Still More Time, Ye Scurvy Dogs!

[dr_phil_physics]

After Working All Week...

... I just submitted my science fiction pirate short story "Pirates Amongst Us" to the Pirate issue of Shimmer, edited by the Dred Pirate John Joseph Adams, first-mate o' th' Fantasy & Science Fiction, aka slushgod. This one's not about making "big bucks" -- it's about the fun of getting to write a spec fic pirate story!

Since I tend to write long (no-ooo, no one ever thinks that of Dr. Phil's writing, do they?), I was of course bumping up against the 5000 word limit. Had a version at 4916 words, but when Mrs. Dr. Phil proofed it, she felt confused by some issues, so I went at it again, and ended up at 4964 words -- all counted by Microsoft Word's unreliable word count feature. All this work only to find that when I set up the final printer/RTF version, it came out as 5004 words. See, I have a tendency to use en-dashes, which when I convert to double-dashes -- for readability -- which MS Word suddenly wants to count as words.

Grumble-grumble. Time to inject some more prosaic punctuation... take it down to 4993 words. Not that it matters. Word count is very subjective, and many in the publishing world prefer the old 250 words (or whatever) to the page, in which case they'll decide I'm over anyway. (grin) Tough, I say! Man the particle beams!

It's Not Too Late!

In doing my due diligence before submitting, I of course checked the online guidelines one last time and the deadline has been extended:

Submission porthole: December 1, 2006-January 31, 2007.

Submission porthole: December 1, 2006-February 28, 2007.

So now, ye scurvy dogs, ye have no excuses fer writin' yer own pirate story!

Me? My pirates are "civilized" and don't Talk Like a Pirate at all. (grin) And am I bitter about having the deadline extended? Hell no -- I've got my story submitted and most of you don't. Ha!

Dr. Phil

Comments

[meljeanbrook.livejournal.com]

I had no idea that MS Word counted the dashes like that. Well, that explains a lot, because I'm a dash-fanatic. So I'm not really writing 156K books ... more like 155K. Phew!

*grin*

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Since I write long, I'm always bouncing off of word count limits on submissions. (grin) Most editors accept word count estimates from MS Word, because its so damned common, and most new writers don't know the old tricks of the five-letter "word" or the 250 words/page standards of yore. They certainly don't remember the word count wars between people with Elite and Pica typewriters (!!), let alone the reasons for using a non-proportional font like Courier vs. Times New Roman...

I've had two instances where my word counts and the editors were WAY off. The first time was when I discovered this bit with the hyphens.

Send as RTF attachment ~4pm

Rcv e-mail (12 minutes old) on Gmail account, saying the story is 60 words over 4000 words. That if I cut 60 words in the next hour, I could re-submit. Huh? Checked and found out that in doing Search-and-Replace of " ^= " with " ^~- ", that the non-breaking hyphens somehow count as words – never checked that before. There were 59 replacements.

Re-Send as RTF attachment ~4:30pm

The second time was the Barcelona novella contest, which specifies character and page counts -- but my dialogue tends to inflate the page count so that in 40,000 words, I couldn't make it fit both the character and page count limits. So I punted and printed it in Times New Roman. (!!) On A4 paper, of course. (grin)

Dr. Phil

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

Yes, but they're probably very entertainging 155K words. (grin)

Dr. Phil