markets... but no. I am cursed with a 6000-word tongue.)

 

[SteveW]

Hye Charlotte. Ya mine was a shorter piece. under 2k.

I didn't find/try any of those markets, but maybe this would give me an easy out to get my feet wet again. I can give that story a rewrite and then send it back out for another round. I haven't written a drop or been kicked in the crotch yet this year

 

[N. E. White]

My sympathies, Charlotte, but at least this shows you are submitting!

I hadn't until you mentioned it in another thread and I said to myself, darn it, just send it out again. So, I sent out my dragon story - again. I'm sure it will be rejected, but I least I tried.

My problem is worse than yours. My stories often end up in the 10k range and there are still fewer markets for that length - and I'm hunting for the token markets!

As far as trying to find something that will take a fun story rather than a dark story, I'm not sure I can help you there, other than to try some of the non-paying markets. Also, another idea, might your long short be serialized into 1000-word chunks? Maybe you can pitch a serialized short story idea to a weekly or daily ezine?

 

[Igor]

Why is dark not fun?
Igor

 

[CharlotteAshley]

Why is dark not fun?
Igor

I'm sure it could be, but fun is not always dark! Sometimes the hero gets their way and people are happy and lives are saved. I'm a fan of utopian visions, imagining things better than they really are, rather than the inverse.

 

[KatG]

I'm reviving this thread because I'm not sure where else to talk about the daily grind of short story submissions! Is anyone else actively submitting right now?

I have nine (9) stories currently out on submission, and another one being revised to go back out. I got my first-ever rewrite request last night, which is exciting. I know there's still no guarantee they'll buy the story when I revise it, but it's nice to know they're interested enough to see a revised draft. I've managed to rack up a staggering 18 rejections already this year (IT'S ONLY MARCH). C'est la vie, I guess!

I'm running into a market-targeting problem, though. I'm having trouble finding semi or pro markets that want lighter/secondary world stories. Wierd, right? I feel like most of the semi & pro markets out there are either out of my reach (Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Asimov's, Tor.com) or want "dark" stories. I see more and more markets for dark, magical-realist, contemporary stories, but nowhere for fun. Am I crazy? Looking in all the wrong places?

Stephen King, railroad spike for rejection letters -- and he had to pay postage. You're doing great. Now, here are some of the mistakes you are making:

1) Assuming that the big magazines are "out of my reach." No they aren't. They have only a few thousand readers. And though the odds are very long that they'll take a story of yours, you won't actually know if they would until you try it. Even if you submit and get rejected, the great thing is, you can send them another story! The people who win the Hugos, etc. for short fiction aren't always known names, or are known names -- for short fiction which occurred because when they were unknowns they kept submitting to magazines, including the big ones. (Although some award winners come from small magazines and anthologies.) So if they publish stuff like yours, submit it to them. It couldn't hurt.

2) Magic realist stories aren't necessarily dark and often have very comic stuff in them. Magic realism is also a very nebulous definition that can mean different things to the different editors listing it. So if your story is even vaguely in the neighborhood, might as well try.

3) Any general fantasy magazine will take secondary world fantasy stories of nearly any kind. If they don't have a ban on comic stories (and most of them won't, as darkly comic is a beloved thing,) they'll look at it. If you slap the label of satire on a story, it becomes instantly more dark than just a regular comic story.

4) Dark doesn't actually mean no happy endings. It doesn't even mean that they don't want sword and sorcery adventure with lots of quips and close call escapes. It means they would like some bloody battle action in it or, in the case of contemporary fantasy, a guy detective who drinks a lot. Do what Shakespeare did in his comedies -- make one character a moody Eyeore (brooding warrior.) You know, the character in the western who, when someone says "He didn't have it coming," replies, "We all have it coming." That actually counts as dark to a lot of folk. In the case of your current stories, consider where you've actually gotten some dark material. You may not then see the story as dark fantasy, but again, "dark" is a relative term. If you can, get a look at what they are doing, you may see where yours fits. Stay away from the horror mags obviously and the term grimdark (though grimdark is actually really easy to get included in.) (Incidentally, this is why when fans and/or writers starting whining about how the industry doesn't want dark stuff and it doesn't sell, I start giggling hysterically and face palm into my desk.)

