ryan.freebern.org

I haven’t said much here about how I’ve been seriously working on my fiction writing these days. I’ve put together a few stories over the past month and a half since attending Boskone in mid-February, and I’ve even sent one of them out as a submission to a paying market two weeks ago. This is the first time I’ve tried this since I was 16 and I wrote up a 3000-word piece of amateurish hackery and sent it to Asimov’s and Analog. I kept those rejection letters and still have them, somewhere, I think. But that was a long time ago, when I was young and could barely craft a coherent story, much less one that might be considered by either of those august publications.

When I sent the current story, I had no idea of the editor’s normal turnaround time, so I wasn’t getting my hopes up — many places take six to eight weeks or even more before they get around to reading your story. Today, the editor posted to his blog saying that when he rejects stories, he usually does so within five days of receipt, and anything that’s not immediately rejected like that is currently in his “Read Again” pile. So since I sent my story two weeks ago, I guess that means it’s at least made it beyond the immediate-rejection phase of the editing process. While I would be seriously surprised (stunned, shocked, bowled over, etc.) if my first story submission was accepted by the first market I sent it to, at least I have a glimmer of hope.

If I try, maybe I can get a second submission sent out before I get word on this one. I don’t yet have a big pile of polished stories to keep sending out like some writers do, but you’ve gotta start somewhere, right? And it’s really nice to know that, even if it doesn’t get accepted, my writing is at least worth a second look. I’m keeping my fingers crossed (which makes it hard to type).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, Mar 27, 2007 at 8:16 am and is tagged writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.