In a happy twist of fate, I'll still be attending next year, though, as the "significant other" of Steven Savile (who's been asked to speak to the workshoppers). I'm so excited!

Alethea, I sympathize with you on giving up on the contest. I'm sure that if you stuck with it, sooner or later, you would win, so maybe you'll change your mind after attending the workshop. Getting your first story published in any Pro magazine is a great accomplishment.

It can be a bit irritating and perplexing when an author writes what they, and many other readers, know is a good and publishable story, only to have it rejected. I look at the contest as just another market. There's no doubt that it's one of the best paying markets, but it is still just another market.

I wouldn't suggest to anyone to base their entire writing career on one publication or contest like this. Especially since, like Alethea said, it is just one editor's opinion on what gets to finalist or not. In fact, it might even be harder to win in the WOTF contest than to get published in a Pro market magazine like Realms of Fantasy, Asimov's, or Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, because only twelve stories a year win. That's about one tenth of the stories published in a Pro market magazine in the same period. The only advantage to entering in WOTF is that most entrants in WOTF haven't published anything, while the pro market magazines have a lot of established authors submitting.

We had The Talk...you know, the one where she said, "Alethea, if you want to win the contest, win the stupid contest. Otherwise, shut up about it." (I'm not paraphrasing. She was in the middle of her second margarita at the time. That was pretty much exactly what she said.)

She was right, of course. See, I have this big thing about writing stories for me--things that make me happy, and things I would want to read. What the WotF people want to publish, I didn't want to write. And I needed to be okay with that.

So now I am a spokesperson for those folks who--like me--were and are completely devastated every time they get a rejection letter from this contest. It IS a very important contest, and you SHOULD go out there and try to win it in as many quarters as you are eligible...but if you DON'T, it's not the end of the world.

(The world, I might add, that I plan on conquering someday soon.)

[Edit -- and everything luapc said was true -- especially the part about other established writers vying for positions in those major mags. It was nice to hear Harry Turtledove at a con complain about how Shawna had never picked a story of HIS for Realms of Fantasy...and he brought this up on more than one panel we were on. Talk about making a girl feel great.]

Remember, she is looking for ANY reason to toss your story in the first two pages. Your job is to not give her that reason.

IN MY OPINION (and I can't stress that enough), KD likes fairly concise (5-7K is the optimum word count) "boy stories," and skews towards the SF.

Of course there have been and will be exceptions (even KD can't remember why on earth she picked Steven Savile's "Bury My Heart at the Garrick" except for the fact that she just couldn't put it down...I love Steve's writing, but he doesn't fit her mold at all), but you're more likely to make it through the first round if you read through some of the stories she's picked...and then write one.

But regardless of all that -- if you've got something you haven't sent to WotF, SEND IT IN. Throw it against the wall and see if it sticks. What's the worst that can happen? Another crushing rejection letter?

To make matters worse, after weeks of proofing, after I had sent it this week, I pulled it up and happened to noticed the one and only phrase in the story I had single quotes. MS Word had made one of the single quotes a 'smart' quote, despite having a recollection of turning them off. D'OH!

2.) In the UK, they use single quotation marks where in the US we use double. As WotF gets submissions from all over the world, something like that might just go unnoticed.

I have been submitting all SF except one story that was Fantasy. The fantasy one was the only straight rejection, and had magical pennies in it. True, an old idea, but everyone whose ever read it said it was really unique, so you may be right. Old ideas probably shouldn't even be attempted, even if it is a fresh and unique take on it.

The funny thing is, that until I read what you wrote here, I was tempted to try another fantasy story, thinking she might prefer that. I guess I won't now, and will continue to stick to SF.

Thanks for the advice!

The problem isn't single quotes. They are enclosed in double quotes as a character is making a quotation. A throwaway example: "I hear Blob likes to eat Martian lava once its cooled," Super-Amoeba said. "It's in his words, 'Crunchy and lunchy' or something like that."

The problem is that one of the single quotes is slanted (smart quotes) and the other is a normal single quote. I had turned smart quotes off, but evidently it got turned back on. And despite rigorous read throughs and having my wife double check, we both missed it!

This time I decided to write a story without anyone but my wife look at it. Time was a factor, so as an experiment I didn't go through the full crit process, not even the first 13. Of course, if I get a total rejection (aka not quarterfinalist), I'll have learned my lesson.

If it makes anyone here feel any better, of the eight or nine times I submitted to WotF, I only made it to quarterfinalist (not finalist or semifinalist) twice. And every single one of those rejection letters absolutely devastated me.

One of the form rejects was, of course, "Sunday," that sold as-was to RoF. One of the quarterfinalists, "Blood & Water", just won 2nd place in The Harrow's 2006 short story competition. (The other stories haven't sold yet, but give them time.)

Different horses, different courses. I guess I'm just a rare breed, is all. Most unicorns are.

And those of you who do make it to those quarterfinals, don't knock them. I made the mistake of saying something to Kevin J. Anderson about the quality of my short stories obviously being "one step up from crap" and I got smacked for my self-deprecation.

Yes indeedy, folks, it's no small thing to be smacked by a New York Times Bestselling Author.