Writing

Dealing With Rejections

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I am perhaps the least qualified person to write this post. Not because my stories don’t get rejected, far from it! In fact, I recently passed my 200th rejection. I’m unqualified because those 200 rejections never really got to me.

When I first started out, I read story after story of how many rejections some famous (or not-so-famous) author got before they became a famous author. Literally every author has this story. If you’re around long enough, you collect rejection letters. That’s just the way it is. So when my truckloads of rejections started rolling in, it didn’t bother me. Everybody gets these, I’m part of the in-crowd! I assumed it didn’t bother me because I was prepared, and I assumed you just got used to it and that’s what it took to be a writer. (To be fair, I also kind of assumed that my stories sucked, so I especially expected rejection.) Let it roll off your back or give up.

However, now that I’ve gotten to know a lot of writers, I discover that this is not really true. A lot of people have trouble dealing with it. Most people. Yes, you have to get used to it to some degree, because you *will* get a lot of rejections no matter how great you are, but people have different degrees of ability to bounce back from that. Some people trunk a story after 2 or 3 rejections, convinced it is awful. Some people sink into depression every time they get a rejection. Some people can’t send out stories in the first place, for fear of future rejection. Whatever 30 seconds of disappointment I felt before totally forgetting about it altogether was essentially bullet-proof compared to most people.

For whatever reason, I never take rejections personally. That’s what everybody tells you to do, “Oh, don’t take it personally!” but I think people still do. As a human being, they can’t help it. For me, though, it really never is personal. Again, maybe this is because I was well prepared in advance? Maybe I took all the advice like, “A rejection just means that story wasn’t for that editor on that day” to heart? I don’t know. But for whatever reason, for me it’s like: Didn’t like it? Shrug. Maybe on the next time out. No reflection on the story, much less on me or my writing.

Egomania on my part? Perhaps.

I think perhaps it’s just that my personality seems to be well suited for it. This is why I am a terrible person to write this post; I’m not sure I have any advice that can help. How can I tell someone not to be bothered by something? Have a good attitude? At the end of the day it comes down to the same tired platitudes: expect rejection, don’t take it personally, don’t let it bother you. But at least know you’re not alone: when it comes to rejection, all writers are in the same boat. And furthermore, even if rejection DOES get you down, you’re not alone either! Some of the most amazing, prolific authors still go to pieces over rejections, possibly even more than you do.

I will say that rejections are a little harder to take, now that I get better rejections. In the beginning I was just throwing stuff out there, with not a lot of hope that anything would stick. Now I have better stories and I know the markets better, so sometimes I’m just *absolutely sure* a story is good for a market, which makes it more disappointing to be rejected. Also, getting a series of “almost!” rejections for a story can be frustrating.

And then you send it back out to the next market and get to work on a better story. That’s the only part you can control.

“My Heart is a Quadratic Equation” now live at Escape Pod

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Escape Pod episode 399, including my story “My Heart is a Quadratic Equation”, is now available for download.

Hearing the story in audio format was absolutely as cool as I thought it would be. I couldn’t help but smile through the entire thing. It’s like I just kept thinking, “Hey! That thing coming out of the radio right now? I wrote that! That’s mine!” And hearing Norm Sherman, my most favorite fiction podcast host in the whole world, read my bio was absolutely surreal.

Special thanks to the narrator, Christina Lebonville, for giving Chrysanthemum just the right twist of intelligence, long-suffering boredom, and sarcasm that I imagined her to have.

Anyway, go check it out, and leave a comment if you’re so inclined.

“My Heart” in Your Ears

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I am very pleased to announce that “My Heart is a Quadratic Equation” has been picked up by the science fiction audio magazine Escape Pod.

I doubt seeing your stories in print would ever get old, but I have to say that the idea of someone actually performing my story leaves me feeling all tingly inside.

As some of you know, I get my fiction almost exclusively through audio, and in fact Escape Pod was the first audio short fiction podcast I ever listened to. Since then, I have listened to many, many episodes of Escape Pod, and in fact I even blogged about them (including a few of my favorite episodes) way back in June of 2011. Although there are dozens of really excellent audio fiction magazines I could recommend, the Escape Artist’s podcasts (Escape Pod for science fiction, Podcastle for Fantasy, and Pseudopod for horror) really are the industry standard for story selection, production value, and just generally putting out a quality product. Needless to say, I am thrilled.

