I am announcing the creation of...
...my website. After years and years of rejection by the markets, I've decided to throw some of my stories up on the Internet (or is it the Web?) for public inspection, where anybody can look at them for free.
Right now it's just a short note and my three most recent stories. I plan on tweaking the whole thing over the next few months...more stories, probably, plus other notes and essays. Right now it's very bare bones.
I'd been thinking about doing it for awhile, and finally threw it together this past week. I wanted it to go up by June 30th, 2008, because it's the thirty-third anniversary of when I made my first serious attempt at writing something for submission to a market. I've privately celebrated it as a holiday of sorts, so what better way to celebrate the slight shift in my career by making this announcement?
I'd post some of my reasons for doing this here, but I'm kinda pressed for time today.
Except one thing: I expect a certain amount of criticism of these stories, of the kind this site routinely provides---but it's not primarily what I'm going for. I figure with the stories up online that somebody might spot them, read them, and maybe enjoy them. I will take what comes...if the link works.
One comment: I'd make the home page more positive. Rather than focus on the fact that the stories didn't sell, and risk driving readers away, why not focus on the themes you're interested in: give readers a reason to read.
Cheers,
Pat
Have yourself a Cigar and drink a glass of Brandy.
RFW2nd
The copy you see there is another "ad-lib"---I wrote it and posted it then and there. I've been working on an essay, which I've mentioned a couple of times---but the thing seemed so disorganized I knew I'd have to let it lie and get back to it.
Probably that'd be even more bitter than what I put---but "bitter" is pretty much how I feel about my relationship with the SF market. It seems I'm at a point in my writing career where it's either move up to publication or move on to something else. I'll see if this satisfies my "something else" requirements. (Being bitter hasn't stopped me from writing---just yesterday I started polishing a story out of my files.)
On "stories that didn't sell"---well, not selling was the primary reason I did this the way I did. (There was more. I'll explain later.) I was sore tempted to list the when-and-where of the rejections I got---but decided against it.
Of course it's a fluid thing. I'll see how it goes. You guys are the first to know about it, but I'll let others in on it as soon as I think of who I want to let in on it.
This is the meta tag from the page header. <META name="generator" content="Trellix Site Builder">
I looked because in the story pages there are text blocks that appeared elongated. I wanted to see why. WYSIWYGs generate unpredictable things sometimes. I found the cause of the conflict. For each block of text that looks odd, the font face tag attribute was broken by a return and numerous spaces in the middle of the font name, <font face="times new [hrt]^^^^^...roman,times" size="3"> resulting in the font attribute being conflicted on page load. ([hrt]^^^^^... indicates a hard return followed by numerous spaces.)
You've done a lot of good and hard work. I'm not criticizing, just I was curious for my own professional reasons. I read the stories because I was curious to read another writer's rejected works.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited July 01, 2008).]
There is no shame in this. Media is shifting. The markets are evolving drastically. Online publication is the future, regardless of what anyone says.
My "hard work" was "copy" and then "paste." That was the easy part---I was expecting a more sophisticated upload and download kind of thing. I'd prepared some HMTL files, but just used them for copying. I regret all my paragraphination disappeared, but I got used to that during my Internet Fan Fiction period.
I did set the typeface at Times New Roman twelve-point---some of you may recall the lengthy arguments I've had here and there about whether or not it's acceptable to send this to an editor. I think that discussion was the final straw---what made me decide to put the stuff online in this way.
(I say "I set..." but I don't know how it looks when it comes out at somebody else's end. I hope it's readable.)
Can't wait to read them at home..
p.s. I second everyone about you being more positive about your writing. Present it as an opportunity to view your writing, and give a hint as to what kind of stuff the writing is.