5) Basically, don't second guess the editors about how they mean the terms they say, because they could mean anything and sometimes they don't even know till they see it. Just assume your story fits whatever categories they say they'll take. The worst they are going to do is reject you and not remember you after. Yes, yes, they all say study our magazine and don't send us stuff that doesn't fit, but what doesn't fit is very movable, and realistically, if they are publishing, it's worth a shot. So if it's not a theme issue or anthology, send. Also, have you been using sites like Ralan.com? I'm not saying don't tailor at all (see avoiding horror magazines -- although, again....not that hard to qualify; not every horror story has an unhappy ending,) but the reality is that you may be making your net much narrower than it needs to be.


(And speaking of submissions, still openings for Nila's anthology. Steampunk, can be light on steampunky things. World War I era. Come on, we have Downton Abbey fans, surely. Gas masks on dwarves. It writes itself, people.)

 

[CharlotteAshley]

1) Assuming that the big magazines are "out of my reach." No they aren't. They have only a few thousand readers. And though the odds are very long that they'll take a story of yours, you won't actually know if they would until you try it. Even if you submit and get rejected, the great thing is, you can send them another story! The people who win the Hugos, etc. for short fiction aren't always known names, or are known names -- for short fiction which occurred because when they were unknowns they kept submitting to magazines, including the big ones. (Although some award winners come from small magazines and anthologies.) So if they publish stuff like yours, submit it to them. It couldn't hurt.

That's true, and to be honest, I do submit to them all the time - but I don't feel these are realistic submissions. I'm doing a spagetti test, checking to see what sticks... and so far, nothing has stuck. (Except for Tor.com - I am not ready to brave that 6-month turnaround time on something I am not 100% confident in!)

2) Magic realist stories aren't necessarily dark and often have very comic stuff in them. Magic realism is also a very nebulous definition that can mean different things to the different editors listing it. So if your story is even vaguely in the neighborhood, might as well try.

Yes, I know magical realism well. But my stuff tends not to fall in the neighbourhood at all.

3) Any general fantasy magazine will take secondary world fantasy stories of nearly any kind. If they don't have a ban on comic stories (and most of them won't, as darkly comic is a beloved thing,) they'll look at it. If you slap the label of satire on a story, it becomes instantly more dark than just a regular comic story.

Very true! When I posed the secondary world question to Twitter, the editors of Apex & Lightspeed both gushed about how much they'd love to see good secondary world fantasy in their slush piles. I understand there are an awful lot of "My D&D campaign" stories out there - we manage to see them at Lakeside Circus, even though we only take work up to 2500 words - and so what counts as "good" secondary world is probably hard to come by. As I say... spaghetti test: mine obviously doesn't qualify yet. But I think you're overstating how many "general fantasy" magazines there are in general - especially among the semi-pros. I flatter myself that I have a pretty good sense of what these editors like by now. God knows I read almost all of these zines every month. They like - and they request - dark, moody, language-driven, non-committally genre stories.

4) Dark doesn't actually mean no happy endings. It doesn't even mean that they don't want sword and sorcery adventure with lots of quips and close call escapes. It means they would like some bloody battle action in it or, in the case of contemporary fantasy, a guy detective who drinks a lot. Do what Shakespeare did in his comedies -- make one character a moody Eyeore (brooding warrior.) You know, the character in the western who, when someone says "He didn't have it coming," replies, "We all have it coming." That actually counts as dark to a lot of folk. In the case of your current stories, consider where you've actually gotten some dark material. You may not then see the story as dark fantasy, but again, "dark" is a relative term. If you can, get a look at what they are doing, you may see where yours fits. Stay away from the horror mags obviously and the term grimdark (though grimdark is actually really easy to get included in.) (Incidentally, this is why when fans and/or writers starting whining about how the industry doesn't want dark stuff and it doesn't sell, I start giggling hysterically and face palm into my desk.)

Yah, really. They're nuts - dark all the way. Of course, dark doesn't mean gory and full of rape and incest - they might be confusing a reluctance to print inappropriate content with a reluctance to print "dark".

No, I'm thinking Apex, Ideomancer, Shimmer, Shadows & Tall Trees, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, Aghast, Lackington's. I can't make a list of similar length that prefers lighter stuff. ASIM, Abyss & Apex, BCS. Daily SciFi, if you write short. Crossed Genres, maybe, if you hit the theme? Unlikely Story. I am looking for concrete additions to this list.

