Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

The Long Haul Burn To Space

Earlier this evening I sent in my 500th submission to any market. I thought it was my 499th, but my log sheets don't lie. 500. Friday 1 June 2012. And just eight days shy of ten years since I made my first submission.

It took 1427 days after 9 June 2002 to get to the first hundred submissions on 6 May 2006, 725 days for my second hundred on 30 April 2008 and 689 days to the third hundred on 20 March 2010 and 532 days to the fourth hundred on 3 September 2011. And now, largely due to last year's sabbatical, just 272 days for the fifth hundred.

75 completed stories sent out 500 times, with 19 publications including two reprints. One recent sale awaiting publication.

Wow.

Dr. Phil

Sabbatical 1.36 Report -- December 2011

In the last month since I reported on my sabbatical progress (DW), I managed just 10 submissions. All told I made 112 submissions since the 29th of July. 1 sale (DW) to the Rocket Science anthology. Plus an Honorable Mention and a Silver Honorable Mention (DW) from Writers of the Future.

I had five new stories to add to my Invenstory in 2011 -- three of them during my sabbatical. Though that's not a record for new stories, but it is a huge record for total new submissions. I even added fourteen new markets to the mix.

Did I accomplish my goals for not quite half a year? We-elllll, no. Not really. But there were a lot of extenuating circumstances -- things that I could take the time to deal with without leaving either students or job in the lurch. I came up with a new workflow for getting stories out. I'm going to call this a win.

And you know? I may be teaching two classes this winter, but I manage to find time to write. And I have a lot of notes for new stories and I have that new novel to work on.

It's 2012 and I already have three new submissions. And no new rejections. Not bad considering how many editors and slush readers were working over the holidays. (grin) Can't sell if don't submit. (double-grin)

Dr. Phil

Sabbatical 1.34 Report -- October 2011

In the last month since I reported on my sabbatical progress, I've made 27 submissions -- 83 since I officially started Sabbatical 1.3. Currently, two days into November, I have a staggering 30 stories out to market -- a new personal record -- including 1 new story. If editors aren't reading it, they can't buy it.

Working on some new writing, of course, but though the conceptualizing phase is going great on all these things, I wish I had more words written. Still, I know of at least two or three stories under consideration. And actually, I've been getting more rejections with comments, even from markets which haven't sent comments before. So this massive sending of stories is certainly not a wasted effort, even though nothing's sold. Yet. (grin)

Next weekend is WindyCon 38 in Chicago (Lombard IL) -- 11-13 November 2011. As of right now, I'm on one panel:

How Not To Get Published
Sunday, 11:00 am–Noon, Lilac D
Mike Resnick, Bill Fawcett, Phil Kaldon, Jim Hines, Steven Silver

This should be a great panel, and if you're a new writer, or have thought about writing, you need to come to this one. Mike Resnick is a powerhouse and tells excellent stories and knows the publishing business. Jim C. Hines is a wise, wise man, who is also a terrific writer.

The Double-Edged Sword of New Stories

I mentioned above that I churned out one new story in October. I wanted to get in one more submission to an anthology which closed in the U.K. on Monday, but I needed another near-term SF story. The good news is that between Clarion and the WOTF workshop's 24-hour story challenge, writing 4600 words in a little over a day is quite doable. The downside is that it was pretty much one writing and one editing session. The danger in shipping a Version 1.00 of a story, is that I always feel like it's 80% there. That is all the major components are there, but surely it would benefit from a rewrite or two, pumping up the conflict, etc. On the other hand I've sold first versions of stories, so what do I know? Mrs. Dr. Phil is just now reading it, so it didn't get the benefit of my first reader/copy editor. (grin)

We'll see.

Classes Looming

I've picked up a second class starting in January -- so I'll have PHYS-1000 for the 1st time and PHYS-1070 for the 24th time. Something old and something new.

I've been printing out worksheets of my sabbatical progress about once a week. Just printed out the 13th set. Hard to believe that there's just two months left.

Dr. Phil

All Those Years, All Those Entries

I was on a friend's blog the other day and happened to notice a sidebar mentioning their successes -- Honorable Mentions, Semi- and Finalists -- in the Writers of the Future contest. And I realized that I should do more than just provide stats. So I created a webpage of Dr. Phil's WOTF Results Summary. And it's a lot -- might even be some sort of a record, certainly in the "modern" era of the contest.

