My break has been highly productive so far. On Wednesday I had two stories out in the cold, cruel world looking for homes. As of Saturday morning, the number has grown to eleven. I’ve also got two stories that need one last round of edits before going out for their first times. This is a record number of stories out at one time for me.

A big reason for this output is a change in market focus. I took some of my stories that are more marginally f/sf and sent them to literary markets just to see what happens. Most of the time I get personalized rejections from the f/sf mags and I’m interested to see how these are received by more mainstream literary mags, i.e. whether I get encouraging rejections from them as well.

Just last Wednesday I went out for drinks after class and one of the undergrads I was with said she was on the verge of sending out her first story but hadn’t yet gotten up the courage. It’s funny how writers build up the moment of “the first submission” in their minds, myself included. The submission process is actually horribly mundane. Everyone dreams of that first sale and instant worldwide recognition of your unalloyed literary genius. But alas, it doesn’t happen that way for most of us, and unless your story is good enough for an editor to buy or so horribly bad that it becomes an office joke, the chances of them remembering your submission is pretty slim. That’s why you just have to get them out there. So I sent a pack of stories to very highly regarded literary mags just to test the waters, expecting nothing but hoping for more than a form rejection to see if they’re at least open to the slightly speculative.

Also, there are tons of decent small literary mags that can help my writing career. My short fiction bibliography will hopefully help me land an agent and/or publisher, but once I finish my degree it will also be crucial to my job search. Selling stories to very small f/sf magazines doesn’t hurt but it’s not a tremendous help to either my pocketbook or career. But selling to small but well-known and respected literary magazines helps my academic career greatly. This means I can shop around some stories to fifteen or twenty quality literary markets. I feel that after six or eight rejections in the f/sf marketplace, a sale isn’t nearly as consequential.

Yet none of this changes what I’m writing. I’m having a great deal of fun writing a story I plan to submit to my grad writing workshop entitled Thief of Hearts, which takes place in the far-future in the city of Sprawling Granada, Spain. There’s no way this one would fly at the literary markets but I’m having a blast writing it and finding out more about this imaginary world. And while I’m not sure it follows all of the unwritten rules for short fiction, I’m having a deliriously fun time plonking the keyboard. I put down 2K words last night and time flew by.

Dog-sitting is going well. I’ll post a picture of Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum later, but I will say putting up with almost two hundred pounds of dog can be challenging, especially when they seem intent upon cruising through the mud left by the rapidly melting snow.

One last thing: if you dig old folk and blues, give Emusic.com a try. It’s affordable and allows you to download music fast and in an unrestricted format, meaning no hassles transferring to CDs, iPods, or between computers. They don’t have anything by the major labels, but they have scads upon scads of wonderful old time musicians. Give ‘em a try as they offer a great trial offer, too.

Current Mood: Fine, Thanks |
Currently Listening To – Charley Patton – “Charley Patton Vol. 1 (1929)”