But yah, obviously reading is what to do. I can say with certainty that I have not seen a lot of what I want to write in any of the semi & pro zines. I loved Electric Velocipede to pieces, but it is closed now... and I love Unlikely Story. After that, I find the majority of what is out there too contemporary, too postmodern, and too bloody angsty for my tastes. And I am more literary-minded than most readers. I find myself wondering where Jenny Fantasy Reader goes for short fiction. You know, the kind of person who DOES want to read their D&D campaign in short form. There MUST be a HUGE market for that!

5) Basically, don't second guess the editors about how they mean the terms they say, because they could mean anything and sometimes they don't even know till they see it. Just assume your story fits whatever categories they say they'll take. The worst they are going to do is reject you and not remember you after. Yes, yes, they all say study our magazine and don't send us stuff that doesn't fit, but what doesn't fit is very movable, and realistically, if they are publishing, it's worth a shot. So if it's not a theme issue or anthology, send. Also, have you been using sites like Ralan.com? I'm not saying don't tailor at all (see avoiding horror magazines -- although, again....not that hard to qualify; not every horror story has an unhappy ending,) but the reality is that you may be making your net much narrower than it needs to be.

I feel like this is good basic advice and not great advanced advice. The most common rejection I get is "this story is not right for us", and they mean it. The last one (Ideomancer) actually tried to provide me with a list of markets they thought I should try (she came up with one closed market to suggest). I suffer from wrong-market-itis, in the words of one of Apex's editors. I am not targeting the right places, and need some insight to aim better, because my writing ain't gonna change.

I use (Submission) Grinder, btw.

(And speaking of submissions, still openings for Nila's anthology. Steampunk, can be light on steampunky things. World War I era. Come on, we have Downton Abbey fans, surely. Gas masks on dwarves. It writes itself, people.)

I know, right??? Yes, I intend to submit - the theme was my idea, after all!

 

[hunt]

Except for Tor.com - I am not ready to brave that 6-month turnaround time

I've only submitted to Tor.com once, and I got the ding on Day #147. Truth is, once it's gone that long you kind of forget about it. If you think you have stuff up their alley, you should definitely submit and just work on having enough stories in circulation to stay active.

 

[hunt]

I'm reviving this thread because I'm not sure where else to talk about the daily grind of short story submissions! Is anyone else actively submitting right now?

Sigh, I had a whole response type out and it got eaten. To recap: it would be great to have an active submission-focused thread.

I've got 3 pieces out for submissions: 2 SF that just started going out, and 1 literary-turns-sort-of-horror that's picked up about 6 rejections (it survived slush at Shimmer, but that's about it in terms of progress).

Then I've got about 5 works in progress, all at different stages ranging from working on first drafts to making final revisions before sending them out.

 

[KatG]

That's true, and to be honest, I do submit to them all the time - but I don't feel these are realistic submissions. I'm doing a spagetti test, checking to see what sticks... and so far, nothing has stuck. (Except for Tor.com - I am not ready to brave that 6-month turnaround time on something I am not 100% confident in!)

Realistic is a relative term. They receive thousands of submissions over the course of a year. They publish, like, 4-12 stories from newbies a year, depending on their schedule. Maybe more for a few online mags. So realistically, your odds are long. So are everybody else's. For pro writers with more credits, it's also long odds -- those pros who bother with the short fiction market at all, because it doesn't pay much anymore (or rather, the rates just didn't go up because magazine circulation went down with the rest of the wholesale market. A lot of the short fiction market now is in individual indie sales or anthologies, not that most anthologies make much money.) So realistically, the odds of you getting a story into any magazine, whether it's Apex or Clarkesworld are about the same -- incredibly long. Like, you will be making lots and lots of submissions long, as you are experiencing. But the thing with the long odds is, they cannot pay off ever unless they are played. So if you are determined to get short fiction in there, it's a long slog of submitting to them.

Yes, I know magical realism well. But my stuff tends not to fall in the neighbourhood at all.

Again, my point is that you would be surprised what you can call magic realism whether it is or not. You might be surprised that someone thinks a story of yours is magic realist even if you don't call it that. It does depend on the story, but the scope is wider than just the general terms of the movement.

