Category: Publishing

Every story you send out is one more chance at publication, every time you send it out. Just because twenty-four editors have said no, doesn’t mean the twenty-fifth won’t say yes.

My longest dry spell on an individual story is nineteen misses for one hit. My friend Eric Witchy recently sold something to a major new market on it’s 32nd trip through the mail. You should always start at your dream market and work your way down, but never stop sending things out.

Also, keep track of who is reading and editing at magazines. An editor may have turned a story down for a market five years ago, but if the editor moves on that’s a market you can now send the story to again since the new editor hasn’t rejected it yet for that magazine.

That’s how I sold my 4th novel first, and how many others have sold novels even further along the line than that. Kris Rusch, Elizbeth Bear, Barth Anderson, Lyda Morehouse. None of these people sold the first novel first. Neither did many others you would recognize.

Keep pounding your forehead against the wall. The forehead heals, the wall doesn’t.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog October 5th 2006. Reposted as part of the reblogging project)

 

Whenever anyone asks me what’s the single most important thing they can do to sell their book, I always tell them to write the next book.

This is one of the fundamental rules to follow in the quest for publication. Every time you add a story or novel to your inventory you increase your odds of selling and you get vital practice that will make you a better writer. The vast majority of writers don’t make the break on their first story or novel. The first novel I sold was my 4th, but I didn’t sell it until I’d already completed 7 and having my editor read and really like #6 had a lot to do with selling #4. I’m at 9 now with only 1 in print and 1 forthcoming, though it’s likely I’ll sell at least 6 of the remaining 7. My short story career is similar, though I’ve been publishing longer in shorts and have now sold something in the neighborhood of 30 of 50.

It’s easier to sell if you have more stuff out, because you have more stuff, because it familiarizes editors with your name, because it demonstrates that you’re not a one story writer, and because with every story you get better.

So, practice. Write the next story. And remember one of the best things about being a writer as opposed to many other kinds of artist is that you occasionally get to sell even your practice work.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Sept 26th 2006. Reposted as part of the reblogging project)

Speaking of passion and persistence, as the last few posts have, leads pretty naturally into something I want to talk about that doesn’t get stressed often enough.

My former sister-in-law is a symphony orchestra cellist. My step-brother is a world-class, make-a-living-at-it target shooter. Both of these professions have several things in common with what I do as a writer. First, the success rate is very low. Second, they require extreme passion. You can’t get there without really wanting it. Third, talent. There’s seems to be a minimum level of talent without which there wouldn’t be much point in starting down the road. Fourth, lots of hard work. And that’s what I want to talk about here.

Hard work. Kari and Matt both dedicate thousands of hours a year to practice. So do I. For some reason this idea often surprises people. There is a not uncommon belief, fostered perhaps by the fact that most people learn to write as a matter of course, that writing is something one can just do. People who would never expect a professional cellist to be able to play without rehersal, or a target shooter to be able to hit the mark without practice, seem shocked by the idea that you have to write a lot to master the craft. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been asked about short cuts or the aghast looks I’ve gotten when I say that there aren’t any.

Which brings me to my next point and the subject of tomorrow’s post:

Practice—Write the next story.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Sept 24th 2006—original comments may be found there. Reposted as part of the reblogging project)

Nota Bene: minor changes have been introduced in the opening paragraphs of this post to make it make more sense out the context of the Wyrdsmiths blog where we were having a more general discussing of passion and persistence. The relevant thread takes place here.

Again, this seems simple, but a lot of folks don’t do this consistently. You can’t sell a story that’s sitting on your desk. Won’t happen. Every time you send something out, you increase its odds of selling by an infinite amount, from zero, to some unknown number greater than zero. Instant infinite improvement. What more could you ask for?

So, do you have anything sitting on your desk that could be in the mail? Come on, you know you do. Put it in the mail. Let it be someone else’s problem for a while. Worst that happens is you get a reject, which means you’re in the game, which means you rock.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Sept 21st 2006—original comments may be found there. Reposted as part of the reblogging project)

This is one of those concepts that seems counterintuitive but is in fact one of the most empowering ideas a writer can have, and I know whereof I speak on the rejections front.

I’ve had something like 410 rejection letters over the course of my career to date. I sold my first short after 96 rejections for various shorts and novels and my first book after about 360.

Rejection happens. It hurts. It’s also a point of pride, not something to be bummed about. Here’s why:

Finishing and submitting a story means you’re in the game and you should be proud of that. Rejections are a measure of finishing and submitting a story—you can’t get one without the others. So, getting a rejection means you’re in the game. Be proud of that. How many people do you know who say they want to write but don’t? How many who start things and never finish them? How many who finish, but won’t send something out?

So when you’re feeling down because you’ve gotten a rejection, remember you’re in the game, pat yourself on the back, and write another story.

And so on. That’s how you win.

Of course, licking your wounds has its points, especially on the rejects that really hurt. But it’s better if you do it as a celebration. So, do what I do when I get one that hurts and treat yourself to a night out and a really silly movie, something guaranteed to make you laugh. The dinner out is the celebration of the lumps and bumps on the road to becoming a professional writer. The movie thing seems to take the worst of the sting away, at least for me. It’s hard to laugh and feel punched in the gut at the same time. Not impossible, but hard.

Rejection = you’re in the game = you rock!

