Right now, I’m thinking no. Just from a cost-benefit analysis, it’s not worth it. The subscription costs $50. I sent out twenty-five submissions and got only one acceptance. It seems like response times are getting longer, guidelines are harder to find, and more frequently I need to poke editors to find out where they’re at. The whole process is annoying (not to mention my workplace blocks half the sites behind their proxy for no goddamn good reason). Not to mention, I’m not writing many short stories. I never have been. Never been interested. I thought they were a way to fill a resume, but no one seems to care. I…
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A Straight White Male’s Unnecessary Reaction to “Cat Person”
Here it is. The short story that everyone’s talking about lately. Mark your calendars. It’s a momentous occasion when a short story raises anyone’s hackles. Actually, it’s a momentous occasion when someone reads a short story. This one doesn’t even have any robots or murder in it. But it does have sex and female perspective, which seems common with a lot of short stories that garner controversy (“The Yellow Wallpaper“, “The Story of an Hour“, “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall“, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?“) Short summary: Margot, a twenty-year-old college student, goes on a date with Robert, a thirty-six-year-old socially awkward hipster she meets at a…
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The Red Land
I really need to make a blog to keep my consistency going, but I don’t have anything to write about. Making queries, writing my princess fan fiction. Just hacking at it word by word, like a writer do. So here’s a ficlet you can enjoy, back when the site was up. —No Survivors: The Red Land— When she woke up, the world buzzed in front of her eyes like a staticky TV. Organic objects only appeared as black and white, fuzzed out, like the inside of a blanket. Other objects and buildings were colored almost like a negative, but not directly opposite. The dirt on the baseball field was as…
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I Cannot Finish This Short Story
I am in a world of shit now. I am trying my damnedest to finish this story I’ve been writing, about the military using little demons to disarm bombs. The problem is I have no fucking idea how to end it. Everything is too cheesy, too easy, too consequential, too non-conclusive, too pro-war, too anti-war. It’s always something that doesn’t make it feel right, no matter what I think of. I sit here staring, hoping for some idea to germinate. And if one does, it’s just a weed and it gets knocked down. I might say chuck it, but good artists finish things. And I’m too determined not to finish…
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Must Work Harder
Since I signed up for NerdCon, I’ve stopped proceeding on my princess fan fiction. I think I was burning out on it anyway — I’d already written a novel’s worth of text and still had a lot to go. Plus, I need to be productive. Real author’s finish things, and I’ve had a hankering to see some finished work. Or at least to the point I can open the door. Luckily, I’ve been blessed with some inspiration lately that’s been guiding me. It may not result in publishable stories, but I’ll at least have some new stuff to add to Duotrope. I’m finding I really need zero distractions if I’m…
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More Shawt Stories stuff
I keep wondering whether I should just stop worrying about short stories and focus on novels. I just finished Unnatural Creatures, a short story anthology, but it took much longer than it should have because I just didn’t want to read it. Short stories are so hit or miss for me. For every good one, there’s a terrible one where I’m so bored I want to toss the book away. Plus there’s having to jump into another world, then another world, and it’s tiresome. It’s like playing eight video games at the same time, one a day. You are too distributed into one world to fall into another. The plots…
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Trooble with Shawrt Stawries These Dais
I’m having a lot of trouble writing short stories these days. I think I really need to outline the entire story before I write it, (which can be dangerous because you’re never quite sure how long the outline will be). The more I write, the more I realize how helpless I am without an outline. Every story I’ve written, I’ve started hating it halfway through. Most likely because there’s no real big ending. Cause usually the seeds of my short stories are cute concepts, like “What kind of guy would Red Sonja marry?” or “The Shawshank Redemption with elves”. Something that asks an intriguing question or lends to an interesting…
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Why Did My Story Get Rejected (condensed)
Basically, I’m rewriting this article, which I found in college and only just now found again, for myself. All credit for this content goes to Marion Zimmer Bradley, who is awesome. WHY EDITORS BUY STORIES-Editors do not buy stories because they are well written.-Editors buy stories that will give their readers the kind of specific reading experience the magazine provides. Ways to Make a Story Sellable• A Satisfying Reader Experience, the kind that magazine provides.• A clear-cut, likable character. One that the reader can identify with.• A story that tells and solves a clear-cut narrative problem. This problem is solved by the main character’s own efforts.• A story that makes…
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Goodbye to EscapePod
I’ve decided to stop listening to EscapePod and PodCastle, and there’s no reason you need to know this. But I’m always running out of shit to say, so I figured this was something to write about. This isn’t out of the blue though. There are two good reasons. One is a problem I feared would happen, despite editor reassurances that it wouldn’t. Two years ago they split fantasy stories off into their own podcast — PodCastle. I like both fantasy and sci-fi and I like getting the best of both. And that’s hard to do with short stories since I’m not in love with them, they have so much harder…
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New Zombie Short Story and Big Pulp
Well, with Merm-8’s 3rd revision done, and no touchies until December, I’m now back on the short story kick. Which is nice for a change. I do have that trunk novel I’m working on, but short stories will give me more resume-building material in the short run. I finished revising Defender based on the critique I got from “On the Premises” and sent it out to a fledgling market that deals with e-books. Sounds like I have what they’re looking for, but their pay rates are based on percentages of gross. Should be interesting to see if that pans out. My new short story is another zombie story (this makes…
