writing updates, 8/6/2011

I have sent a novella to Fantasy & Science Fiction!

Yes, you read that correctly. I wrote a novella. And actually got up the courage to send it to a publisher. I sent it off in early July.

...and got it back three weeks later, with a rejection slip enclosed.

This is only the second time I've been rejected. Heck, it was even the same magazine. I might've known what was coming. An amateur can't expect his first five, ten, or 1500 works to be accepted at a veteran sci-fi mag which has played host to everybody from Stephen King to Daniel Keyes. King himself got a nail and hammered it into the wall above his bed and stuck his rejection slips there. He had a whole pile of them before he got accepted anywhere. Sylvia Plath submitted one story to The New Yorker thirty-six times before they finally accepted it. I can't logically expect anything different.

But still, it hurts.

I had high hopes for this story. It was 23,000 words of what appeared to be, at the time of submission, 100% Grade-A effluence. The plot (I thought) was superb, the setting grandiose and compelling, the premise timeless. The characters sparkled and sizzled. The twist at the end was dynamite. To the FACE.

Boy, was I wrong. The assistant editor at Fantasy & Science Fiction wrote back and said, basically, that the story "couldn't hold interest."

Ouch.

Well, I shrugged, I'll have to do better next time.

I was flying around at 10,000 feet yesterday, with the bright desert sun shining in the window and burning my face to a crisp, when suddenly two new ideas struck me full-force. One concerns a boiling planet 73 million miles from its super-hot sun, where the inhabitants scurry about like rats beneath the surface until an alien race from an ice planet shows up and begins siphoning all the heat off; and the other, "Refuge" concerns an extraterrestrial mendicant who just happens to show up in the backyard of a—

Now, now; any more and I'd be telling.

Succinctly, I have two new story ideas burning holes in my brain, and I'll start work on them forthwith. Whether they'll actually be published is up for debate, but I think I'm getting a little better with every piece of crap I churn out. Someday one of them is going to catch the eye of somebody sitting at a big desk. And you'll be the first to hear about it.

Or something like that.

I have one last momentous piece of scribbling shop-talk for you.

I have resumed work on the Novel.

Yes! That damn novel!

I was sitting around the airport one day, bored out of my skull, wondering when I was going to get over my fears and finally implement the edits and changes I'd been kicking around, when something inside me said "Screw it." I clicked on the link and the monster itself appeared on the screen of my brand-new Toshiba.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I highlighted a chunk of puerile drivel.

Licking dry lips, I moved my index finger to the top right corner of my keyboard, and punched the DELETE key.

The garbage vanished.

And just like that, the Novel got a little better. I added in a few paragraphs of new dialog and characterization, liking where it was going. The beginning is a lot less dry and preachy and a little more punchy now. It shows promise, much more promise than before. My inklings were correct about what needed to be done to improve the storyline.

I shan't stop here. I'll keep on editing, slowly, carefully, so the night-terrors don't overtake me again. And soon the monster will hopefully come out looking better than it did in the beginning.

That is all...

Wish me luck.