Aeryn Rudel's Blog, page 25

A Week of Writing: 11/30/20 to 12/6/20

Heres my past week of writerly endeavors. Normally, Id try and play catch-up and cover multiple weeks since I havent posted one of these in a while, but the last month and change have been pretty hectic, so Im just gonna start over.

Submission Protocol: Ask the Editor

As I’ve stated many, many times on this blog, you should always read submission guidelines carefully and completely. Nine times out of ten, all the information you need to successfully submit a story will be there in black and white. But every once in a while, submission guidelines might not address a specific situation and leave you wondering if and how you should submit a particular story. What do you do then? Could you ask the editor directly?

I know, I know. Sending an email directly to the ...

Submission Statement: November 2020

November is in the books, and here’s how I did with submissions, acceptances, rejection, and all that jazz.

November 2020 Report Card

Submissions Sent: 5
Rejections: 6
Acceptances: 2
Publications: 1
Further Consideration: 0

Well, I certainly did not get as many submissions out as I would have liked in November. Most of that was due to a particularly hellish move into a new house. The new place is definitely an upgrade, but getting there was a wee bit stressful. Still, I did manage to rally in ...

Hook Shot: Still More Fun With First Lines

One of my absolute favorite blog topics is analyzing the first lines of my short stories and trying to divine whether a good one helps you get published. This all stems from a fantastic essay written by Stephen King called “Great Hookers I Have Known” in his now sadly out-of-print collection Secret Windows. The term “hooker” in this case comes from an old bit of publishing slang that means a first line that hooks the reader. Anyway,  through the years, I’ve been taking a look at the first lines ...

Good as New: Evaluating Fledgling Publishers

I covered this topic back in 2016, and I think it’s due for an update. In the last four years, I’ve seen a lot of genre markets come and go (one that showed up and disappeared almost overnight), and there are some things I think you should look for when considering whether to send a story to a brand new market. I’ve broken that evaluation process into six points. Let’s take a look.

Presentation. Does the publisher have a professional-looking website that’s easy to navigate? Obviously, this is t...

Story Acceptances: 2020 vs 2019

Yesterday, I received my 15th story acceptance for 2020, which is one more than I received in 2019. That’s pretty cool, and I thought it might be fun (and even informative) to take a look at this year’s acceptances, compare them to last year’s, and see what, if anything, has changed. Okay, to the numbers!

Submissions

First, let’s just look at the raw submission numbers for the two years.

2020
2019


Submissions
77
76


Acceptances
15
14


Accpt %
22
18

So, I’ve sent roughly the same amoun...

Rejection Letter Rundown: The Unspoken Rejection

It’s been a while since I posted a new Rejection Letter Rundown, mostly because I’ve covered just about every kind of rejection you can get. That said, there’s always something new in submission land.

Six Speeds of Submission Response

How long does a short story market take to respond to a submission? Does the response time differ with rejections and acceptances? These are questions every author, new and old, needs to know in order to strategize where to send a new story. In my experience, markets fall into six broad types or categories with regards to submission response times, and we’ll take a look at each one in this post.

As with all my posts, what follows is based entirely on my experience, and though I’ve sent a lot of...

Submission Statement: October 2020

A little late with the October tally, but here’s how I did.

October 2020 Report Card

Submissions Sent: 10
Rejections: 5
Acceptances: 2
Publications: 2
Further Consideration: 0

October was a legitimately good month submission-wise, and I managed a respectable number of subs plus a couple of acceptances and publications. The 10 submissions last month puts me at 77 for the year, which means I’m going to need an exceptionally good November and December to hit my goal of 100. Doable, sure, but it’l...

A Week of Writing: 10/12/20 to 10/18/20

Another week of writerly doings. Here’s how I did.

Words to Write By

This week’s quote comes, once more, from Elmore Leonard.

“My characters have to talk, or they’re out. They audition in early scenes. If they can’t talk, they’re given less to do, or thrown out.”

-Elmore Leonard

I love this one, mostly because I write the same way. I tell my stories primarily with dialogue, and characters who don’t talk–or, you know, ones I can’t figure out how to make talk–fade into the background or even disap...