Katherine Mankiller

*drops pin*

Has anyone heard from the Indian Country anthology? I queried on the 15th.

I am a dork.

That's why I sometimes get the urge to do Snoopy dances upon receiving rejections. But this was one of the nicest I've ever gotten! I'm definitely moving these folks up in my rotation.

This story is now out to its 22nd market. People say nice things about it, but no one's bought it. Maybe the 22nd time will be the charm.

What the...?

Cory Doctorow writes, over at Boing Boing:

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to fraudulently remove numerous non-infringing works from Scribd, a site that allows the general public to share text files with one another in much the same way that Flickr allows its users to share pictures.

Included in the takedown were: a junior high teacher's bibliography of works that will excite children about reading sf, the back-catalog of a magazine called Ray Gun Revival, books by other authors who have never authorized SFWA to act on their behalf, such as Bruce Sterling, and my own Creative Commons-licensed novel, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom."

I'm not a SFWA member, mainly because I don't yet qualify. But even if I were, they are not authorized to claim copyright of my work in their attempts to serve DMCA notices on my behalf. Just... no.

And I should be writing critiques.

A question from the "feeling stupid" files...

So, hypothetically speaking, you know, I have this friend... Okay, no, I don't have this friend.

Suppose I have this story, and my friend said it sucked last July, and I'd had it critiqued at a writing workshop in September and rewritten it so much that a unix diff on the files leaves me scratching my head and wondering where the untouched parts are and whether they exist, but there is the same premise and the same characters and all.

Is this a new story when I go to submit it?

1. Yes, it's a new story. Submit like the wind!
2. No, it's the same story. You've burned the story at the markets that saw the old version. Sucks to be you.
3. It depends on the editor.

How embarrassed should I be that I don't know the answer to this question?

1. Extremely.
2. A moderate amount.
3. Mildly.
4. Not at all.

If I submit like the wind, should I say something to the markets that saw the previous version? If so, what should I say?

1. It's rude to not mention it. Say something like this.
2. It's a new story. Don't mention it.
3. Tell them it's a "reboot" of the other story.
4. Do something else, which I will detail in comments.

Discuss.

The Year of Getting Serious

My Hollywood Creative Directory is on its way. I received one of my two first script queries back in the mail as undeliverable. D'oh! Short fiction markets are all over the Internet, but this is not the case for the places I want to send scripts. (The online version of the Hollywood Creative Directory is $250 a year. Ulp. Maybe if I start selling or win the lottery.)

I'm running a little behind on the short story a month plan, but not badly. I still think I can crank out nine this year if I try. (No short stories during NaNoWriMo, NaNoEdMo, or Script Frenzy.) I may write a play instead of a short story one month, or for Script Frenzy. Or not, but it's an idea I've been vaguely contemplating for awhile. I just think it would be fun. I've improved the script reporting in my submissions tracker. I'm also not sure how I'm fitting Lizardfic into that plan, but I really need some short fiction. I don't have enough in circulation.

After NaNoEdMo comes Critters for the NaNoWriMo novel, unless I decide I hate it. ;) If I don't hate it, I'll have to do something with it. I've updated my submissions tracker to handle novel queries and submissions. (Fear me! my Geek-Fu is powerful.)

Year in Review

Short stories completed: 1
Scripts completed: 1
Novel first drafts completed: 1
Short stories that somehow morphed into novels-in-progess: 2
Short stories that were pulled from circulation and completely rewritten: 1
Short story submissions: 32
Short story rejections: 28
Short story sales: 1
Short stories in circulation: 3

Lo, I am dissatisfied.

I'll be patient, then...

From Full Unit Hookup's news page, dated 08/26/2006:

My computer crashed this week and unfortunately the FUHU submission log file was corrupted. This disaster doesn't mean I've lost all submissions to FUHU. What it does mean is that I'll have to rebuild the the tracking file I use to record all FUHU submission activity, which means longer response times. (Even though I keep monthly backups of all FUHU files, the submission file can change daily.) Sorry, folks.

Yeah, this sounds like a bad time to query. It also explains why they've had my story 79 days, which is long for them. Darn, and I was hoping it was because they loved me.

Reversing Myself.

Up until this point, I've been very firm in the idea that I should not rewrite old stories. (I'm not sure what the definition of "old" is, in this case, but...)

Well.

I believed quite firmly that "Median Effective Dose" was the single best story I'd ever written when I started sending it out. Rejectomancy, on the other hand, says otherwise; my response times suggest that editors are not particularly tempted by this story, although I'm still getting personalized rejections. I also had a friend tell me that it sucks. ;)

Which is why it's been rewritten and resubmitted to the Critters queue. This breaks two previously firm rules: 1. Never rewrite anything that received a personalized rejection from My Dream Market, and 2. Never rewrite an old story; make room for new stories. I care too much about this story to waste time with rules.

Of course, I'm now wibbling about resubmitting to those markets. Jed Hartman from Strange Horizons has some advice here that makes me feel better about the whole thing. I was trying to decide whether it would be more boorish to query or to just submit with an abject apology for the rewrite, so I feel a lot better.

