**The Writer’s Toolbox series are resources I’ve found that have helped me in developing my writing and my writing career. I hope you will find… Read More »Writer’s Toolbox: All I Need To Write by Grant Snider
While falling down the black hole of the internet not long ago, I stumbled upon the illuminating blog of L. Lambert Lawson. He’s a speculative… Read More »Write 1 Submit 1
I can’t believe another year (+ another month) has passed. I think this same exact fact every year. Yet, even though I know I’ll think… Read More »Happy (Belated) New Years!
**The Writer’s Toolbox series are resources I’ve found that have helped me in developing my writing and my writing career. I hope you will find them as useful as I do. All copyright is retained by the original writer.
Original article found here.
Ask most fiction editors how to avoid rejection, and you’ll hear the same thing: Read the guidelines. Review the publication. Don’t send a science fiction story to a literary magazine, and vice versa. Don’t send a 10,000-word manuscript to a magazine that never publishes anything longer than 5,000 words. Spell check. Proofread. Check your grammar. Format your manuscript correctly. Be professional. Failure to observe these basics, many editors say, accounts for more than 80% of all short fiction rejections.
But what if you’ve done all that, and your stories are still coming back with polite, form rejection letters? I asked nearly 50 fiction editors — from traditional literary publications to flash fiction ezines — what types of problems resulted in the other 20% of rejections. These are the problems that plague stories that meet all the basic requirements, but still don’t quite "make the grade."
Read More »Writers Toolbox: 5 Fiction Mistakes that Spell Rejection by Moira Allen
It’s been a while since my last update. I’ve been travelling abroad, and trying to find little moments here and there to work on my… Read More »Siren’s Call Anthology
A couple weeks ago, I attended the LA Times Book Fair, in large part because I’d read Orson Scott Card was going to be speaking there. My husband and sister joined me, both also big fans of Mr. Card and his books. We splurged on reserved tickets. Ok, the tickets cost only $3 total, but, hey, every dollar counts in my very limited budget right now. We waited a half hour with those reserved tickets to get into the event "A Conversation with Orson Scott Card."
Mr. Card was, no other word for it, hilarious, along with his interviewer, and close friend/collaborator, Aaron Johnstone. That hour flew by and it was our unanimous consensus that we could have probably listened to him talk for the rest of the day, or as long as our empty stomachs would’ve allowed. Immediately after the Conversation, we ran, dodging people left and right, squeezing into every opening we spotted, to arrive at his signing, only to realize we would end up burning in the hot sun at the very back of a very long line. But, we waited, our fortitude strengthened by the victuals my husband kindly procured for us at the nearby Carl’s Jr. And waited. And waited with barely-suppressed relief when we finally reached the shade of a large stand of trees, giving thanks to the genius minds behind sunscreen. And waited some more, praying we would reach Mr. Card in time. When asked, none of the volunteers could give us a clear answer as to our chances for meeting Mr. Card, only making vague noises of doubt and leaving it into our hands whether we wanted to abandon our pursuit for another avenue. An hour into waiting, and only twenty or so people away, we were told abruptly that Mr. Card would be leaving to sign somewhere else and would we kindly leave the vicinity. Immediately.
Though I fancy myself progressive and modern in many ways, a few superstitions linger despite my best efforts, one of them being that I try… Read More »Still Point Arts Quarterly
It’s interesting the sheer diversity of people thrown together for a certain period of time on a train, so many lives all briefly travelling in… Read More »Know Your Ending
There are both easy and hard aspects to being a budding writer. Writing, itself, is easy because it is as natural to me as the regular inflation and deflation of my lungs. It is simply me taking bits and pieces of my self (my mind, my heart, my experiences, my hopes, my desires, my philosophy, my fears) and blending it through the lens of stories, both real and imagined, before pouring it out for public consumption.
Which leads me to the hardest part of writing: the rejection.
Rejection in more objective disciplines such as engineering or accounting tends to be straightforward. There is a right answer or a wrong one, it works or it doesn’t, the figures balance or they don’t. If there is a problem, one can figure out a solution, fix it, move on.
Rejection in a more subjective field such as art, music, dance, or writing is so different, and, for me, exponentially more devastating. Why? Because it is more personal. Each story I write contains so much of me in it, that I feel, whether this is logical or not, that they are rejecting me personally.
Looking back on the last year, I accomplished so much less and so much more than I anticipated. I learned about the frailties of the… Read More »And So Another Year Begins