blog cacophony
millions of voices screaming
mine is but one more
I recently sent three more stories out for rejection. Now I am in a very focused period where I will spend an entire month writing one short story for one contest and ignore all other writing opportunities. We shall see how it goes.
I now have no stories out there awaiting rejection letters. They have all already been rejected. One novel submission and three short stories (one of them rejected twice!). I will, however, be sending out two more stories tomorrow, and then a personal essay later this week, and finally another short-short submitted to a web site. Oh, and I sent my novel to the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest. But they can't reject it... they can only fail to give it a prize. So that's nice.
At some point I will have to rebuild my personal web site (not this blog) to showcase all my rejection letters and my works-in-progress. And, hopefully, one day my actual publications! (I mean fiction. I already have a few published articles posted there.)
If at first you don't succeed, revise it and send it somewhere else. That's what I've done with a story that got rejected last week. I have revised the hell out of it, and I hope I didn't make it worse. If you calculate it all out, I believe I spent about six hours on it. At 417 words, that works out to 69.5 words per hour, or 1.16 words per minute.
During NaNoWriMo, I averaged about 1,250 words per hour, but that did not include revision time.
The new place I've submitted accepts only eight stories for each quarterly issue, and I am imagining they get several hundred submissions. So I'm not holding out much hope. But until I get that return email saying "no way jose, your story stinks," I still cling to a fool's hope.
PS: Seattle is beautiful this week. Despite the rain, the Olympics are glorious across the Sound from the 14th floor of the Wells Fargo building. I do miss living in this city.
Bears beat Stanford. Though why the Cronicle claims it was the first-ever sellout of Haas Pavilion, I'm not sure. Particularly when Cal's release, right there on their web site, says Haas was sold out when Stanford visited two years ago.
Egads. Both my "flash fiction" pieces were rejected by QuickFiction. I may submit one of them to another magazine, so I won't post them here now, but to commemorate the occasion, here is a flash haiku:
My faith in the international sporting community has been restored. I have been vaguely disturbed over the years by the trend in the Olympics of not only allowing but encouraging the participation of professional athletes. It's happened in basketball and hockey and baseball, and it's made me wonder about the meaning of the Olympics. Is it to become just another money-making venue for highly paid prima donnas to strut in front of cameras and adoring throngs? It's already sold out to corporate sponsorship and TV contracts, but at least they could rely on the emotion and integrity of using "amateur" athletes in most sports.
Then, in one fell swoop, the IOC got rid of baseball, and some of the balance was restored. (They also got rid of softball, which I think is a tragedy, and not just because the USA won every game.) At least we wouldn't have to hear about how A-Rod and Barry Bonds were waffling about whether their hangnail was bad enough to keep them from joining the US National team.
Now, more news comes from the Olympics to restore my faith further. Curling, one of the weirdest sports I've seen, will no doubt have center stage during these Olympics in Turin, Italy, thanks to a special calendar that helps promote the sport's exquisite athletes. (No, I have not purchased this calendar.) I mean, who could fail to love an ice sport that does not use skates, instead utilizing brooms and stones? Alas, there is no swimsuit division, but I still will be sure to catch the high definition broadcast (if there is one).
Writing Update
I have written two new short stories but have not yet heard back from either QuickFiction or The First Line. I don't expect to until some time probably near the end of March.
Although I've already received my first novel rejection letter, I am currently on pins and needles awaiting the result of three short story submissions, all due today. Two are "flash fiction" submitted to Quick Fiction, and the other is a 2,000 word story submitted to The First Line. I've already got another story in first draft to submit to Thema, though they have been affected by the hurricanes. (If any of my regular readers would like to read any of these stories, let me know. I would be happy to share them privately and accept any comments.)
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