posted
Just wanted to say that I just sent out my 100th story. 100 different stories that were written to try to get published.
That doesn't count around 30 I wrote for a certain contest I can't send anywhere else. But I've done better with those stories... one sold as a HM, one was written well enough to make it but was rejected because they had bought one already. And another was very close.
And it doesn't count a bunch that aren't for prime time and a few others for practice.
I sent this one to Lightspeed so I will be hearing back in no time and it can go out to Asimov's or Analog.
The 99th one is at Universe Annex hopefully being looked at but so far maybe not. Eventually that one may go to Beneath Ceaseless Skies after I change a car into a wagon.
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posted
Been there done that...I'm somewhere around two hundred now...the number is vague 'cause my story-list file scrambled a few years ago and I haven't taken the time to reconstitute it...and also if I finish a draft, or it's substantial-but-unfinished, I'd count it.
Either way...go for the thousand rejections...
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I haven't counted in the last two years but when I stopped I was over 300 rejections, so mostly probably way over 500 now.
I did lose a couple of stories when my hard drive died over a year ago but most were backed up... more than once. I also lost some of my list of stories sent out which I hadn't back up for months.
And I just remembered that number of stories doesn't count maybe five fan fic stories. One was published on a Dray Prescott site... it still might be up even though that was five years ago. Same for a Highlander story. I had two Star Wars universe stories but one I thought about filing the numbers off of was one of those stories lost. And I did a Honor Harrington story.
I did file off the numbers of the Dray Prescott story -- rewriting just enough to make it my own world.
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posted
Oh, yeah...even though they're spread over about a hundred thousand words, for convenience, I counted my Internet Fan Fiction as one opus number on my list---which is the precise point where my records break off. (#190, actually.) It's after that when things get fuzzier...
All the stories I put up on my website are beyond this point...
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posted
Well, that story can now go to Asimov's. Tomorrow night I should take time out of writing and send it. Along with a story to Ideomancer, and Daily SF and a couple of others.
And the 99th story is still at the Universe Annex forum. I may do one more revision and post it there one more time. I'll wait another day to see if I get one more crit. Then it's off to BCS after that one tiny change.
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posted
I'm still a slave to tradition...I sent two out the other day via the mail to print magazines. You've all probably seen some of my rants about e-submission and e-magazines...but, given the state of things in the print world, I'm actively considering submissions elsewhere.
(That step you're all cutting out by sending things out over the Internet? That's my job...)
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I still have three snail mail markets I send out with paper--obviously if they be snail mail. . Of course it could be more since certain markets still give a choice but not all of them do.
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posted
Congratulations, LD! Quite an achievment. I'm very impressed (and envious of your energy and discipline). It is unlikely I'll write half as many in what remains of my lifetime.
Respectfully, Dr. Bob
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I'm a postal clerk...right now I sort the mail for the carriers using a machine. (You wouldn't believe what goes on in there if I told you---besides, it'd be libelous.)
I ain't crazy about Warren Lapine for other reasons, which are also probably libelous...
My three markets are F & SF, Asimov's, and Analog, usually in that order. Right now, I don't think there are any other print markets.
As I've said here and there, getting something in print was my goal when I started---online stuff just doesn't do it for me, though if I want to keep at it and keep sending, I suppose I'll be forced to send to these markets...
(Don't go by me on this, all of you---you do what seems best to you.)
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But how about WotF? I believe they still take snail mail manuscripts.
And I know of a couple not so pro pay markets that take mailed stories. I usually send my shorter stories to them since they pay per story.
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posted
WotF? Another in the "I'm not crazy about" category, relating to deep suspicions about their motives. As for the non-pro markets, been there, done that, not what I'm looking for now.
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posted
Sounds like a shot. As the pro-print market is slowly dying and leaving me, I suppose now is a good a time as any to research and inspect online possibilities. If all else fails, I've still got my website...
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Oh there was another pro market that still takes both but I didn't get to posting it and now can't recall which one it was.
And Robert you might appreciate that my wife always uses the USPS to send her crafts. She has gotten some good help from the clerks at the branch she goes uses. Even though three times in the last two months her package got held up for an extra week somewhere along the way. But overall she has had no problems and will continue to use them.
And I sent out my 101st story, with another ten plus on the list of stories waiting in the pipeline. Most need to be revised, and one set needs to be finished. I've talked about that set on another thread.
Of course I still need to find one western(that makes three) I wrote. It must have been on paper-- on smaller notepaper, that might be in one of two places.
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From what we're told and read in posted memos and see in videos, it's clear that somebody back at HQ knows the future of the USPS lies with parcels and physicality, and they're trying to upgrade the delivery service of all that.
But I sort letters, the dying end of the business, and I'm hoping to hang on doing that for awhile longer, long enough to retire from it and collect from what's said to be our overpaid retirement fund.
Writing might pay off for me, especially when I have all that free time to devote to it, but I stopped holding my breath for that twenty years ago...
*****
I think I've got a story that might be just up this "Buzzymag"'s alley...once it's bounced from where it is now, the last of the Big Three, which I expect to find in my mailbox any day now.
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You may have to send in a request to use snail mail but there a chance to use it with them.
Strange Horizons have a daily diet of stories and they were full up again today by the time I got to it. Drat, might have made it in yesterday but forgot to check in the morning. Next Saturday or Sunday maybe but a lot of work for something that will most probably reject my story. But I can work on one or two of those stories in my pipeline.
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