As usual, I will keep you posted when the story is available.

Trivial Superpowers Save the Day!

/ Shane / 2 Comments

I’m pleased to announce my story “Random Play All and the League of Awesome” will appear in the anthology “Oomph: A little super goes a long way” from Crossed Genres publications.

Oomph is a collection of stories about superheroes. But not just any superheroes:

It’s easy to save the day when you’re invulnerable, can fly, or can punch through steel. But what if you’re just… really calloused? Or can hover for three seconds? Or can only punch through things made of aluminum?

Oomph: A little super goes a long way explores what it takes to be a superhero with just a little bit of power, where heroes and heroines use their small gifts to great advantage. Sometimes, you don’t need a big lever to move the world.

This is exciting for several reasons: first, because I have a lifelong love of trivial superpowers (see The Tick). Second, because it’s exciting to be included in something I’d actually want to read anyway. Third, because it’s quite a bit longer than the other stories I’ve sold. And fourth, because it will mark the first time I’ll be published in an actual dead tree book (although it will also be offered in e-book format).

I don’t know yet when the book will go on sale, but I’ll certainly keep you posted.

Writing Year 4

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My writing anniversary is March 1st. Every year on March 1st, I write a post about how the previous year went in terms of writing. I think it speaks to how well this year is going as far as writing is concerned that I just completely missed March 1st this year! So I’m writing this post as of March 1st (i.e. not counting rejections or new submissions since then), just to keep things consistent.

This year:

Stories Written: 3
Number of [Submission-Ready] Words: 12,700
Number of Story Submissions: 61
Number of Rejections: 50
Number of Acceptances: 2(!)
Postage Costs: $2.40
Revenue: $144.88

Total:

Stories Written: 18
Number of [Submission-Ready] Words: 86,000
Number of Story Submissions: 175
Number of Rejections: 165
Number of Acceptances: 2
Postage Costs: $116.59
Revenue: $144.88

The big news obviously is that I sold 2 stories this year, and came out of the closet (so to speak) about writing. After 3 years of toiling in obscurity with the rejections mounting up, this has been a phenomenally successful year for me. Of course, 2 acceptances to 165 rejections, that’s still only a 1.2% acceptance rate, lest my britches get too big.

You will notice that my lifetime revenue now exceeds my lifetime postage costs! Exciting. However, that’s postage only. Luckily I almost never need postage or ink these days, but I did donate $10 to Duotrope, and buy a $30 iPad bluetooth keyboard for writing. So I’m still net negative lifetime (even without considering ink). I’m no longer using Duotrope, but I’ll probably donate something to The Grinder this year instead.

My first thought on looking at the stats was, “Only 3 stories last year? That can’t be right!” Actually, I think it is, with a few caveats. First off, I put 20,000+ words into a novel, which is not counted there. Second, I had a story finished just before March last year, which I counted last year, and I actually have 2 stories I just finished in the last few weeks, which I’ll take credit for next year. So 3 might be technically correct, even though it doesn’t tell the whole story.

I also finally got around to trunking a few stories, and I think I’m about to trunk a bunch more. I don’t know if it’s because my writing has improved, and so my older stories look worse to me now, or if it’s just because I’m published and thus more snobby. But I start to think about certain stories that have been rejected everywhere and have mostly run through the list of markets I like, and I start to say, “If this does get published, would I still want people to see it? Is it up to the level of the other stuff I’ve published? Would I want this magazine on my “resume” of places I’ve published?” So yeah, I guess totally snobby.

I also joined Codex, an online writer’s group. This has been an amazing so far, for so many reasons. It’s very nice to have someone to talk to about writing (believe me, Sara hears about as much as she can handle). Also, I spent so long researching how to get started writing, and now that I’ve sold a few things, it’s really nice to tap into sort of the next level of research and talk to people who are more in a similar boat. Big thanks to David Steffen of Diabolical Plots for recommending it to me.

As usual, onward and upward. But it feels great to finally see a little bit of onward and upward progress!