The Submissions Grinder
Listed over there on the left is probably one of the best sites I’ve ever found on the internet that helped the writer. It’s Duotrope’s Digest. It was a fantastic resource as it listed tons and tons of markets for writers, helping them find a home for that story about the hermaphroditic Sasquatch that no one else wants. They were free and their data was extremely useful. They took donations on a “pay as you like” basis. I donated the proceeds from several stories, because, well, they helped me get stories into home.
Well, starting on 2013, they now charge a fee. A pretty steep fee, too. $50 a year, or you can pay $5 a month. You can imagine the outcry from people who merely felt they were entitled to free stuff and now they would have to pay for it. After that storm blew over, the real users of the site came out and started bringing out the real facts – the stats will now suffer because only those that pay for the service will now log their stats. Very true. Also, usually writers don’t have a lot of disposable cash to pay for something like that. I know I have $50 to spend on it, but I have other things that I need more than a subscription to a site that I can use a spreadsheet and Writer’s Market from Barnes & Noble.
I won’t get into the good or bad of Duotrope going to a pay model. I don’t care, as I will not pay for that and if you want to, please, do so.
Enter the awesome David Steffen from Diabolical Plots.
I won’t go on about this, but I will direct you to the article, and information about their attempt to create a (free) replacement for Duotrope – The Submission Grinder.
Good Start to 2013…
I received an email this morning informing me that I had been paid for my story “Terminal,” and that the anthology containing it, Dark Stars, was out on Amazon today. I happily took my hard earned loot and headed over to Amazon to check it out.
You should too, just click on the picture…
Hmmm. My name seems to be missing a letter on the cover. How vexing. However, it’s spelled correctly inside the book at the story as well as in the author bio at the end. It’s also spelled correctly on the Amazon listing. *shrug* Irritating, but nothing to get too worked up over.
And no, I didn’t see the cover before release.
Anyway, it’s only $3 for your Kindle, so why not? 🙂
How things change
About a month ago, I pulled Mist out of the office and started reading it. In case you don’t know, Mist is the novel I wrote a few years back. So large I broke it into three parts, because each item by itself would be the length of a novel. Well, I was ready to get to work on it. I think I read about two chapters in it (and damn, they need some work). Then, something else stepped in my path.
As you know, I’m the Assistant Managing Editor at Tangent Online, a fairly large and well known short fiction review site. I haven’t done much with the position since earning it last year, aside from maintaining it’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. Well, the Managing Editor ran into a rough patch, and needed me to take over for a while. So I’ve been learning that, in addition to various other personal life items that just kept me busy in the evenings.
Swallowing your time (and your soul) since 1996
Oh yeah, there’s also Diablo 3, but that’s another story.
Anyway, I’ve nearly gotten my hands around this editor thing, which is pretty demanding work when I have work to do. I have a new appreciation for what solo editors have to do to keep things floating, I can say that for certain!
So I just keep on moving. I haven’t written much in well over a year, aside from some gaming material for personal use. I have a lot of ideas flowing and lately the itch to sit down and write something has started to grow. I think here in a few months, once I get past a few other hurdles, I will be ready to get back into the writing game. At the moment, I have noting even to send out to publishers, and I really need to correct that! I have a ton of finished stories.
Well, finished as in the first draft is done. Which means I have about 6 or 7 more revisions of each one before they are ready for sending out to people for consideration.
Mist looms, as well. It’s time to get it right, and get it out into the world. I just need to get this next review posted to Tangent…
And “Karma” gets a home…
Looks like Short Story Me liked “Karma” enough to select it for publication! Nice to see that someone there could be bothered to, you know, read it and all that. I’m very pleased that this piece finally found a home, so many years after it was initially written.
However, this puts me in a bind. I’ve always had a couple stories floating around in various places. Well, with the sale of “Karma,” I have nothing else left to send out. I have a lot of stuff written, but nothing is ready to send out! So I guess its time to bust out some of these stories I’ve had sitting around and actually edit them and get them ready for mass consumption!
You’ve got to be kidding me…
Many years ago, while in a quiet moment at the computer shop in which I worked, a story idea popped into my head. I belted it out, and in about thirty minutes had a 1000 word story called “Karma.” It’s a fantasy story, about an undead assassin who gets what’s coming to him. I was proud of it, enough that when I seriously started pursuing the glorious life of a writer, I pulled it out and edited it into the 950 word powerhouse that it is now.
Now, it’s made the rounds. A couple of high end publications had narrow fields which included it, but eventually it was cut. Which tells me its good. Damn good. Just not quite good enough. But, after even more revision, it is about all it can be at my current level of skill. I’m okay with that, and its still making the circuit.
This morning, though, I received a rejection that just blew my mind. I won’t say who it is from, as that isn’t really necessary. It’s bad enough I had to bitch about here.
Here it is, in its entirety (names changed to protect the… err… innocent?)…
We can’t use your story at this time. We hope you have some luck placing it with another market. See below for editor notes. Please submit more fiction.
Your submission of “Karma” was reviewed by John Q Editor.
