The W1S1 Check-in and Chill Lounge and Bar

JJ Litke said:

I'm at seven days out with LS (got in a sub first thing when they opened). I'm having lovely fantasies today that someone there is hanging on to my story and considering it. Though I pretty much expect those fantasies to be squashed flat by the end of today. But it really is a good story and they should take it.

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Awesome, JJ! Good luck!

Finished a story, did some resubs, and now I'm up to 14 out. Hoping to write another and sub it by this time next week.

14 out? I'm in awe. My nerves are wrecked with two out at the same time.

I have two out, but it looks like both have fallen into the black hole of no reply = not interested. At the moment I have only one unsold story (a non-genre humourous short-short) other than crappy ones from the last century: having a collection published cleaned me out. Two others are complete in draft but I'm not entirely satisfied with them, another in my sig is halfway through a first draft and I have the start of another.

I did set myself a New Year Resolution to complete six new ones this year and the one in the sig, when finished, will be #3.

Three out now. Time to start back on the longer fiction.

July sub sent out, two days late but who's counting!

Weird question for short story writers:

When you get an acceptance for a short story, how long do you wait before subbing something else to that market? Send right away? Or wait until your accepted story is published (which could be months)? Curious if there's some standard etiquette for this.

I know when something is rejected nicely (as in a personal rejection) I tend to send something else to that market straightaway, so they don't forget me. If I can find something that I think fits, that is.

No idea of acceptances, given that I'm rather lacking in that area

I'm sure I've seen something in at least one market's submission guidelines about that, though I don't recall which market or what exactly the time period was. And I have no idea if there's a general standard.

As far as I know there isn't and it should be fine to submit something else to that market as soon as you can. Depending on how often that magazine publishes and how big their inventory is, you could be waiting a while for the story to appear. One of the two I sold to F & SF in the 1990s took three years to appear. Other stories to other magazines were in print within two or three months.

But in short, if you've sold to someone once they would like to see something from you again. Even if they don't take that second story, you've shown that you can write something they like well enough to publish.

If you are particularly prolific and good, it might be an issue because the magazine won't want to publish you more than once in a particular issue. One editor (of a respected small-press magazine, not publishing any more) said once that she received about six stories from the same author, who was also appearing a lot at the time in other magazines. She said she loved all six stories but told the author she could only take one or maybe two as she couldn't publish only his stories - her magazine wasn't huge in size and was only quarterly, after all.

That said, if a market does have a policy on this they should say something in their guidelines.

I'm falling behind on my two stories a month goal. I've got a couple of ideas I could write, but they aren't very strong. So do I push to write a story I may not think is worth submitting, or do I try to come up with better ideas instead?

I guess I know the answer is to just write the damn story and see if I can make it better. But it's hard to muster a lot of enthusiasm for that.

How do you deal with mediocre ideas?

ETA: apparently all I have to do to nullify a complaint is post it on AW, because I just got hit with a potentially cool idea. But it still would be nice to hear how anyone else copes with trying to develop ideas into solid stories.

JJ Litke said:

I'm falling behind on my two stories a month goal. I've got a couple of ideas I could write, but they aren't very strong. So do I push to write a story I may not think is worth submitting, or do I try to come up with better ideas instead?

I guess I know the answer is to just write the damn story and see if I can make it better. But it's hard to muster a lot of enthusiasm for that.

How do you deal with mediocre ideas?

ETA: apparently all I have to do to nullify a complaint is post it on AW, because I just got hit with a potentially cool idea.

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This exact problem was on my mind earlier today. I think the answer is to write, enthusiastic or not, then trunk it for a few weeks. When I reread, it's almost like I'm bouncing ideas off someone else and I get excited about things I didn't notice while initially writing.

shortstorymachinist said:

This exact problem was on my mind earlier today. I think the answer is to write, enthusiastic or not, then trunk it for a few weeks. When I reread, it's almost like I'm bouncing ideas off someone else and I get excited about things I didn't notice while initially writing.

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And you know, I knew that was the right answer, but I wanted the reality check. There's too much negative influence going on around me lately, not the least of which is my daughter having huge stress at work and worrying about her job (let's see if the AW magic works on that one). I find it so much harder to get lost in a story when I'm covered in stress.

