Aeryn Rudel's Blog, page 28
July 20, 2020
Hard Drive Deep Dive
The subject of unearthing forgotten stories from your hard drive came up on Twitter yesterday (Thanks, Marcus!), and it prompted me to go to my hard drive (and an external one I use as backup) and see what might be lurking there. Well, in addition to discovering a few forgotten tales, I started wondering just how many stories, either finished or unfinished, I’ve written over the years and what became of them. So I started cataloguing and spreadsheeting, and here are the results.
Finished
Un...
July 16, 2020
A Novel First Draft by the Numbers
A few days ago, I finished the first draft of a new novel tentatively titled Hell to Play. I’ve posted about first drafts in the past, but since this one is fresh in my mind I thought I’d break down the numbers and talk about how long it took to write and how the writing went. Here come some stats. 
July 10, 2020
Rejection Letter Roundup: The Rejectance
Yeah, I know. Rejectance isn’t a word (well not a proper one, anyway), but as you might have suspected, it’s a portmanteau of rejection and acceptance. So, how do you get a rejection and an acceptance at the same time? Let me show you.
Back in March, I received the following response to a submission. As usual, I’ve removed the name of the editor, the market, and the title of the story. I’ve also removed other information not pertinent to the point I want to make but that might identify the publi...
July 6, 2020
Weeks of Writing: 6/22/20 to 7/5/20
A week behind, but here are my writing endeavors for the past fortnight.
Words to Write By
This week’s quote is from Stephen King.
“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.”
—Stephen King
This quote is one that I wholeheartedly agree with. I don’t want any outside input while I’m writing the first draft. I know it would seriously fuck up my rhythm, and I don’t know if I’d ever finish. After the first draft, I am more than happy to throw the manuscript to the wolves and brace for i...
July 1, 2020
Submission Statement: June 2020
Another month come and gone. Here’s a breakdown of my short story endeavors for June.
June 2020 Report Card
Submissions Sent: 4
Rejections: 5
Acceptances: 1
Publications: 0
A lackluster month, unfortunately. I needed to get 8 submissions to stay on track for 100 subs for the year, and I got half that. This just means I’ll have to pick up the pace in July. I really need to finish some of the short stories I’ve got in various stages of completion. More stories always means more submissions . . ....
June 29, 2020
Evolution of a Short Author Bio II
An author’s bio can change quite a bit over an author’s career. Mine sure has. The more writerly accomplishments I accumulate, the more my bio changes, and over the past couple years I’ve added some important things to my resume. Before I get into the new bio, let’s look at the old one, which I wrote back in early 2018.
Aeryn Rudel is a freelance writer from Seattle, Washington. His second novel, Aftershock , was recently published by Privateer Press. Aeryn occasionally offers dubious advice on t...
June 22, 2020
A Week of Writing: 6/15/20 to 6/21/20
Hey, all, here’s my weekly writing report card.
Words to Write By
This week’s quote is from Julie Andrews.
“Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th.”
—Julie Andrews
Julie Andrews may not have been talking about writing, but the sentiment certainly applies. Writing, especially publishing, is a long string of failures broken by occasional successes. I don’t mean to sound pessimistic. I’m generally upbeat about the trials and tribulations involved with writing, but the fact remains...
June 19, 2020
Submission Protocol: Lengthwise
I’ve been writing this blog since 2015. In that time I’ve dispensed a lot of advice on how to handle the various aspects of submitting a story, usually in a series called Submission Protocol. In the last five years, however, my understanding of the submission process has grown, and as I look back at some of the old Submission Protocol posts, I realize that a) my stance on certain things have changed, and b) I’m just, well, more knowledgeable. Therefore, it’s time to revisit and update some of th...
June 17, 2020
A Week of Writing: 6/8/20 to 6/14/20
Way late, but here’s another quick look at the writing week that was.
Words to Write By
This week’s quote comes from author Anne Lamott.
“Get it all down. Let it pour out of you and onto the page. Write an incredibly shitty, self-indulgent, whiny, mewling first draft. Then take out as many of the excesses as you can.”
— Anne Lamott
As you may have guessed, and as you’ll certainly learn as you read more of this post, I’m still in the middle of a first draft of a novel. I think Anne Lamott’s adje...
June 12, 2020
How Long Does It Take to Sell a Story?
From first submission to glorious acceptance, how long, on average, does it take to sell a short story? The answer, of course, is dependent on a lot of factors, not the least of which is the author submitting the story. Since the only author I have hard data on is, uh, this one, let’s take a look at my submission records and see how long it takes me to sell a story.
Below are two tables with ten stories each. The first ten are short stories I’ve sold, which are generally 3,000 words or more. The...
