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sinanjuI haven't written anything today. Well, okay, a couple hundred words, maybe, as I edited "Bound by Convention" before submitting it to a publisher a few minutes ago. I've mostly been doing the nuts n' bolts part of writing today.
I line edited "Bound by Convention"--I read it aloud to myself, thereby catching a number of typos and brainos and missed words, which I corrected. I changed a few lines here and there to clarify something or to tighten it up a bit. Then I wrote an email "cover letter" which included a two paragraph "blurb" for the story, as required by the publisher. Then I sent it off.
I sent it to the same publisher who just bought "Flying High" since it's a sequel of sorts. Same characters, same sort of story, but you don't need to read one to understand the other. I could have sent it off a couple of days ago, but I wasn't sure about doing so. But I wrote to the editor who accepted my first story to ask about additional submissions to them. For all I knew, they wouldn't want to look at another until the first one was done. She wrote back to say that they have a policy of not publishing more than one piece by a given author in any particular month--but otherwise, they're always happy to look at submissions. In fact, she told me I should add "in-house submission" to the subject line of any future stories I send them.
Hurrah! Doesn't mean they'll accept any given story, of course, but they're definitely more interested in additional work from people they've bought from before. Not a big surprise, I suppose--who doesn't want to work with known quantities? But still, nice to know.
On the other hand, I got a rejection email today as well. "Clean Up Detail" was rejected by a second market, albeit with a nice response:
"Thank you for submitting "Clean Up Detail" to [MAGAZINE]. It was well received here, but after some thought we have decided not to accept it for publication.
I hope you'll consider us again, and I wish you the best success in placing this story elsewhere."
I'm not entirely sure what "well received...but rejected" means, exactly. That they liked the idea but not the execution? But in any case, they wrote the magic words--"I hope you'll consider us again" as opposed to "never darken our doorway again"--so I will engage in the ancient art of Rejectomancy and assume that I'm hitting close to the target.
I've also already sent "Clean Up Detail" out to a third market. Go me!
And having seen a post on livejournal from someone who lost a lot of his (her?--I forget who exactly it was) correspondence due to computer issues, I reviewed my backup procedures and discovered a big hole.
I use Jungledisk to back up all the crucial files on my PC nightly to an offsite server. It's a cheap (less than a dollar a month) service, the files are saved elsewhere. I rest easier knowing that barring major disaster that takes out both MY computer AND the Amazon servers, my files are safe.
But I realized that ALL of my emails are saved in my Gmail account. If, god forbid, something happened to them, I'd be hosed. So I downloaded all my saved emails to Thunderbird here on my PC and added the mail folders to my nightly Jungledisk backup. I ran a very special one-time only immediate backup to make sure they were tucked safely away. I feel better now.
Words Written Today: None
Words Written YTD (since May 1): 90,633 - NINETY THOUSAND PLUS!
Stories in Circulation: 8
Rejections: 5
Stories Accepted: ONE!
I line edited "Bound by Convention"--I read it aloud to myself, thereby catching a number of typos and brainos and missed words, which I corrected. I changed a few lines here and there to clarify something or to tighten it up a bit. Then I wrote an email "cover letter" which included a two paragraph "blurb" for the story, as required by the publisher. Then I sent it off.
I sent it to the same publisher who just bought "Flying High" since it's a sequel of sorts. Same characters, same sort of story, but you don't need to read one to understand the other. I could have sent it off a couple of days ago, but I wasn't sure about doing so. But I wrote to the editor who accepted my first story to ask about additional submissions to them. For all I knew, they wouldn't want to look at another until the first one was done. She wrote back to say that they have a policy of not publishing more than one piece by a given author in any particular month--but otherwise, they're always happy to look at submissions. In fact, she told me I should add "in-house submission" to the subject line of any future stories I send them.
Hurrah! Doesn't mean they'll accept any given story, of course, but they're definitely more interested in additional work from people they've bought from before. Not a big surprise, I suppose--who doesn't want to work with known quantities? But still, nice to know.
On the other hand, I got a rejection email today as well. "Clean Up Detail" was rejected by a second market, albeit with a nice response:
"Thank you for submitting "Clean Up Detail" to [MAGAZINE]. It was well received here, but after some thought we have decided not to accept it for publication.
I hope you'll consider us again, and I wish you the best success in placing this story elsewhere."
I'm not entirely sure what "well received...but rejected" means, exactly. That they liked the idea but not the execution? But in any case, they wrote the magic words--"I hope you'll consider us again" as opposed to "never darken our doorway again"--so I will engage in the ancient art of Rejectomancy and assume that I'm hitting close to the target.
I've also already sent "Clean Up Detail" out to a third market. Go me!
And having seen a post on livejournal from someone who lost a lot of his (her?--I forget who exactly it was) correspondence due to computer issues, I reviewed my backup procedures and discovered a big hole.
I use Jungledisk to back up all the crucial files on my PC nightly to an offsite server. It's a cheap (less than a dollar a month) service, the files are saved elsewhere. I rest easier knowing that barring major disaster that takes out both MY computer AND the Amazon servers, my files are safe.
But I realized that ALL of my emails are saved in my Gmail account. If, god forbid, something happened to them, I'd be hosed. So I downloaded all my saved emails to Thunderbird here on my PC and added the mail folders to my nightly Jungledisk backup. I ran a very special one-time only immediate backup to make sure they were tucked safely away. I feel better now.
Words Written Today: None
Words Written YTD (since May 1): 90,633 - NINETY THOUSAND PLUS!
Stories in Circulation: 8
Rejections: 5
Stories Accepted: ONE!
