Waiting....

Posted by Colin Harvey Nov 4, 2008

Waiting, waiting, waiting. Sometimes it's all I ever seem to do, waiting for an editor or a publisher to make a decision.

I'm blessed with Swimming Kangaroo Books. They've given me carte-blanche to write what I want within spec-fic, But I still write short stories, and there are overseas rights, so I've not forgotten what it's like.

Every quarter I submit to Writers of the Future, and wait in agonized anticipation around the end of the next quarter for the results, always in vain. I've a novellette coming out later this month which has been in the pipeline for eighteen months, and I've had a short story with another magazine for almost a year. The same editor has had another short story for five months. My next book is with an agent who is looking it over, and an overseas publisher is looking over one of my novels for my first overseas sale. It's exciting, but every day is an agony of expectation.

Nor am I alone in this; a friend has a short story placed with Asimovs, who generally reject quickly. So every day went past the first month, the tension grew. 42 days, he posted. 56, then 61.

It's one of the reasons to submit a lot. If you only have one short story out there, all your emotional investment is with that story. Submit two short stories to different magazines, and you halve that investment. A good rule of thumb for beginners is that you will sell one short story on average every twenty submissions. As you improve, it drops to one in ten.

That sounds bleak, but as you progress, you learn that rejections are nothing to do with the story. The editor may have bought a similar one last week; it may not fit their agenda; they may have a plethora of present-tense stories, and so is yours, etc, etc.

But submitting regularly cuts the waiting down, and reduces your investment in each story.