Update Jan 2013: Total Rejections to date hovers around 500, though it’s harder to keep track now that most of my novel rejects come via phone to my agent.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Sept 20th 2006—original comments may be found there. Reposted as part of the reblogging project)

I was having an online conversation today that made me reiterate one of the fundamental rules of selling your fiction—Never reject your own story. That’s the editor’s job. Too many times a writer will look at a story and decide one of three things:

A, this is a disaster and I can’t send it out.

B, this story isn’t the right sort of story for ________ (fill in the high end market of your choice).

C, this story is perfect for __________ (fill in the low end market of your choice).

In all three cases, the story never makes it to whatever is the writer’s dream market, thus guaranteeing that it will never be published there. But, for the cost of postage and a little time the writer could give the editor the chance to do the job of rejecting the story if it doesn’t work for them, or maybe, just maybe, buying that story.

Look at it this way:

When a writer pre-jects a story for an editor:
—The worst case scenario is that they don’t sell to dream market x.
—The best case scenario is also that they don’t sell to dream market x.

When a writer lets the editor make the decision:
—The worst case scenario is that they don’t sell to dream market x.
—The best case scenario is that they do sell to dream market x.

Never reject your own story.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Sept 18th 2006—original comments may be found there. Reposted as part of the reblogging project)

I feel the need to give this reblog an intro. The career building portions of this post are radically out of date. I’m not at all certain how much of a boost starting in short stories will give a career these days, and I’m far enough out of the short story scene that I wouldn’t even hazard a guess. That said, I do think the impacts on craft and time management and risk taking are still pretty good. So, without further ado, the OP:

In one of the threads Erik asked why some of us had recommended that Sean focus on short stories for a while rather than novels. It’s a topic worth talking about at some length as it’s advice I give to every aspiring writer these days—if you can write short stories, it’s the best available way to build your career. There are a number of reasons for this.

The market: In science fiction and fantasy the big publishers are collectively breaking something between 20 and 50 new writers per year. I’m not sure of the exact number, both because it varies and becuase the editors I’ve talked to aren’t terribly specific, but it tends to be on the low end of that. In short stories, the numbers run into the low hundreds and there are venues that are open solely to new writers or that hold a fixed number of slots open for new writers. On top of that, the competition is lower. In the middle tier of short story markets a writer is competing against considerably fewer writers for a significantly larger number of available spots.

Diversity of story: The short markets are also willing to take more risks on the really bizarre and the stuff that crosses genres. This is a twofer. It lets a writer have more room to experiment and it can be used to establish that there’s a market for the outre. Short story readers write letters to the markets and those often get published. If something with a different flavor draws a lot of attention at the short story level, the book editors will pay attention to that.

Failing spectacularly: This is directly related to the diversity issue. I came into writing from theater so I’m used to thinking in terms of rehearsal and seeing that as the opportunity to fail really spectacularly without consequences. Short stories can be like novel rehearsals. They give you a chance to try out effects and improvisations that are either going to end in something extraordinary or in total disaster without the consequences of attempting the same feat in a novel. It’s much easier to walk away from the smoking wreckage of short story.

Time into product: Let’s say that 10,000 words of text takes a fixed amount of time to write, whether it’s for a short story or novel. I know, it doesn’t. But for the sake of argument let’s say that it’s at least close. Let’s even assign it a time. Call it two weeks. Some writers are a good bit faster than that, other writers will be much slower, but it’s within the realm of reason. That means that a novel (arbitrarily 100,000 words since that’s slightly on the high side of what the publishers are looking for in a new writer at the moment) takes about 20 weeks to write. Let’s say a short story is 5,000 words, again arbitrary, but with some basis in fact since that’s the high end for a lot of markets. So, one week per short, or 20 shorts in the time it takes to write a novel. That’s 20 chances to sell that first piece of writing and start building a reputation vs. 1.

Splash factor: George RR Martin has already said this better here, so I’ll quote, of his first novel: it was not just another novel being thrown out there with all the other first novels, to sink or swim. It was “the long-awaited first novel,” and that makes a very big difference in a career. And: A novel may pay more initially, but if your concern is to actually build a career, you do yourself a lot of good by building a reputation with short stories first.

Finally, learning curve: And I actually think this is the most important reason of all. In my own career, I wrote three novels before ever trying short stories. I’m not a natural short writer and when I started out it was like pulling teeth to get them down on the page. Also, I wrote a lot of things that were not shorts, though they were genre and of the right length. Mostly, they were lost chapters. However, I persisted, writing nothing but shorts for three years. In that time I wrote something like fifty shorts, more than half of which have now seen professional publication or are forthcoming, and a gazillion fragments for a total of something like 250,000 words. I created hundreds of characters and dozens of worlds. I had to come up with something like a 100 plots (there were a lot of fragments) and write a huge number of beginnings, middles, and endings. And all of it had to be short, there was no room for wasted words or blind alleys. I learned a ton about the craft of writing and about idea generation, and the vast majority of it is also applicable to novels. Would I have learned as much from writing 2-and-a-1/2 novels? Possible, but highly unlikely.

Of course, none of this matters if you’re one of the fraction of authors who simply can’t write shorts. But if you can, it’ll do you a world of good over the long run.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Sept 13th 2006. Reposted as part of the reblogging project)

The original post also included these questions, but, as I’ve elected not to enable comments at kellymccullough.com, I’m separating them out below and people’s answers can be found at the Wyrdsmiths version:

And now I’ve talked way too long when I should be working on The Black School, so I’ll open the floor to comments and questions. What do you write? At what length? Why? Are you a novelist first last and always? A short story writer? Bitextual? Do you dabble in the truly outre. . .poetry? I do, and again, I’ve learned things there that apply to my other work.