Very true! When I posed the secondary world question to Twitter, the editors of Apex & Lightspeed both gushed about how much they'd love to see good secondary world fantasy in their slush piles. I understand there are an awful lot of "My D&D campaign" stories out there - we manage to see them at Lakeside Circus, even though we only take work up to 2500 words - and so what counts as "good" secondary world is probably hard to come by.

It's worth noting here that there are numerous authors who got their start writing D&D campaigns and then turning them into stories and more often novels. Some of the biggest dark folk, particularly. And again, "good" is subjective. What's good to one editor is bad to another. As you discovered, you thought they didn't want the secondary world fiction and several ones gushed, "oh no, we do!" That's very typical. And that's why as much as they are trying to winnow stuff down to what they want when they say, we take this and don't want to see that, it's actually not necessarily the limit of what they will look at. What they look for is a story they like. And they don't know what stories they like. And the things that they think they don't like, they will flip over on in a minute if a story that has them they find they like. Consistency is not the hallmark of fiction magazine editors. So if there's not a specific theme (and sometimes even if there is depending on the theme,) might as well take the shot.

As I say... spaghetti test: mine obviously doesn't qualify yet. But I think you're overstating how many "general fantasy" magazines there are in general - especially among the semi-pros. I flatter myself that I have a pretty good sense of what these editors like by now. God knows I read almost all of these zines every month. They like - and they request - dark, moody, language-driven, non-committally genre stories.

I have no idea how many general fantasy mags there are at any given moment. (Heroic World Quarterly? Might be worth a look.) Ones go out of business and come into business every five seconds. A lot of them are horror, because horror/Goth readers like short fiction -- it's part of an overall sub-culture. Then there are the lit mags -- there are still a lot of those. They are often funded by grants, academia. And yes, those want not "genre" stories, whatever their notion of genre happens to be that month. Because they believe firmly in the content/action/genre/commercial/sells versus language/character/literary/doesn't sell myth. But because they believe in a myth and because they will also toss that myth over immediately if they like something, sometimes you can trick them. After all, post-modern is the idea that there is no truth, or some such (sounds a lot like rehashed existentialism,) so what is dark is not set. And what is genre? What they don't like. What is not committedly genre? Whatever they like.

That's how we got not-fantasy fantasy and not-science fiction science fiction. You know how you do that in books? You switch publishing imprints to general fiction imprints and get a new cover treatment (it helps if you're a guy.) And voila, you are not-genre genre. Jeff Vandermeer is in the middle of this right now by publishing his new series with Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Which is giving him a big marketing push because that's what they do because the literary versus commercial genre meme is bullcrap. It's not how the market works. (Not that FSG doesn't think Vandermeer is a great writer -- they clearly do. But he was still a great writer when he published with Night Shade Books and the big SFF imprints as well. He co-authored a humorous directory of magical diseases. But now, many will pretend that he didn't you see, wasn't "genre" at all, just as they did with Jonathan Lethem. Because that's what some folk are comfortable with and they respond to packaging.)

Obviously, when you are sending in submissions without cover letters, you can't do this. But unless they send you a cease and desist request that you've sent them 47 stories and please stop now, you might as well see if there's one editor who regards your slightly humorous dwarves deal with stubborn goats story as a darkly satiric commentary on our social times. Because they might. It's just that the odds are long. Hence, King's nail in the wall that became a railroad spike of rejection letters.

Yah, really. They're nuts - dark all the way. Of course, dark doesn't mean gory and full of rape and incest - they might be confusing a reluctance to print inappropriate content with a reluctance to print "dark".

They believe people only want happy endings -- why, just look at movies. (No, not that one that was successful with the unhappy ending; those other ones, and Titanic wasn't an unhappy ending either -- she's reunited as a ghost! Hamlet doesn't count! Etc.) And that publishers are only interested in commercial formulas, which means sunny endings and no dark violence or anti-heroes, yadda, yadda, yadda. Or, now people want antiheroes, they might admit, but that only happened recently that people changed, never mind Elric back there in the 1960's corner, etc. Or the entire history of horror fiction. That's why I'm always whining about looking at the whole market, because people don't. They cherry-pick.

(They cherry-pick their own work sometimes. Mike Sullivan doesn't think his stuff is dark. It's got lots of dark in it.)

