"Power", a story I had high hopes for, was just bounced by Interzone. It had previously been bounced by F&SF and Asimovs and it is clearly not in the Analog style. I'll probably try Baen next, but first I'll post the first 13 and see if anyone wants to read it and suggest improvements. (I wrote it shortly before visiting Hatrack River for the first time.)

Beethoven didn't compose great symphonies the first time he sat down at a piano. He kept plunking away. Same with writing. Don't be discouraged. Just keep at it. Odds are, the more your write, the better you'll get.

Oddly, getting married sparked the writer's bug within me again. I attribute it to my wife being a writer, too. She didn't know I had once called myself a writer. Before we started dating, she saw an essay I had written and said, "Wow, you'd make a great writer."

It was love at first compliment

Even after our wedding, it took another five years for me to get into it again.

Thing is, I work best when I know someone will read my work. Even if it is just a friend. If I write something and send it out, and it gets rejected, it feels worthless to me because no ones ever seen it. So critiques help me a lot. Someone's reading it.

For others, that may not be enough. I think each writer has to find what keeps them going. It won't be the same that keeps the writer next door plugging away.

However, I don't think what you're seeing is abnormal. I think lots of writers hit that rejection wall and eventually need a break so their ego can heal a bit.

Another trick that works for me is to remind myself, moments before looking at a critique or rejection, that there will be lots of rejection and criticism. If it happens to be particularly bad, I put it away as quick as I can. Let it simmer in the back of my mind a while. Usually, when I go back to it, I see a light: something they said that is true or makes sense. I try to learn from it and move on.

Lately, this month, there have been days where I just thought I was wasting time trying to write and I should give up and it was stupid, etc. It happens. Usually, next day I was loving writing again. Sometimes it took two or three days. I just hope I get past that, soon.

So when you get rejections, any feedback you can learn from? Or just form letters?

Second, I do my best to see rejection letters as proof that I'm a writer. I can tell people, "Yeah, I'm a writer." And if they say, "What have you gotten published," I can say with confidence, "Nothing, but I have X-amount of rejection letters." The more you have, the more impressive it is. To say you have over 100 rejection letters means that you've been working your ass off. It's proof that you're paying your dues.

Third, once a story is finished, try not to put so much hope in it. Just because you love it doesn't mean that it's any good. Try to distance yourself and say, "I will not judge it."

Fourth, this also goes for editors. EDITORS DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO JUDGE YOUR WORK. Nor do they. You just can't give them the emotional power to do so. If an editor says, "This isn't right for us," then it means that the story, good or bad, isn't right for us. (Though I have to say that I hate the way John Joseph Adams says, 'This tale didn't grab my interest, I'm afraid.' Sorry, but that's almost crossing the line.)

(Just Kidding)

I've decided to wait to submit until a simple majority of crits and comments on something are somewhat positive. At one time that that threshold was 75%. Soon it might be 25%, I'm getting impatient. But that's off topic.

I had a pro sale that I didn't even try for. Heady and flush with that success, I submitted maybe a half dozen times, just a couple stories to a couple markets. They were rejected and I quit. Worked on my novel instead, telling myself that I shouldn't bother trying to do both shorts and a novel at the same time. But I think I was mostly afraid of more rejection.

So, apologies to those who are sick of hearing about this, feel free to talk amongst yourselves. . . .

Okay, still here?

This is exerpted from an essay I wrote for inclusion with my story "Respite" when it is reprinted in an upcoming anthology by Tor:

quote:

---

"Respite" kept me from attending Orson Scott Card's Literary Bootcamp. At the time, I'd only finished one or two short stories and really had no clue what I was doing. Bootcamp would be a great way to light a fire under me, and OSC had been my favorite author since I first discovered him as a young teen. But I needed to come up with a one page writing sample for my application. I recalled a disturbing dream I'd had a few months previous in which I was on a wagon trying to outrun a menace that was about to hatch and devour everything in sight. The dream made such an impression that when I woke from it, I even sketched these creatures and their life cycle--and I can't draw. I wrote only the first page and sent it off, so anxious about the application that I didn't even finish writing the story. Then Scott's assistant, Kathleen Bellamy, called me one morning and said he wanted to read the whole thing. Could I send over the rest so he could read it that night?
"Sure!" I said, trying not to hyperventilate, and a frantic five hours followed. Amazingly, these two characters which began as mist in my mind came to life as soon as my fingers tapped the keyboard. I fell in love with them as I wrote, and I cried at the end. Without time for revisions, I emailed what I had.
The next morning Scott called me in person and told me he wasn't going to let me go to Bootcamp, since in his opinion I didn't need the class, and he wanted to buy the story from me instead, for this new magazine he was starting. Mine was the first story purchased.

---

It all sounds really impressive, and I guess it still is, but to date it's my only sale (though it is being re-printed in the antho, so it's sort of two sales).

The truly great thing that has come from that sale to IGMS though, is that Scott and I still email from time to time (he mentors me a bit), and he wants to read my novel when I finish it. Plus, it gave me the credit I needed to join Codex, a very good online writing group that several other Hatrackers are members of.

It was a truly awesome experience. It's just that it was two years ago, and it's still the highlight of my writing career. I'm hoping to top it eventually .

It all usually comes out at about five hundred words a day, too, when I'm writing. Only rarely---and usually when I'm reaching the end of something---do I gallop ahead in bigger amounts.

It's rarely-if-ever anything in my life that sets it off. I've had a lot of ongoing turmoil at work that doesn't seem to affect my output at the moment---other times, maybe. I used some time where I was "off the clock," and my further employment there was in doubt, to finish up that "last-finished novel" I mentioned. (My previous prolific period ended precisely on September 11th, 2001...the Internet Fan Fiction carried on into the following dry period as well before running out of steam.)

I was once told to put no significance in any rejection or acceptance. I might like to have an acceptance (or, better yet, some money) to balance the rejections, but I'll perservere after that. My first writing goal is getting something published in a paying market. My second writing goal is to get somethine else published.

I see rejections as getting the work out there; at least you're doing something with the stories you write.

I used to get a load of short stories accepted for publication by a small press - about twelve in all, and some poems, until I woke up one day and smelled the coffee. I sent them two stories in for a competition - a number of winning stories would go into an anthology. One was rather quite good, the other was probably the most cliched thing I'd ever written - I wrote it that way deliberatly as a test.

Guess which one they accepted for publication - and had a mention in the press release?

You've got it, the cliched one!

Hence, I sent them no more stories.

Rejections don't put me off writing - a lot of things have done in the last few years, but not that. It makes me want to write even more, even better. I would never give up sending to publishers/agents. I'm going to send off my YA novel at the beginning of August.

That's basically it. If you keep writing when others give up, you'll get better at it until something happens. If you keep working on learning the business and what people want, you might make it. The entire article/interview on his path to publication is on his website. I've found it very inspiring and informative. Here's the address:

I have well over 100 rejection slips and letters. Mostly, these days, I get letters or notes ("Good work but not for us. Let us see your next.") but the Interzone was a form e-mail, after my previous submissions got notes. I just had a thought, though -- isn't there an earthbound issue of Interzone coming up with a different editor? Maybe I'll send Power there.