All three of these stories were completed prior to the first sale and in fact, in this case they had all been submitted prior to the first sale meaning that I did *not* mention them in the cover letters for the other two.

At the moment, I still have 13...grrr....no 12 (I literally just got another rejection via e-mail.) stories out there. They are of varying lengths and topics and at this time, 3 are at pro markets while the other 9 have (for one reason or another) been sent out to semi-pro mags.

And now, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you for those who don't have short fiction sales and want some. There are two things that are true here: First, I have not sold my favorite short stories yet. Second, I have not sold to well-paying markets (although I refuse to submit to free markets...I will get paid). I tell you the latter because as excited as I am that I'm getting stories published, I've adjusted my goal according to my recent success. (Got to keep climbing that ladder) Now I've got an eye to my first professional or even high paying nearly professional market. These are correspondingly harder to sell to.

But if you want to sell a short story, the secret is to write them. Honestly, quantity counts more than quality in the short story market. Well, let's take a step back. The rejection I received just a few minutes ago says:

quote:

---

Christine,

This was very well written, especially the stylized treatment of the
narcoleptic lapses. Unfortunately, I'm going to pass on it; the ending
just felt a little too familiar. There are a lot of stories out there
that end with some variation of "it was just a dream/coma/delusion" and
the sheer numbers of them make it hard to accept any of this type but
the most surprising and exceptional. I wish you luck with this story
and truly hope you'll send me more of your writing next reading period.

All Best,

Lon Prater

---

I almost never receive a rejection, even from professional markets, that don't say "well written but..." this is one of the buts. I guarantee, though, that editors don't invite you to resubmit to their markets unless they mean it. They see too much crap to want to encourage it.

So....when your writing starts to receive such feedback you're quality is just high enough that it's time to bring sheer quantity into play.

Write a story a week. Read through it once for errors. Submit it to the highest paying market first. Repeat. This is a formula I heard once that guarantees your first publication in a year. I didn't do it that way, but I know that jpeople do and it will work on two levels:

1. Quantity
2. Your quality either will improve by your fifty-second story or you were never meant to be a writer.

Now, if you actually want to use this method to improve I would recommend submitting some of these stories to critique groups BUT I would not recommend doing any major changes or rewrites to the stories you send them. Move on and use the knowledge for bigger and better things. Ideas are too cheap to linger on one for the rest of your life.

I finally realized that the same thing was at least partly true of novels. I was considering spending another year on the one I just finished and am now doing last-round edits on. I already spent a year on it. I decided I was nuts. Why? Because even if this concept could be better it won't be for me. The next novel can be better. I will, at least, be starting *fresher* and that's important.

BTW, I also have 9 graveyard stories. These are stories that I did send out but gave up on, a few probably too soon. I keep thinking I need to work on them but I won't. They're old news, dead and gone. One of them has a publisher interested in a rewrite and that's the only one I'll probably work on.

Oh, and I don't write a short story a week. I'm a novel writer at heart. Short stories, for me, are more for practice and for the hope (recently realized) that I could get published sooner than ten years from now.

That was a long and complicated answer to a simple question, wasn't it?

edit: P.s. I did say undeniably... I built in a backdoor for my argument! hehe

I made a New Year's resolution to write a first draft every two weeks this year. I'm just finishing up the second story, which has taken me over four weeks. But with the limited time I have for writing, and the speed that I write, that is the best I can do right now. So quantity is good, but don't be disappointed if you can't produce as fast as others.

And now, as you send out stories with the previous publication credits in the cover letters, maybe you can let me know how that affects your market success statistically. If you don't mind, that is.