In my previous post, I discussed the publishing landscape for short fiction and the intricacies of the submission process, including the different market tiers, payments, and odds of success. Now I want to provide an overview of the stories I’m preparing to submit.
Eternal Bargain is a fantasy flash fiction story about a pair of adventurers who strike a deal with a Gorgon and realize not every bargain is at it seems. I’ve worked with an editor to polish it, and now I’m researching markets to decide on a submission plan.
Interstellar Oatmeal is a sci-fi short story about an engineer who is awakened from stasis to fix a potentially catastrophic problem with the ship’s warp drive. Calamity ensues, and he must make a difficult choice. This one is close to ready. I need a few more pairs of eyes on it.
Manhattans and Miles Davis is a sci-fi short story about a bartender on a generation ship who grapples with her place in the galaxy and how her ancestors sealed her fate hundreds of years earlier. When offered a chance to escape, will she take it? I just wrote this yesterday, so it’s a few weeks from being ready.
In addition to these three stories, I have about half a dozen more in various stages of readiness and a few ideas rattling around in my head. Time will tell how things play out, but I’ll chronicle all of it right here.
Imagine you’re a high school counselor helping seniors apply to colleges. Each student has a prioritized list of the schools where they want to apply. The students then submit applications to all their chosen schools and wait to hear back. Then they select from among the schools that accept them, and off they go the following fall. Sounds familiar, right?
Now imagine we introduce a wrinkle into this familiar process. Students apply to one school and must wait for a decision before applying to the next. Also, each school’s average response time varies widely from a few days to several months. Would this change your approach as a counselor working with these students? Absolutely!
Short story markets
The process of submitting short stories for publication is very similar to what I just described. Most markets (magazines, anthologies, etc.) don’t allow simultaneous submissions. That means authors can only submit each story to one market at a time and then must wait for a decision before moving forward. A lot of markets also don’t accept multiple submissions at the same time. Strategy becomes an essential element in deciding how to proceed.
In addition, like colleges, the sci-fi and fantasy short fiction markets can be divided into tiers. The top tier consists of the SFWA qualifying markets that pay authors professional rates (typically 8 cents per word). As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my goals is to join the SFWA, so I have my eye on several of these markets. Naturally, competition is fierce at this tier, and roughly 1-2% of stories are accepted.
Next are the “semi-professional” markets that aren’t on the SFWA list and typically pay lower rates (maybe 1-3 cents per word). These are still desirable places to be published, so they’re competitive and usually accept less than 5% of stories submitted.
Then we have the markets that don’t pay anything. Publishing for free isn’t a deal-breaker for me since I’m under no illusion that I’ll make a lot of money from short stories. I’m more interested in getting published than getting paid. Most of these markets accept less than 10% of stories.
Playing the game
So how do I formulate my approach? That’s an excellent question that I’m still working on answering. Each story is different and needs its own strategy, so I’ll be playing this game multiple times.
Fortunately, I have an excellent source of intel on all the short fiction markets. The Submission Grinder is a clearinghouse of data on nearly 400,000 short story submissions by about 8,000 authors to more than 2,800 open markets. It contains detailed data on acceptance rates and response times for every market.
Naturally, analysis paralysis is a risk, so I’ll need to study the data, make a plan, and execute that plan without overthinking things. Single-digit acceptance rates are daunting but not disheartening. I know I’ll get a lot of rejection letters before I find a home for each story. That’s just the nature of the game.
After relearning the intricacies of MailChimp, my newsletter is back. I’ll be sending the first issue tomorrow morning. If you’re interested in subscribing, there’s a convenient sign-up form in the right sidebar of this site. I plan to send them weekly(ish). It’ll keep me motivated to do something newsletter worthy each week.
Aside from following my blog, the newsletter is the best way to keep up with my writing journey. And as a bonus, I’ll be providing my newsletter subscribers with early access to short stories and chapters from my novel projects. You’ll have an opportunity to provide valuable feedback on my writing. So please considering subscribing—I’d appreciate it.
This is an area in which I’ve struggled in the past. There’s a fine line between motion and action. Rather than explain what I’m talking about, I’ll point to an excellent post by James Clear and provide a brief excerpt:
When you’re in motion, you’re planning and strategizing and learning. Those are all good things, but they don’t produce a result. Action, on the other hand, is the type of behavior that will deliver an outcome.
James Clear
I can think of several examples of motion versus action in my writing journey. Here are some motions:
Researching Web hosting options
Evaluating WordPress plugins
Learning about e-mail newsletters
Evaluating professional editors
Researching publications for submitting stories
And here are some actions:
Setting up my author website
Writing a blog post
Setting up an e-mail newsletter
Sending an e-mail newsletter
Hiring an editor
Writing a short story or novel
Publishing a short story or novel
The motions aren’t a waste of time by any means. In fact, they’re necessary to make good decisions. That’s why I’ve spent considerable time on each of those. The problem arises when motions don’t eventually lead to actions. I could research, evaluate, and learn things indefinitely, but I need to take action and make progress at some point.
One could make the argument that some of the actions I listed are actually motions in disguise. Perhaps the only real actions for a writer are writing and publishing. Maybe it’s a matter of primary versus secondary actions. At any rate, I won’t officially consider myself a writer until I publish some of my work.
In the meantime, I’m tackling my list of actions, so I’m ready when I do get published. In my opinion, every writer needs a website and a newsletter. I want to hit the ground running, so my readers have a way to follow my journey—and hopefully, continue reading my stories.
Speaking of which, I need to set up that e-mail newsletter…
I have a confession to make. I’ve been a “stealth writer” for a few years now. By day, I’m a mild-mannered mid-career tech worker. By night, though, I write sci-fi and fantasy—mostly short stories, but I also have four novels in the works. Up to this point, only my wife and kids have read any of my writing.
That’s about to change. I’ll be working with a professional editor to polish a few of my short stories before submitting them to online magazines. My short-term goal is to join the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) by meeting their membership requirements.
After that, I’ll focus on one of my novels—a YA (Young Adult) fantasy story about a girl who discovers a doorway to another world and takes a leap of faith into a challenging and dangerous adventure. I’ve written about 8,000 words so far, so I have a long way to go considering the expected word count for this genre is 70,000 to 100,000. My current outline will get me halfway there, so I’m expanding that before writing any more.
In a way, I feel like my novel protagonist, leaping into the unknown. I’m not sure where this will lead, but I look forward to the adventure.