Rituals

There's this thing I do, when I get a rejection.

1. Enter the rejection in my submission tracker.
2. Report the rejection to Black Holes.
3. If the next market on the list is electronic, email it immediately. If the next market on the list is snailmail, go and print it out. I usually jump in the car and mail it then and there, too.
4. Record the new submission in my submission tracker.

It's like juggling, or some other game where the ball isn't allowed to touch the ground. And it cuts down on wibble time.

Upon Reflection...

I've decided that you give up on a story when it's about Jebi Knight Mary Sue, leading the oppressed rebel army of big business against the forces of evil market restrictions, led by the terrifying Darth Nader.

Short of that, you give up on a story when you run out of markets.

I think we all eye our own work with a hypercritical eye. And this story is at its 15th market. Of all the personalized rejections it's received, some I agree with and some I don't, but I'm not sure what to do about that. I suppose I could rewrite every time I get a personal rejection, but then I'd never have time to write something new.

Ah well. I've already sent it out again, because stories should not be allowed to sit around with their feet up, eating peanuts, drinking beer, and watching the game. They must be forced to work for a living.

A Question.

I have a question, for those of you wiser than I.

When do you give up on a story? Never? When you run out of markets? When you decide it sucks?

I'm considering pulling a story from circulation. I just... feel it's flawed. I wrote it over a year ago and I'm a better writer now. I could rewrite it, but I feel very strongly that I should be writing this year's story and not last year's.

What would you do?

New story in circulation, and badness...

Thanks to the comments of Jen, Margo, and Lisa, the nightmare story is now in circulation under the name "Book of Shadows." W00t!

I went to go record the information on my Treo--yes, yes, I track these things in mysql and php--and lo, my poor Treo gave its life in the recording of my data and died. It was a 180 that I got off ebay 18 months ago, and was old then. Well. It just so happened that my SO had given me a chunk of back rent recently, so I...

...spent part of it on a Sidekick. Oh, baby! It doesn't have internet yet--they said to give it 24-48 hours--but I'm still in nerd heaven! *cue soft violins*

Go ahead. Call me a geek. I can take it. In fact, to record what a dweeb I am, I created a shiny new category to record my amazing feats of dorkosity.

Alas, noble Treo! Your tragic sacrifice was not in vain!

Huh. Go figure.

Apparently the scene reshuffle worked; I got a personalized rejection from Sheila Williams. Oh, the shameless rejectomancy! And yet, I am encouraged beyond all reason.

I have another market lined up, but will probably wait until Monday to send it out, 'cause I'm lazy.

I'm also eyeing the market where I sent another story; I'm within 6 days of their usual turnaround. Hmmmm.

I have asthma. It's been bad lately. But that's boring and tedious and doesn't have anything to do with writing, so that's all I'm going to say about that.

Bad Katherine, No Biscuit.

I got "Corporate Oversight" back almost a week ago and didn't have a new market lined up, so I've been sitting on it. Bad Katherine, no biscuit! Stories should not be allowed to lie around the house with their feet up watching TV and drinking beer and eating up all my food, they should be forced to go out and look for gainful employment. And hopefully get a haircut, too.

This weekend: Find new market for "Corporate Oversight." Ralan's is my friend.

Also, that other market definitely lost my story. I've resubmitted that one.

People keep saying nice things about "Corporate Oversight" when they reject it. Well, except the guy who said that corporations were far too smart and responsible to ever screw up as badly as they did in my story.

More rejectomancy...

Alas, JJA says I didn't "grab" his interest. Woe. Alas, alack, and woe. I took this as a sign to reshuffle the scenes so the opening scene was the one with the blood.

Why, yes, I do feel a bit silly editing my story after getting what is basically a form rejection. But I believe "didn't grab" is a step below "didn't hold," which is in turn a step below "didn't work for me."

I need help. And perhaps more blood. ;) Oy.

Vanity publishing, rejection, and other gibberings.

Teresa Nielson Hayden has a blog entry about a guy selling his unfinished manuscript on ebay. He includes a letter from a "legit company" offering to publish his novel for only $700. I have no idea if this guy can write or not, but I hope he listens to the people on TNH's blog who say they've emailed him. And I really hope he doesn't vanity publish; it doesn't sound like he has $700 to spare.

BTW, articles like this and Slushkiller are why I'm a regular lurker on TNH's blog.

Speaking of Slushkiller (yes, I know she posted that in February)...

There's a comment in the Slushkiller thread by Jo Walton: "Submitting a manuscript is like a combination of applying for a lifechanging job and going down on one knee to propose marriage; when it's rejected after a looooooooooooooooooong wait, I think it's a natural human impulse to want to lash out at the person rejecting, because otherwise they're all alone with the fact that they're not good enough." I just can't let myself go there. I can't. It's not a lifechanging job or a marriage proposal, it's just one magazine looking at a story. I think this is why I don't ever want to quit my day job to write: I don't want that kind of pressure on my writing. It's just a story at one market. No one place is the only place that can buy your story/novel/script. There is always another buyer. It's not final proof that you're not a real writer, it's not proof that your story sucks, it just means that what you sent and the editor didn't click. Or, to quote this post by Max Adams on contests and not making it to the next round,

Well. "The average script" is not very good. You could even, in a black moment, say "the average script" is actually pretty bad. A bad script is going to get cut in the first round. It just will. So anything "average" is out of there right off.

