keeping stories on the market

gettingby

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I am so bad at this. It seems like the easiest thing to do, but I struggle to keep sending out stories after they have been rejected a few times. Have any of you ever had this problem?

I think my problem is the amount of work I am producing with doing W1S1 weekly. Every week I write a new story and think it is the best thing ever. I am excited for that story to go out, but as the weeks or months go by I feel like my newer stories are so much better. It makes it so I kind of give up on the older ones. Does this happen to any of you?

Right now I have 15 stories out there, but have have twice as many I could send out. Sometimes when I am researching markets for a story I just decide to write a whole new story instead and send that out over an old story. I know I could send them all out, but I don't. Do any of you work this way? How do you stay excited about old stories? And why do you want to keep the old ones out there if you are always producing more works?
 

V1c

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I am one of those who takes the challenge to write one a week who doesn't beleive in sending out THAT story the same week. I beleive in the art of simmering. Then rewriting. Then revising. Then editing. Then proofing. Then starting that over again. I like W1S1 because it gives me a stack of stuff to do the process with. So while I may write one in the week, I also have a stack under each work of ones to edit that week as well (or whatever level it is in the cycle) and submit the ones I feel are polished.

And it's good you think each new story is better, you should grow. So go back to the others and rewrite, revise, edit, proof, and repeat. I generally can get excitement back if I haven't seen something in a while. and if I don't, I let it sit more.
 

Aggy B.

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I tend to take another look at a story every 3-5 rejections or so. Sometimes I revise (or rewrite) and sometimes I don't. There have been a few stories that I've pulled from rotation until I can rewrite because I realized that they WEREN'T as good as they could be. But I've also sold a couple I wasn't confident in so... I may not always be the best judge of my own work.

And one thing I've learned is that cannibalism is a healthy thing when it comes to short stories. Even things that sucked when I first wrote them, have made really fantastic stories when I pulled out the bad parts and completely rewrote/restructured/reimagined the idea. (The Collections Agent was originally a contemporary paranormal short told from the viewpoint of a guy getting his heart repossessed. And it sucked. Then I decided to tell the story from the POV of the collections agent and set it in a steampunk world and it was SOOOO much better.)

So for me, old stories are just stories waiting to be better stories. Or to be sold to smaller/lesser known markets.

However, when I get tired of rejections on a particular story I usually try a really slow market (Tor.com, The New Yorker, etc). And yes, I do get tired of rejections. They can be a huge distraction from writing new stuff (or working on the novel). I also try markets that may be less "appropriate". (I'm still considering sending my "not-zombie" story on a thorough round of the lit mag markets.)

I don't know. I guess I just figure everything I write has some value (either to me or someone else) so I might as well keep trying to find a way to share it with everyone else. I always figure if I want to I could put stuff on my blog for free. It might not be my newest work and therefore not the "best", but that doesn't make it lousy work. So.

Aggy, secretly confident ;)
 

michael_b

So many ideas, never enough time.
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I've learned the by long trial and error that my second version of a story is my best version. Anything beyond that leads to over writing, or too many cuts, neither of which are productive.

No matter how many times you go over a story you will always find something you can change. The big thing is to learn when not to change it.