JJ Litke said:

And you know, I knew that was the right answer, but I wanted the reality check. There's too much negative influence going on around me lately, not the least of which is my daughter having huge stress at work and worrying about her job (let's see if the AW magic works on that one). I find it so much harder to get lost in a story when I'm covered in stress.

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As far as I'm concerned AW magic is like duct tape. Or WD-40. Works on everything. Hang in there!

JJ Litke said:

How do you deal with mediocre ideas?

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I have a whole notebook of them that I read through every once in awhile and see if I can combine or tweak or mix-and-match and come up with something that is exciting. Sometimes if I'm really stuck, I'll jot down some ideas right before bed so my subconscious can work on it while I'm asleep

WendyN said:

I have a whole notebook of them that I read through every once in awhile and see if I can combine or tweak or mix-and-match and come up with something that is exciting. Sometimes if I'm really stuck, I'll jot down some ideas right before bed so my subconscious can work on it while I'm asleep

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I do like mulling stories over while I'm not-sleeping. But I haven't tried making notes right before going to bed, that's a good idea. It'll get it set in my head better that way.

Completed a story yesterday and sent it out. I'm up to 14 currently in various stages of slushiness. And I've got a couple good ideas for the next one I want to write.

In the immediate future, though, I need to start working on some tweets. Specifically the ones I'll be tweeting during #PitMad (a novel pitch session) in 2 weeks. Also want to get cracking on the 2nd novel as well--finally worked out the plot issues and am ready to start writing.

ACFantasy said:

Completed a story yesterday and sent it out. I'm up to 14 currently in various stages of slushiness. And I've got a couple good ideas for the next one I want to write.

In the immediate future, though, I need to start working on some tweets. Specifically the ones I'll be tweeting during #PitMad (a novel pitch session) in 2 weeks. Also want to get cracking on the 2nd novel as well--finally worked out the plot issues and am ready to start writing.

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Yowza, 14? That's impressive, I'm almost up to 2, haha.

Okay, so I totally forgot that this was on my to-do list after I got back from vacation, but I've opened up Horror Tree to see if any of the places looking for submissions spark any ideas. And the first thing that caught my eye was a place looking for horror novellas. I had one "short story" once upon a time that I expected to come in at about 10k, which is exactly their minimum word count. So I think I'll take a couple weeks and finish that one up. Still working on ideas for short stories, but at least one of my trunked idea seeds is nudging me in response to one of the places looking for submissions. (Nice thing about being me: I have literally hundreds of idea seeds scattered around, and if I see a place looking for something I can tweak one or two of them into a proper short. Sucky thing about being me: I tend to plan things to death instead of just diving in and writing them.) Actually, I'm thinking about turning a trunked novel or two into a short and subbing them like crazy...

Oh, also, this term I'm playing a fun game called "How much stress can I put on myself before I actually die?" I'm taking five classes, working two jobs (more like a job and a half because one of them I pick my own hours), attempting W1/S1, working on getting one novel query-ready and another one drafted, and trying to write a half-dozen fanfiction pieces that I set aside last term. (I love writing fanfiction, it gets me instant feedback that's helpful no matter what I'm writing, and I give myself deadlines that give me good practice in meeting them.) Oh, and attempting to run an Etsy-based jewelry business. That too.

Got a partial request on my novel the other day. That was pretty exciting.

Other than that, not much new on the writing front. Wrapping up a short story that I aim to submit in a few days, and also working on the tweets I'll be using during PitMad, a novel pitching session on twitter.

About 2k words from the end of my first short, which will probably need substantial revisions because it's supposed to be horror but it's not scary. :/ Oh well. Next week will be another horror short, a rewrite of something I did years ago.

zanzjan said:

Remember to sleep, and eat decently healthy food.

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What's sleep?

No, I'm kidding. I get like nine hours a night and everything else just has to be squeezed in around it. As for food, I'm eating... enough... Pop-Tarts count as dinner, right?

Thanks, Zanzjan! Really hopeful this'll work out.

Oh, boy. I'm up to the point where I need to start submitting for my goal and it's stressful.