The trick with all this is, advancing means a script has something going for it. But getting cut does not mean the script is bad. It means it got cut.

Scripts get cut for a lot of reasons. Judging is subjective. It is possible in the process of judging 6,000 scripts for a good script to get overlooked or for a script to just hit the wrong reader at the wrong time and if that happens, you are out of there for that round. In a subjective process, that just will happen. Especially when you are dealing with 6,000 scripts in a very short period.

Bottom line, figure, if you advance, that is encouragement, and if you do not, well do not get distraught, it just was not your turn.

For those of you who thought scripts and fiction were completely different markets, well, there are some constants to the writing universe. I try to keep the writing and selling completely separate; I write, and I also have this thing I do where I send stuff I wrote out to markets. The writing is the important, fun part; the selling is just this wacky thing I do.

Apparently, I don't have to change my address for Austin...

I didn't make it into the second round of the screenwriting competition.

Which dampens my faith in that script not even slightly. Dot Com rocks. It's the best movie script ever. It's young, it's hip, it's screamingly funny, and someone should buy it. I have spoken.

In other news, packing is the suck. I just thought I would share that brilliant insight into the human condition with you.

encouraging rejection

From The Life of Charlotte Bronte, by Elizabeth Gaskell:

As a forlorn hope, we tried one publishing house more. Ere long, in a much shorter space than that on which experience had taught him to calculate, there came a letter, which he opened in the dreary anticipation of finding two hard hopeless lines, intimating that "Messrs. Smith and Elder were not disposed to publish the MS.," and, instead, he took out of the envelope a letter of two pages. He read it trembling. It declined, indeed, to publish that tale, for business reasons, but it discussed its merits and demerits, so courteously, so considerately, in a spirit so rational, with a discrimination so enlightened, that this very refusal cheered the author better than a vulgarly-expressed acceptance would have done. It was added, that a work in three volumes would meet with careful attention.

I just received a very encouraging rejection. It included a three-line critique, including a description of what the reader liked and disliked about the story. Yay!

This story also got a "there's some nice writing here" from another editor.

I've been trying to find ways to tell myself that each rejection is a positive sign, that somehow there is evidence that I'm "almost there." Lately I've had the yucky suspicion that I've been deluding myself, but no, today I really, truly feel like I am "almost there."

Thank you, Karen. It means a lot.

Sallya still a captive...

Alas, poor Sallya. ;)

I received a rejection note for her today. On the bright side, this market claims their average turnaround is 25 days, Black Holes gives their average turnaround as being 31 days, my average turnaround for this market is 25 days... and the turnaround was 35 days. Not too shabby!

This brings to mind a dilemma--Sallya's next market. Do I send her to one that sounds like a great match but has a Black Holes turnaround of 216 days, or send her to a market that might work and has a Black Holes turnaround of 76 days?

Ehhh. I'm thinking the 76 day one. :P

Rejectomancy

I'm sitting here trying to decipher hidden meanings out of the quarter-sheet I received from F&SF according to the handy-dandy JJA interpretation guide on the F&SF board. This is why people claim rejectomancy is madness. No, but this way lies madness. ;)

So I'll avoid the long entry about how this is final proof that JJA secretly loves getting my stuff in slush and can't wait until he can finally buy one of my stories. Even though that's exactly what I'm telling myself. ;)

Next market!

Damn!

Color me impressed. Lone Star Stories just rejected my story in 2 hours. A very flattering rejection, mind you.

Must... resubmit... before... bed...

Maybe I'm a sicko...

Is it wrong of me to be amused by a harsh rejection letter? I suppose I wouldn't be submitting humor stories if I couldn't take a joke, but it just seems odd to think this is funny. I mean, aren't I supposed to be crushed?

I can't help it. It's just funny. *snort*

personalized rejection

Well... it includes the comment, "There's some nice writing here, but..." It could be the "more encouraging form" for all I know, but I'll take all the encouragement I can get. :)

Curses! Foiled Again!

I got a lovely mail-merged rejection note from F&SF. I was under the impression most places used preprinted sheets of paper: "Dear writer, thank you for thinking of us but we cannot use this material at this time. --Editor." The body of the letter seems to be a form but it really has my name, address, and the story title in it. Do they do that for all 400-600 submissions a month?

Yes, this is shameless rejectomancy. ;)

I've already sent it out again. *crossing fingers*

And, the script answer is...

No. It's a form no, too.

Dear Katherine,

Thank you for your Dead Zone script submission. Unfortunately, we did not think "Ethos Anthropos Daimon" was right for us at the time, but we wish you luck in your writing career.

Ah well.

On the wishful thinking side, they said it would be 30 days until they got back to me and instead it was 89 days (12.7 weeks), calculated by the date on the letter, not the day I received it (today). (My submissions spreadsheet is a beautiful thing.)

Do I need a "First writing rejection celebration beer"? ;)