still collecting those merit badges
Mon 2019-05-27 23:57:00 (in context)
And, more than a month later, another blog post. Hi. Please rest assured that my streak of daily story submissions (for weekday values of "daily") has continued unabated through the radio silence. I am up to 33 submissions and 14 rejections for 2019. In May, that's 20 and 10 respectively. Three rejections came in over this past weekend alone, and a fourth even as I was logging those three. Only 86 rejections to go 'til my goal of 100 for the year!
(Remember, rejection letters are merit badges you earn by submitting manuscripts! That said, so is publication. WHATEVER.)
I'd like to briefly highlight one of the places I recently submitted a story: StarShipSofa, purveyor of fine science fiction for your ears. Over the years they've featured stories by both new and established authors (sometimes very established authors). Their narrators are also top-notch; some of them are extremely well known in film and stage. Recently I had the pleasure of hearing my story "First Breath" narrated on their (at the time) sibling podcast Tales to Terrify; if you listened to that, then you know what a good job the District of Wonders community of podcasts can do. I'd be thrilled to hear something of mine included in the StarShipSofa line-up. Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to listening to SSS's latest offering next time I've got a solo drive or a 20-minute stint in the traction chair at Cafe of Life.
In the course of maintaining my workweek submission streak, I've learned several things:
- More markets accept simultaneous submissions than I'd hitherto realized
- I have more potential reprint submissions than I'd been acutely aware of
- The previous two observations notwithstanding, I desperately need to get more of my stories submission-ready pronto.
I have had mornings when I simply did not know what to submit where, and I finally just threw up my hands and said, "Let's do a search on the Submission Grinder for yet another simsub- and reprint- friendly market I can submit Story X to." It's not very satisfying. It feels like cheating, and it gives me a sneaking submission that I'm using up appropriate markets for Story X rather more quickly than I should. I'd almost rather just get a rejection letter that frees up one of my unpublished stories for exclusive submission somewhere else.
I've got a bunch of stuff ready to revise or soon to be ready, and after that an infinity of new stories I could write. I just need to make sure I take the time every day to do it.
In other news, I'm a smidge late on Friday Fictionettes again. Look for the May 24th release to go out tomorrow. Thankfully, this week belongs to a fifth Friday, when no release is due. So I'll still be able to get an early start on the one for June 7th while also making some strides towards getting caught up on the Fictionette Artifacts for my $5 Patrons.
Thus the workweek begins!