But yah, obviously reading is what to do. I can say with certainty that I have not seen a lot of what I want to write in any of the semi & pro zines. I loved Electric Velocipede to pieces, but it is closed now... and I love Unlikely Story. After that, I find the majority of what is out there too contemporary, too postmodern, and too bloody angsty for my tastes. And I am more literary-minded than most readers. I find myself wondering where Jenny Fantasy Reader goes for short fiction. You know, the kind of person who DOES want to read their D&D campaign in short form. There MUST be a HUGE market for that!

There might be, but Jenny Fantasy Reader mostly goes to novels. Or anthologies. When the wholesale market collapsed in the 1990's, very few magazines were left standing, in part because a lot of the fan market had already moved over to books, and the bulk of the smaller ones were horror. So that's why you see the trend you see, the lit mags survived off of academia, sort of, and the horror ones, plus a few of the big ones owned by corporations. And the online model has been hard to make work economically so far. There are quite a few anthologies with humor in them, though. And people just start them up. As long as they aren't asking you to pay them, it's a hunt and peck process.

I feel like this is good basic advice and not great advanced advice. The most common rejection I get is "this story is not right for us", and they mean it.

Of course they mean it. Why would they say it if they didn't mean it? You hit a mag that doesn't like your story enough. Not that publication at this time with that story. They read it and it didn't work for what they wanted. This time and maybe all times. But you tried it out.

I'm doing routine cheerleading here, because it's not fun, what you are doing. It wasn't fun even back in the magazines' hey day. I don't have a low down on what magazines are out there. This thread can maybe help with that -- at least info on response times as people submit. SF Signal is pretty good about magazine info as well as books. Ralan.com has been a good volunteer one for awhile now, and it's probably good to use multiple directories if you can because they don't catch everything. (But you know that.) If you are going to tackle the short fiction market, which may be less disposed to your work than the long form market, that's the mountain that you are climbing. But don't let them pen you in too much on opportunities to submit.

If they said, not quite the right market for this in addition to just "not right for us;" if they bothered to suggest other places to go -- they did like the writing. They just weren't wowed. But it tells you something. You are, strange as it may seem, getting somewhere. If the list of magazines that you do feel are aimable ends up small -- if you think Black Gate won't bite because not dark enough, etc., then keep hitting that small list with new stories, and take the other ones and see if you can get them into anthologies, is a possible approach. Remember, editors of magazines are not very market-oriented. These are not people who work in advertising for a living. They are fans, they feel their way by instinct, and while they don't lie exactly, they are not necessarily very clear or defined. Just bear that in mind in dealing with them. Don't cut off possible markets too soon.

 

[Banger]

As always, a very insightful post from Kat.

I often have trouble finding semi-pro or pro markets where for my stories would fit, especially if I'm looking for a market devoted mostly to that genre. Kat's observations match my own experience searching for markets, as there do seem to be plenty of horror markets out there, whereas sword and sorcery is limited to a few like BCS and HFC. I also think there is definitely something to the idea that many markets don't accept certain things except when they do, as I've had acceptances in markets that I really wasn't sure would even be interested in the types of stories I had sent them. I think that's why a lot of markets are somewhat vague in what they are looking for, or advise contributors to read a few issues before submitting. Unfortunately, even then I'm still unclear what they like, and often I end up asking myself: Is it a pro/semi-pro market? Is the response time shortish? Do I meet the word count guidelines? Do they claim to accept fantasy/SF/horror/suspense/othergenremypiececouldplausiblybedescribedas? If so, send it out and see what happens!

I hit a milestone this week by logging my 200th rejection on Duotrope. Mr. King would be proud

 

[KatG]

I hit a milestone this week by logging my 200th rejection on Duotrope. Mr. King would be proud

Congratulations! Now do it again.

 

[CharlotteAshley]

Is that you in the brag box on (Submission) Grinder, hunt?

 

[hunt]

Is that you in the brag box on (Submission) Grinder, hunt?

Ha, that didn't take you long at all. It is indeed me, and it's also my first acceptance. Doesn't scratch my Clarkesworld/Asimov's itch, but it was nice to be able to report a win.

 

[CharlotteAshley]

Ha, that didn't take you long at all. It is indeed me, and it's also my first acceptance. Doesn't scratch my Clarkesworld/Asimov's itch, but it was nice to be able to report a win.

Yay, congratulations! That's fantastic!

Yah, I'm not really a person... I'm a sentient AI more or less imbedded in the dozen or so webpages I've infected. Nothing gets past me. :/