The Submissions Grind

The submissions grind is a relentless thing, and I haven’t been having the best time of it of late.

Or at least it feels that way. Compare, if you will, my short story submission tracker when I first built it in 2022, and said submission tracker now.

Ignore the fact that The Singer, which I was originally submitting as a novella, has now been self-published: that’s still 5 more stories accepted in the last few years, which is objectively pretty good going. You may also note that a couple of stories have been removed entirely to become published on this very website, if you want to read them.

But you can see how many new stories are on the pile, going nowhere fast. And those are the ones that are dragging me down.

(And one old one: ‘New Faces’, you will see print one day, I promise. Years after I wrote it it’s still, I think, one of my best concepts and my favourite stories.)

These are good stories, or at least I think they are. They’re better than some of the stories that I’ve already had published. But they’ve been rejected, often swiftly and brutally and almost always with form responses, the author’s bane. Some have been sitting in submission boxes for a few months now, and while on the one hand, sitting waiting for responses at least means that I haven’t had a rejection yet, on the other… it’s been bloody ages, and my hopes wane with every passing week.

Sometimes a long wait means a nice, detailed bit of feedback. Sometimes. Usually it’s a wait of months for absolutely no detail at all. In the case of my full manuscript submissions, which are also ongoing, the norm has been a wait of months – or years, in a few cases – for no response at all. With the exception of the one agent who provided a detailed chunk of feedback – and actually read the whole book – I usually get nothing, for short or long submissions.

It’s quite hard, trying to do creative work, and not getting any insight into what works and what doesn’t when you’re rejected. It’s not particularly helpful to the ol’ process of improvement.

(It’s the same story with reviews, too, though I am sympathetic to people forgetting to review books they’ve read when I, too, have to remind myself to do it as often as possible, especially for indie books which need it the most. But those reviews are mostly for other readers, not the writer. Not that that doesn’t make them important. Please review indie books. Please review my books.)

But hey: I have had acceptances, right? ‘Great Martian Railways’ came out in July this year! What am I complaining about?

Yes, ‘GMR’ was published a few months ago, and I’m extraordinarily glad it was, especially in a prestigious publication like Analog. So I have got a 2024 publication credit. But it was accepted over a year ago, and that was the last successful submission I’ve had. A year is a long time. When the lead times for publication can be this extensive, it’s a very long time. I might get an acceptance tomorrow and not have the story be released until 2026. And that is a long time to go without anything to my name.

Also, while this may be a little crass: I just had a wedding, and I am broke, and I will have to do my taxes very soon, and a short story sold is money that I could really use. I haven’t sold anything in a year. I need to pay rent and fund my crippling ‘plastic crack’ addiction.

But with the mammoth task of finishing The Owl in the Labyrinth still before me and the potential publication date getting more distant by the day I’d really hoped that a short piece or two would keep my hand in. Keep my name vaguely in the ears of a slightly wider audience. Maybe.

These are the days when writing and submitting just feels like shouting into the void. Half the time you don’t even get an echo back.

I know it’ll get better. I know I’ve been writing damn good stories and eventually they will see the light of day, one way or another. I just wish it wouldn’t take so long, and I wish I could know more about why they keep coming back to me unliked, if they come back at all.