The thing is, I didn’t read all of it, but it quickly became a vision of the afterlife, and we’re really not interested in stories that are a glimpse of the afterlife. Granted, all writers must write these stories, and obviously some do get published (Sixth Sense), but it’s not right for our magazine.
Now the form part at the start of this rejection is fairly normal. “We don’t want it, good luck placing this junk with someone else. Oh yeah, send us more of your junk.” Every writer sees them. I’ve learned to ignore that part of the message. It’s a rejection, and for whatever reason (however nebulous), they didn’t want it for their publication.
For most rejections, that is all you get. A simple “Thanks but no thanks.” Sometimes you get lucky and the reader provides something further. It’s usually a reason why they won’t take it (didn’t like the character, the story was too drawn out, too much exposition, etc.) and maybe something constructive like “delete pages 5-9 and you will have a good story.”
The part that blew me away on this rejection was the feedback. Bear in mind, this story is 950 words. 950 words is a fast read. Double spaced, its a 3 page Word document. We’re not talking about a time commitment, on any level. So yeah, the reader above chose not to read it, and on top of it all, quickly proved that he didn’t by assuming what the story is about. Also, he brought up the movie Sixth Sense to prove his point.
What? Unless the Sixth Sense he’s talking about features an undead assassin who serves a mysterious master who loves a dose of Karma and Irony, then I’m not sure what he’s talking about.
The editor/slush reader is well within their rights to not read something, that is fine and dandy. But to call attention to the fact by proving you didn’t even finish reading the first 100 words, well, that’s unprofessional and not very intelligent. Had he just said that he didn’t finish reading it as it felt like something he wasn’t interested in, then I wouldn’t be here writing this. Now would I?
I also fully respect that the reader felt it wasn’t right for their publication. I wouldn’t expect a publication that takes vampire robot stories to accept a werewolf hooker story. But make the rejection a little more friendly. Come on, you’re making a struggling writer a little sad that their story wasn’t up to snuff. To be rude and say “Hey, I didn’t read your steaming pile of excrement because it is a werewolf hooker story and we only take vampire robot stories,” when had you read further than 20 words in you would have seen it was a werewolf hooker who teams up with the main character, who just so happens to be a vampire robot. Well, that’s just bad form.
You know what, give me a form rejection. At least that way I don’t know you didn’t take it because you don’t like how I had the letter T in the character’s last name.
Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.
Review Writing
Anyone that knows me well enough knows that I am very opinionated and will verbally tell anyone that will listen what I think is wrong with something. This usually results in some funny comments as I run on about how such-and-such item is junk or how awesome something is that no one cares about. This naturally evolved into me writing reviews of the music I listened to, along with the occasional movie. These reviews were not the best constructed in the world, and they could be very amusing.
About a year or so ago I was given an opportunity to have one of my book reviews actually published. You know, on paper with ink along with other pages with ink and bound together into a magazine. I thought it was awesome, but let me tell you, it wasn’t easy to get there.
Since I’m an aspiring writer, I seek to become part of a community of people that thrives heavily on the relationships that form. Editors and writers and publishers cross paths at some point, whether it just be through email or through an in person meeting at the Nebula Awards. But you can be rest assured that they all read one thing – reviews. The author wants to know how their work was received, the editor how their author is faring, and the publisher need to know if printing further works from their author is worth their time and attention. Careers can be made or broken by reviews.
A well written review will explore the positive and negatives in a story. It will be balanced and show how the good and the bad weigh in evenly and make a complete story. The review will also explore how the story fits into the existing genre, how it changes the rules or how it blends in perfectly, becoming one with its genre. But most of all, the review will NOT do harm to the story or the author.
I don’t care how much I read or learn, I may not always understand what an author intended in a story. Does that make the story inferior? No, it doesn’t. Unless, of course, the story is so dreadfully written that it makes no sense at all. Even then, you don’t go off on it. You just say “Perhaps I’m not the target audience for this story.” You get the point.
Reviewing a story based on spelling errors and grammar mistakes is amateurish. Unless, of course, you’re reading a book that is filled with grammar and spelling problems enough that it destroys your ability to read it. Most reviewers are working with Advance Reader Copies (aka ARCs) that are filled with spelling errors, grammar mistakes, and in some cases, entire pages missing, so in those cases we cannot even mention it because its not the finished work. The ARC for Andrew Mayer’s The Falling Machine was page after page of bad spelling, incorrect words, and jumbled up grammar. But I couldn’t judge it on that, since it wasn’t the official release (which, by the way, is much better).
Blowing something out of the water merely because you don’t like the formatting of the pages is also not the reviewers job, unless it also detracts from your ability to read it. Once again, chances are good you have an ARC, so what you have and what may be on the shelf upon release may be two different things.
In all my reviewing, I’ve read some really bad stuff. Many times I had to force myself to finish the story so I could write an honest review. You can’t review something you’ve only read half of. Some of those awful stories actually turned out better at the end, too. It’s considered unprofessional to half-read a story and then review it, and worse, comment on a public forum about the problems with the story when you haven’t even read it all the way through. Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind only came together at the end of the book, so if you only read half of it, of course you would think the story is weak.
