A Shot In The Arm

Well, getting two rejections in one day seems to have been the elixir I needed to get back to work. After writing my last blog, I got down to finishing my current story. I took a quick glance at it when I was done, and can see a lot of revision will be necessary. I changed my mind about a point or two about partway through, leaving the end product a bit confused and inconsistent. I think I've come to a decision about which way I want to go, so I'm going to work on the next draft with that in mind.

I'm also trying to decide if I should send "Long and Short" over to Intergalactic Medicine Show. I'm not sure if it's the kind of thing they're looking for. I think I'll read a couple more issues of that magazine before deciding. In any case, there's a couple suggestions the editors of Leading Edge gave me for the story, and I should give them some thought before sending "Long and Short" anywhere else.

I haven't heard from Leading Edge yet regarding my latest submission to them, though I won't be surprised if that takes another month. Space and Time Magazine's website still says they're closed for submissions, so there's no point in sending anything their way. Aside from that, I'm going to start researching more places to send my work to. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the key is persistence. I don't plan on giving up any time soon.

-E. Maxfield Moen

Two at once

After writing that last entry, I decided to check my email in case Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show had gotten back to me. It turns out they had. Two rejections in one day.

But, I'm not gonna let that demoralize me. I just gotta keep writing, keep sending out manuscripts; in other words, keep persisting.

-E. Maxfield Moen

Well, that was fast

I heard back from Zahir today, about two months earlier than I'd expected a response. Another rejection.

I still have two other stories I'm waiting to get a reply from. I imagine I'll be hearing from Leading Edge soon, I sent them a story back in March. The other story was sent via email, so I'll have to keep an eye out for that.

I have the beginnings of another story bubbling in my head. I'll try and work on that, as well as the stuff I'm already working on. In the meantime, my latest rejection slip goes on my fridge along with all the others.

-E. Maxfield Moen

Two for the price of...two

I'm sending out two submissions today. First, after reading some of Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, I decided to send them "Where Do We Go From Here." I hope they enjoy it.

After I did that, I decided to crack open my copy of 2010 The Short Story and Novel Writer's Market and see if there was anything in there that caught my attention. I also decided that this time I would work from Z-A, in case I came upon any magazines which I had never looked at before. I found in there a website called Zahir, which I'm sure I've never looked at before. They had their latest stories on the site, and after reading them, I decided that I should send them a copy of "The Last Day." It's shorter than the stories I saw on the site, but I think it's a good fit nonetheless.

The Intergalactic Medicine Show story I sent via email, so they'll probably see it in the morning. The Zahir story I decided to send through snail mail, as it'll probably be cheaper than the $2.50 fee they want for electronic submissions. I don't expect to hear from either of them for a few months, regardless of the method of delivery.

So, I'll be making a run to the post office in the morning. Once I do that, it means I'll have three stories I'm waiting for a response on. If I can keep the momentum going, it'd be nice to have all my stories out for consideration at once. I'll have to do some more research and find some more places to send my stories to.

-E. Maxfield Moen

Another rejection

Well, I heard from Barbaric Yawp today. It was a brief note written in the corner of the letter I'd sent with my story. The editor must have liked it at least somewhat, because he says my story made it to the "final cut." That's good to know, at least it wasn't rejected out of hand. He also asked me to send another. I'm thinking I'll send him the one I'm working on once I'm satisfied with it.

I've been thinking about submitting a story to Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, which is an e-zine. the main thing holding me back is probably a little silly. I wanted to check out an issue before submitting, to get an idea of what they're looking for, but the site only offers yearly subscriptions. It's only $15.00, and I should be able to read the magazine on my eReader. I don't have a compatible reader, but I do have a program which the site says will be able to convert the format to a version I can use.

I think I'll give it a shot. If it turns out that the magazine doesn't seem like it'd be a good fit for me, I'm only out $15. And the fiction should be entertaining.

I haven't heard back from one magazine I sent a Query Letter to last year, Outer Darkness. It's been so long I can't even remember what story I had in mind to send them. Maybe I didn't have any, and I was waiting for a response to my Query Letter to get an idea.

Well, that's all the news I have for now. Hopefully in the next week or so I'll be sending out a couple more stories. Till then, good night and good luck.

-E. Maxfield Moen

(Lack of) Progress Report

Wow, I can't believe how long it's been since my last post. I wish I had more to say. I'm still working on my latest story idea, still on the first draft. It's proving to be trickier than I had anticipated. My difficulty is in getting the tone right. I'm trying to make a lighthearted story with a rather ludicrous premise, but within the setting it's totally serious, and that's proving to be harder to convey on paper than I'd thought.

I'm not sure if what I wrote above makes any sense or not. I hope it does, or maybe I'm in the wrong field. ;-)

In the meantime, I should get back to researching publications to send my stories to. According to a spreadsheet I set up to keep track of such things, I submitted "The Last Day" to Barbaric Yawp back in December, and I haven't heard from them yet. I think I'll give it another month before I start shopping that story around again. In the meantime, I have other stories to submit. Space and Time magazine says it's closed for submissions every time I check the site, which is a shame, as I think I'd be a good fit with them.

I have a couple ideas of other places I can send stories to, I just have to determine which of my stories they'd be most likely to accept. That, and get to work on putting my current story idea together. Time to put the old nose to the grindstone.

-E. Maxfield Moen

Second Try

I finished my revision of "The Mind's Retreat" a few hours ago, and I will be mailing it to Leading Edge tomorrow. I ended up taking the story from about 11,000 words to a bit less than 9,000. Even more impressive when you consider the second draft of the story was more like 18,000 words.

The reason it was originally so long was that I didn't have any real direction in mind when I was first writing the story. I had this character in mind, I knew a whole lot about his life, and I ended up writing the first draft of the story as a highlights reel of the first 20 or so years of his life. Hell, the first draft started with his Baptism.

As I went on, I started focusing more and more on the latter half of the story, which was really the story I wanted to tell. It turned out that the first 5,000 pages or so were nothing more than an overly-long introduction, so I trimmed that out. I kept parts as flashbacks, and ended up trimming that, too.

Eventually, with the draft I was working from today, I had shortened the timeline of the story from 20 years to more like 6 months. And most of that was transit time in Interstellar Space that went wholly unmentioned. With this copy, I realized that even that was putting too much reliance on flashbacks, so I changed one part into a dream that was more described than shown (and in about 1/10th the time, as well, without missing anything important), and adapted another into a record another character was watching. So that now, the entire time frame of the story went from 20-something years to about 24 hours. And it still tells the story I wanted to tell, and probably does a better job than before.

I think this draft is a lot tighter, and I think I'll stick with it. Until I decide to revise it again.

-E. Maxfield Moen