Well, I took the plunge and submitted a story to the Writer’s of the Future contest. Wish me luck. I have no idea if they’ll like it, but it’s on the longer side and good old science fiction, so maybe it’s to their taste. It’s my first time. Meep.
In other news, I got yet another rejection in the flavor of “we liked X about this, but it’s not right for us/we can’t use it at this time, submit more”. I feel so near the top, yet in the end it’s functionally the same as being at the bottom. No sales. Grr. Argh. Oh well, head down and sending that story out again.
I’ve been on a very strange sleeping every other day sort of schedule lately for no good reason, so writing has been really sporadic. I think I might abandon writing cohesive whole chapters for the next couple weeks (we’re packing and moving) and work on editing and writing some more short stories. I’ve been reading lots of award winning stories lately trying to pick out what makes them tick/win. I think I’m going to try to get out of my comfort zone and write a few stories using elements I don’t tend to gravitate to, like specifically happy endings and linear, clear plots. I don’t know. I have some ideas.
Meanwhile I’m trying to avoid reading Clarion West blogs because man, that’s depressing. I’ve got over half a year to get some stories to the point that I’ll have a chance. Of course, the story I submitted last year is still one of my all time favorites, so clearly I’m no kind of judge of my own work. That story has since garnered a near-sale and a few nice comments on rejections, so it can’t be totally bad. Once it gets back from the latest submission place I might post it in the JBU slush and let the grinder that are those commenters take a stab at it. Or maybe it’ll get bought, finally. We’ll see. So yeah, NOT thinking about Clarion West 4 hours to the north for the next few weeks. Nope. Not at all.
