First thoughts on seeking a publication

 I skimmed through a few parts of my copy of The Novel And Short Story Writer's Market, mostly in the articles written to help budding authors like myself. I also did a random sampling of a few of the magazines listed that accept Sci-Fi manuscripts. It's given me some food for thought.

I looks like on the average, most magazines want stories under 10,000 words. That makes sense, they have a limited amount of space to work with and they're probably just as worried about quantity of stories as quality. Unfortunately for me, the first story I had in mind to send in, "The Mind's Retreat," is closer to 17,000 words. So I'm going to have to do some heavy revising to cut it down.

I wrote that story a few years ago, and it was my first submission to the Writers of the Future contest. It didn't win, but I still feel a touch of pride thinking that the judges (who include a number of authors I respect) actually read something written by me. But looking at it now, I can see there's plenty of room to put on some extra polish. Just cleaning away the story's cruft should get it a lot closer to 10,000 words.

The other stories I'm considering submitting, "Long and Short" and "Where Do We Go From Here" are shorter, at approximately 10,500 words and 13,000 words, respectively. I'll have to keep "10,000 words or less" in mind as I continue to write stories, or else I'll have to start marketing them as novellas.

Once I've tightened up "The Mind's Retreat" some, it'll be ready for me to start sending out manuscripts. I haven't decided whether I want to go the simultaneous submission route yet or not. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. I think I should compile a list of magazines I'm most interested in first, see what their policy of simultaneous submissions is, and go from there.

-E. Maxfield Moen