Again, this seems simple, but a lot of folks don't do this consistently. You can't sell a story that's sitting on your desk. Won't happen. Every time you send something out, you increase its odds of selling by an infinite amount, from zero, to some unknown number greater than zero. Instant infinite improvement. What more could you ask for?
So, do you have anything sitting on your desk that could be in the mail? Come on, you know you do. Put it in the mail. Let it be someone else's problem for a while. Worst that happens is you get a reject, which means you're in the game, which means you rock.
P.S. Charging the batteries and Lyda's post. Great idea to talk about. Like Lyda I read when I'm in a down cycle. But I also write. One of the most exciting things for me about being done with Cybermancy (the next contract book) is that it means I have several months to write something just because it sound cool to me. That's what The Black School is—my rest and recharge book.
What do you do to recharge?
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4 comments:
Rejections are just part of the business. I'm a submission junkie, which is why I have fourteen stories on submission and six more nearly ready to go.
Submission Junkie
I love that! Me too!
Here's one where I can't entirely agree with you. I certainly agree that a writer shouldn't self-censor by withholding finished stories. But my definition of finished keeps changing as I learn about writing. Every time I write a few more stories, there are stories that were "finished" where I look at the first page and decide, "This isn't going back out right away."
Essentially, I'm incapable of sending out a story that I know I'm currently capable of making better. I want anything out there with my name on it to be the best writing I can do right now. If that means a story sits for a month or two (or more if I take on a bigger project) while I clear out the stack ahead of it, so be it.
Which is probably more a difference of nuance and circumstance than of actual opinion, since the resources I can devote to writing are generally more limited.
I don't know that it's just nuance. I think there may be a basic philosophical difference. I have a finite amount of time that I'm willing to put into any story.
I regularly send things out knowing that I could make them better if I was willing to invest more time in them.
The question is always how much time and how much better and whether I'd be better off investing the time in the next story. I tend to err on the side of making all the changes that make sense to me right now and get it out the door model.
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