Aeryn Rudel's Blog, page 38

A Month of Microfiction: March 2019

In late February I started writing daily Twitter microfiction under the #vss365 hashtag (that’s very short stories). I’ve had a real blast writing these things, and the prompts have been fun and challenging. I’ve been a flash fiction writer for a long time, but I’d never attempted micro because, frankly, I was intimidated by the tiny word counts. I wish I hadn’t waited so long to dive in because micro is an excellent exercise in stripping an idea down to the frame so it still makse sense with...

Submission Top Ten: Shortest Waits

Last week I showed you my ten longest waits for submissions. This week, I’m gonna flip the script and show you the ten shortest waits. So, without further ado, here they are:

Time Elapsed Result Sold 1 10 minutes Rejection 2 17 minutes Acceptance Yes (2) 3 46 minutes Rejection 4 49 minutes Rejection Yes 5 1 hour, 37 minutes Rejection 6 1 hour, 52 minutes Higher-Tier Rejection 7 2 hours, 30 minutes Rejection 8 2 hours, 58 minutes Rejection 9 3 hours, 22 minutes Rejec...

A Week of Writing: 3/18/19 to 3/24/19

Back on track with the weekly writing updates. Here’s the week that was.

Words to Write By

The quote this week comes from the incomparable Ray Bradbury. 

“You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.”

– Ray Bradbury

I touched on this a bit last week, but I think it’s worth talking about again. Obviously, if you want to make it as a writer (at any level), you have to learn to accept rejection. That’s a given, but what might Mr. Bradbury mean by “rejecting acceptance?” I thin...

Submission Top Ten: Longest Waits

Recently I sent a few submission status queries and even a withdrawal letter, and it got me thinking about long wait times and how they turn out. So I went back through my submissions and pulled my top ten longest waits to see how each resolved. It’s an interesting mix of results, I think.

Days Out Avg Wait Status Queried Notes 1 419 180 Withdrawn Yes Closed 2 324 128 Pending Yes 3 310 317 Rejection 4 286 180 Acceptance Yes Closed 5 277 57 Withdrawn 6 211 153 Withdrawn Ye...

Why I’m Not Writing: Procrastination

Let’s talk about procrastination, one of the myriad demons that plague writers and keep them from achieving their goals. I believe procrastination generally stems from fear. You know, fear of failing, fear of writing badly, fear of that really difficult scene that’s out of your comfort zone, and so on, and so on. This is why I procrastinate, anyway.

Procrastination’s enabling bosom buddy is distraction, and, well, the writer’s world is chocked full of distractions (I’m sitting in front of one...

Weeks of Writing: 2/25/19 to 3/17/19

Well, as you can see, I fell a bit behind with these weekly updates, so I’m just gonna go ahead and get caught up all at once.

The Rejectomantic Arts: Reading the Wait

As you know, rejectomancy is the practice of divining hidden meaning from rejection. This is the most commonly done with rejection letters, but rejectomancy is a broad tent sheltering many mystical writerly arts. You see, a writer looks for meaning, patterns, and validation in more than just rejection letters. They will attempt to apply other forms of literary prognostication to, well, just about everything related to the submission process. In this post we’ll examine the merits (or lack ther...

Charting the Rejection Progression

As I’ve discussed many times on the blog, there are different tiers of rejection letters that may indicate how close you might have came to an acceptance. Now, spread across multiple publishers, the differences in these rejections may not be so apparent, but when they come from the same publisher you can often see the progress you’re making. As usual, I have examples!

I’m going to show you three rejections from the same pro market, and I think you’ll see the progression I’m talking about.

Rej...

300 Rejections or THIS. IS. NOT FOR US!

A few days ago I received my 300th rejection. Well, that’s not entirely true, but it’s the 300th since I started tracking my submissions diligently through Duotrope, so I’m gonna run with it for the cool 300 Spartans vibe.

How do I feel hitting this milestone? Pretty good, actually. It is a lot of rejections, but just about right, I think, for how long I’ve been submitting and for the markets I’ve been submitting to. I also think the numbers show some serious progress both in the amount I’m s...

Submission Statement: February 2019

And there goes February. Let’s have a look and see how I did.

February 2019 Report Card

Submissions Sent: 7 Rejections: 7 Acceptances: 1 Publications: 1 Submission Status Queries: 2

Seven submissions is, well, not good enough. If I want to hit my goal of 100 submissions for the year, I need to step it up in March. I’m at 16 total for the year, an average of 8 per month, and I need to bump that up to an average of 9. So I’m gonna shoot for a dozen subs this month to get back on track.

You’ll...