I have just posted my 40th submission of 2019 – a 3000-words science fiction story. This being the 28th week of the year, it means I’ve been submitting 1.4285 stories per week. That’s a lot.
And yet I’d like to write more, and submit more.
My current bounce rate is pretty high – of the 40 stories I submitted, I sold 9 and have six still out waiting for an evaluation.
It’s not bad, but there is ample space for improvement.
I have no illusion of ever becoming a 100% sales writer, but it would be nice to sell more.
I’ll work on it.
Tag Archives: story submission
An evening with Mr Shunn
A story bounced back, about one hour before dinner. Polite, cold, standard editor’s mail: good story, not our genre, worth keeping on the lookout for a publisher, good luck.
Oh, well, it happens.
As we dined it started raining again – there’s storms passing across the skies of Astigianistan – so no after-dinner walk tonight.
I sat down and started tweaking that story – it’s been so long I had forgotten a lot of things. I revised it. Cleaned it up.
Cut about 150 words. Nothing major, on an 8000-words number.
Tightened the dialogue a little, made some minor adjustments.
Checked for American vs English spelling.
A story of the non-wanker kind
I just submitted a story for the 20th anniversary issue of Inferno!, the Black Library magazine covering Warhammer 40.000.
After my post yesterday a WH40K-playing friend of mine pointed out to me the open call for the magazine. It was sort of, OK, mister so-superior-to-this-stuff, let’s see if you’re so hot.
The submission requested a one paragraph pitch and a 500-words scene.
I checked the deadline – April the 10th.
And I thought, why not?
The worse that could happen is, I might get a rejection slip and lose two hours of my life. I can live with that. So I wrote a positively non-wanker story set in the WH40K universe, and sent it along. Let’s see what happens.
