Category: Uncategorised

What can I say. I fell off the wagon.

I wasn’t writing regularly, and life got in the way.

I wrote a couple more short stories, so now the rejection total is 44.

Working on 100 words a day.

Form Rejections Total: 22

Stories that I consider complete: 6 ( -2) see below

Max concurrent submissions: 5

Stories in development: 3

Ideas: 10 ^ 8

I’ve had to retire a a couple stories that I previously submitted, as no-one is biting and I can see the flaws in them ( nothing much happens) .

Keep plugging away.

So the strategy is:

1. Write a story
2. Polish it till it’s the best i can
3. Submit to the top pro market , ordered by response time
4. Then submit to “tier 2”, and below until it finds it’s natural level.
5. Repeat
6. When everyone has refused it, give up.

It seems like there will be an endless chain of submissions, which unsurprisingly takes time to do.

Of course, I have the angst that the editors will start to hate me as they guy who keeps submitting bad or inappropriate work. But it’s called the slushpile for a reason. Part of it is just to keep writing.

Now, three separate bits of work in the slush piles. Which I consider an achievement, even if all are rejected.

Rejected from Clarkesworld. Form rejection, as expected.

Off to the next on the list and so on.

Keep on truckin’

Submitted the first of my “mature” stories to Clarkesworld – “Angel” . Obviously this is the A+ gold plated fiction magazine, but why not shoot for the moon. Self-censorship is a bad idea. I’d rather other people tell me the stories stink.

Anyway, I fully expect a rejection and then I’ll just keep going down the list until I either sell it or run out of patience.

The whole point of this site is to collect all my existing stories together, and provide a place to comment upon how it goes when I try to sell the newer ones

The old stories will appear on the Timelines page which i will populate as i go along.

Have you ever picked up a book in a bookstore, read a few pages and then put it down in disgust, thinking to yourself “I could write better than this”.

I do that all the time.

So I’ve finally decided to vomit up a wordpress site where I can collect my earlier writings and as a “Author Site” if I get any of the newer ones published.

I always thought I could write, (and this will be the acid test) . I don’t make a great deal of time, but I’m inspired by the likes of Andy Weir https://www.andyweirauthor.com/ – the guy who wrote “The Martian”, whilst having a full time programming job, which subsequently got made into a big film with Matt Damon.

Anyway.

Here we go.