Sometimes it seems as if the laws of weirdness stack up to create the illusion of the unlucky — or, dare I say it, the cursed. I’ve got a story that just doesn’t seem to have even the normal, ‘getting rejected every three or four months’ kind of bad luck that at least keeps a thing in circulation. No, this cursed story is two years old and has only seen three markets:
In September and October of ’06 I wrote ‘The Dogs of the Desert’ to specifically target an anthology called Guzzolene, a collection of stories paying homage to the spirit of The Road Warrior. The story is fairly brutal, hopefully a little unexpected, and a lot of fun spread out over 8k words. It’s accepted, but the market folds. The market comes back . . . and folds again, along with the whole press.
Where to send it next? Not a lot of markets fit, it’s too long, and it’s post-apocalyptic action SF. I send it to Apex Digest in February of ’07 as my dream candidate and wait for the inevitable quick rejection so I can get it back out there again. But as the months slide by I hear nothing, and assume it must be the object of much scrutiny and appreciation — or at least at the bottom of a very large slush pile. When Apex temporally closes to subs I keep waiting, figuring they’ll clear the backlog and I’ll hear something. I don’t. Finally I query after nine months, and it turns out they lost it.
Now, that’s not normal for them, I’ve had quick turn arounds with every other sub I’ve sent them. And their Editor-in-Chief was good enough to look at ‘Dogs’ right away after my query . . . and reject it, of course, just as I pretty much assumed they would nine months previously.
So then I sent it, in December of last year, to Brutarian, with basically the same idea — a long shot at a highly desirable market, with me figuring a decent turn around time will have me shopping the piece around in a few months time again, anyway. I wait a while, and a while longer, getting pretty jazzed as the months go by, imagining, hey, maybe the guys at Brutarian are giving my little doggies some serious thought! I finally queried in September ’08 and got a prompt response — if I haven’t heard anything by now, they didn’t get the sub.
So, wow, right? I mean, really, that’s two markets in a row and over a year of ‘dead time’ for ‘Dogs,’ only to find out my story was lost. Twice. In a row.
Now, I find this more amusing than frustrating, and I’ll tell you why and maybe someone out there with even less experience than me might even learn something from it:
Know what markets want — as I said, Apex and Brutarian were long shots, and ‘Dogs’ isn’t exactly a swell fit for 99% of what’s out there. Knowing that there weren’t a lot of places to send ‘Dogs’ meant that it didn’t really matter if it got lost — there weren’t many markets to send it to anyway.
A corollary to this rule is, if you plan to write a targeted sub to a themed anthology, think long and hard about where it goes if (read: when) it’s rejected or the anthology folds. If having 8k+ of Road Warrior inspired short fiction collecting dust on your hard drive bothers you, then don’t even write the story if you don’t think you can sell a piece to another market once your first option evaporates. Me, I had fun writing ‘Dogs,’ and that’s all that mattered for that particular story, but I don’t necessarily recommend making a habit of it.
Have lots of irons in the fire — If I had made the beginner’s mistake of sitting on a handful of stories back when I first started submitting short fiction, having ‘Dogs’ out of commission for fifteen months with nothing to show for it would have really, really stung. Instead I kept writing and submitting to markets. ‘Dogs’ is now one story of forty or so, and represents a whole lot less of my output then it did back when it was the third thing I ever wrote. Quantity is crucial to short fiction in so many ways, the odds of acceptance increase with each finished piece, the more you spread your stuff around, the more contacts you will make with editors and other writers. Psychologically this shields you from failure and boredom as the inevitable rejections, losses, and miscues come your way. Finally and most importantly, keeping the writing-submitting wheel turning builds discipline and craft.
Save you’re imagination for the stories and query! — After about ten rejections things became ‘business as usual,’ for me, I no longer imagined every submission was a sale. But that’s not the only area where a writer’s imagination can get the better of them as, when confronted with the blank wall of waiting for a submission, the writerly mind naturally supplies a bit of color and structure — despite the lack of any basis for speculation as to the submission’s true status. The imagination can go wild with this. Did the market you just submitted to close to subs? Must be clearing the backlog, wait till they reopen before you bother them. They reopened and sent you no word? They must really like your story, you can just see them throwing out some other poor bum’s short in order to shoehorn your 10k opus into the Christmas Double Issue. Did the editor mention in his blog how impressed he was with his recent crop of slush? — surely that means he had your piece uppermost in mind. . .
The truth is, there is no reading between the lines here. Even if you receive an email stating your submission was received, you’d have no idea if it was erased accidentally the next day. The only real information you have to go on when playing the waiting game is a response from the editors, and that means if you hear nothing past a reasonable waiting period you need to query. Some markets tell you how long they usually take, some have decent statistics at Duotrope that reflect return time, and sometimes you can ask around and get a somewhat accurate idea. One thing you shouldn’t do is assume anything about your sub, or worry that a polite query after a decent interval is going to irritate anyone but a curmudgeon (though don’t ever be surprised if you do encounter a curmudgeon, just don’t curmudgeon back).
Oh yea, and anybody know where to send an 8,400 word homage to The Road Warrior?
