A question I’m often asked with regards to my blog is: Do rejections still bother you? The answer is largely no, they don’t. Form rejections, especially, barely register anymore, and at this point, they are little more than a notification to send the story somewhere… Continue Reading “Rejections: The Bad Beats”
The first month of the new year has come and gone, and it was a fairly average submission month for me. I always feel like I should send more submission out, you know, because I totally should, but half a dozen ain’t terrible. Let’s… Continue Reading “January 2017 Submission Statement”
Let me start this post by announcing my first acceptance and publication in 2017. My story “An Incident on Dover Street” received an honorable mention (7th) in The Molotov Cocktail’s Flash Doom contest. You can read it right now along with a nine other… Continue Reading “Flash Doom & The Molotov 10”
Here’s the scenario. You fire off a short story submission, fully prepared to wait the two weeks or one month or however long it takes for them to read your story and make a decision. You check your email a couple hours later and BAM! They’ve… Continue Reading “4 Reasons for the Same-Day Rejection”
And that’s a wrap on 2016, some might say mercifully so. As for how 2016 treated me and my writing career, I would rate the year as “not too shabby.” Let us now turn to a whole bunch of stats because they are the… Continue Reading “2016: A Writing Rearview Review”
Should you reply to rejection letters? A good question, and 99.9 % of the time my personal opinion is a resounding NO. The most compelling reason is that many publishers will straight-up tell you not to reply to a rejection in their submission guidelines, and… Continue Reading “When Should You Reply to a Rejection Letter?”
I didn’t have a chance to recount my submission efforts for October, so I thought I’d combine them with November and do one big ol’ update. What follows is a two-month submission report, and since I was fairly active, especially in November, there’s a lot… Continue Reading “October/November 2016 Submission Statement”
I recently received a further consideration from a publisher that included what can best be termed an escape clause, and it prompted me to ask the following question. When should you, if ever, pass on a publication that is obviously interested in your story? First,… Continue Reading “Submission Protocol: The Escape Clause”
How many rejections do I let a story accumulate before I revise it? That’s a question I get asked a lot these days (maybe because I plaster my rejections all over the internet). It’s a good question, and my answer usually is something like,… Continue Reading “Rejections and the Revision Decision”