Since June 2002, I've submitted a story to the Writers of the Future contest every quarter. But Dr. Phil, if you were published in WOTF Volume XXIV, from the 2007 Q3 contest, why are you still submitting? Excellent question! My story, "A Man in the Moon" was a Published Finalist and not a winner -- and as I currentlt only have two SFWA-eligible pro sales, I still have contest eligibility left. With 30 out of 37 submissions receiving some level of recognition, WOTF Contest Director Joni Labaqui thinks this may be some sort of a record, although there don't appear to be complete stats over the lifetime of the contest.

Someone else might consider my lack of winning as beating my head against the wall. But I don't see it that way. After all, if you just consider WOTF as a market, it pays better and has higher visibility than most. Why wouldn't you send new work to them?

Every ninety days.

The Results:
Rejected 6
No Call  1
Finalist 3 (1 published in WOTF XXIV, 2 in one year)
Semi     2
Quarter 10
H-M     15 (Quarter+H-M = 25)
Total   37
Subs    38 (WOTF Q4 2011 in)

Post-WOTF:
Published    6
Readings     3
Website      1

It might seem strange that only six stories from all these have been published. But only about half of my finished stories have gone to WOTF -- and often these were the first versions. It is, after all, a numbers game. For WOTF stories the publication rate is 1 in 5.5 stories, for all my stories it's 1 in 4.5. Pretty close. And whether any story fits what an editor -- or a judge -- wants at any time, is a matter of preference. And yes, I rewrite everything when it comes back.
Me? I'm pleased.

You can see all the stories and what happened to them on the webpage It's complicated enough that I even missed a publication in my first iteration. Now if I could just win this damn thing. (grin)

Dr. Phil

Yet Another Milestone

Yesterday, Saturday 20 March 2010, I shipped my 300th submission to any market. Like my 200th submission, this was to Writers of the Future -- I believe my 32nd submission to that contest. Still have a little eligibility left. 62 completed stories sent out 300 times, with 14 publications and one more pending. Not bad for not even eight years of sending things out, if I do say so myself.

It took 1427 days after 9 June 2002 to get to the first hundred submissions on 6 May 2006, 725 days for my second hundred on 30 April 2008 and 689 days to the third hundred. #301 is already shipped and #302 should go out sometime in the next few days.

Hopefully I'll be able to do some more work on novels as well this year -- perhaps work on getting an agent. (double-grin)

Dr. Phil

Another Milestone

Yesterday I shipped my 200th submission.

It took from 9 June 2002 to 6 May 2006 (1427 days) for the first hundred, but just over half as many (725 days) for the second. Yes, I think I'm improving and beginning to get some results. And yes, halfway through that first hundred submissions I invested in going to Clarion in 2004, which absolutely made a profound difference in my writing, in what I know about how the writing business works and introduced me to a number of wonderful new and established writers.

Ray Bradbury says to be a successful writer you have to write a million words -- and throw them away. Well, I have over a million and a half words just in one unfinished project, so I've got that. And I know of successful writers who took 600 or more rejections before they really made it -- or stacked rejections X number of feet high -- and I hope I don't need quite that many. (grin)

My 100th submission was to Fantasy & Science Fiction, which was fitting because Gordon Van Gelder was our guest editor at Clarion. And now my 200th submission is to the 3rd Quarter XXV-th Writers of the Future Contest, which is also fitting considering how long I've been sending to them and that some of my successes have come from them. And I'm still eligible to try to win a prize from them. (double-jeopardy-grin)

But...

I know what some of you are saying. It was just the end of April, not the end of June. Why send early? Well, there wasn't a lot of point in waiting. I had a story ready and in less than two weeks the postal rates will go up, so it'd just cost me more money to wait until the last minute. And yes, I did put a FOREVER stamp on the SASE return envelope, so it won't cost WOTF any extra to send me my results, yay or nay.

201

Of course it's May 1st and time marches onward. Strange Horizons has closed to submissions, but I still have one in process there, so they're out of the running until July 1st. But one market closes temporarily and another is bound to open back up. Jim Baen's Universe was scheduled to reopen on May 1st, but their submissions page still said:

Jim Baen's Universe is closed for submissions until an unspecified future date but not before March 2008.

...

Web submissions can be made through our currently off line submissions form.

But I'll tell you something funny about the old World-Wide Web: (1) We are so used to things happening at Internet speed that we tend to forget that (2) a lot of Really Useful webpages don't get updated instantaneously. So, since I had good information that JBU should be reopened today, I went straight to the supposedly offline submissions form, which cheerfully told me:

Note: Story submissions are currently open.

So, not only do I have submission number 201 in the field, I also have 12 stories out at market right now, tying my all-time record.

A milestone, indeed.

Dr. Phil