Now, if all you want to do is review stories and have them posted to websites and the like, then do what you want. However, if you want to pursue a writing career, and you are using reviewing as a springboard to get your name exposure, then you need to be politic. If you write destructive reviews for years, and then one day decide to try to get a book of your own published, think about what might happen. The editor may see your name and think “Oh, I know who this jackass is,” and just issue a rejection notice without even a look at your manuscript. An author who may have liked your work and would help you promote it may remember you bad mouthing their book and look the other way.
Relationships.
Remember, doctors are to do no harm.
Likeeise, reviewers should do no harm.
Because you never know who might actually be paying attention.
Update to “To Query or Not to Query…”
After getting some advice from a fellow writer (and fellow North Carolinian) I went on and sent a query to the publication in question. I got a reply pretty quickly, too. Seems the story had indeed dropped through the cracks and never made it into the slush pile/submissions queue, despite a confirmation email. A few emails later and the story is back into their queue for consideration.
To Query, or Not to Query…
That is the question.
“Karma,” a piece of flash fiction that I wrote that has received some fairly positive rejections over the last year, is currently sitting at a pro market, and has for 88 days. They say that they can take up to 3 months to get back to a person. I have no problem with this. However, looking at Duotropes, they have been all over on dates and by the information shown there, they should have read my story long before now. Additionally, this market has an average of around 40 days on a rejection and around 45 days on an acceptance.
Once again, I’m at 88 days.
When I submitted the piece, I almost immediately got back a confirmation email. Cool, their mail server got it. But, did a person get it?
Pulling up the original email I sent, I see that everything is professional. The manuscript is in good order. Nothing that would have immediately sent my story to the recycle bin in an editor’s email program.
So, the urge is to query the editor. However, in the past, everytime I have queried on a story that has been out for a long time, I seem to always get an immediate rejection. While I realize that chances are good that the story isn’t a fit for their publication, I can’t help but wonder if they just got the query, dug up the story, and just processed the rejection. Nothing makes that point strike home harder than when I subbed “Karma” to a pro market. After 100 or so days I queried, only to get an almost immediate form rejection. THEN a month later get a personal rejection letter from the same publication (and the same editor!) stating that it was in contention but they ultimately decided to pass on it.
A few months after that, another publication sits on “Karma” for a long time, then rejects it immediately when I query. Then, three months later, I get a second rejection from a different person from the same market, the person that had it in their slush pile all along!
So, does querying doom a short story to an immediate death? I really think it does. I started wording queries so that I tell the person that I’m not trying to hurry the process, just trying to make sure someone, anyone, has it in a towering pile of slush that they will read through at some point.
I will be patient on this one. Maybe, just maybe, the length it’s being held is a good thing. Perhaps at 120 days I will query.
Or perhaps not. 🙂
New Employment II
So I go and get a real job again, finally. Then, a week into that, I’m offered another job. Not a paying job in my field, but a non-paying job with an online magazine. I accepted a non-paying position with Tangent Online as the Assistant Managing Editor. So, what does this mean? In the immortal words of Dark Helmet…
- Absolutely Nothing!
But, its a cool gig and I think while I will never have a lot of work to do, I still maintain the Facebook page for the site and update it when we have new reviews. I just have a cool title to go along with it.
Steampunk Joe
Many years ago, while reading about Cyberpunk, I happened upon another sub-genre of science fiction called Steampunk. I found myself a bit surprised that I had already encountered it quite a bit in my movie and book consumption. As I read more and more on the subject, I found my imagination working overtime, things fitting right into place in my warped brain. Story ideas started coming to me, and soon I had full blown adventures for dashing heroes wearing brass goggles and wielding strange but familiar weapons that shot lightning bolts and aether gases.
It was from this miasma of ideas that my love of writing returned. I had always been a storyteller, and I’ve been wanting to be a published writer for longer than that, but with Steampunk I found a place I felt comfortable and could produce a lot of writing. Strangely enough, more of my recent stories have been regular science-fiction, but I have a lot of Steampunk ideas brewing. I don’t want to be pegged as being one type of writer, but I do want to make my mark somewhere.
It was my love of Steampunk that managed to get me my first ever item published – a book review of Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker. My first ever published story, “The Duel,” is a Steampunk story.
So last week I received an email that put my ass in gear and had me scrambling for the goods that could allow me to have a new author headshot made. This time, wearing more stylish duds that fit in with my favorite sub-genre in speculative fiction. After combing town I located a bowler (or a derby, for those who insist on the American name).
But the search for cool stuff didn’t stop there. While combing the antique and vintage shops for hats, I also looked for shirts and other things that would fit. I couldn’t find much, and finally decided that hunt would have to wait for a better day when I had more money to play with (i.e. never LOL). I was bound and determined to find something other than just a hat.
For a few bucks, I managed to secure some green welding goggles. Ugly things, and didn’t look right at all. However, a quick stop at Lowes provided me with a can of brass spray paint. A few hours of work and a can of paint can change a lot about a pair of goggles.
Once that was all done, I just needed to get the pictures made and get them off to editors and websites. If you saw the last picture I had on display, it was of me wearing a Real Deal Brazil tarp hat, taken by my good friend Nikki Midgette. We both worked there at the time and being an employee, it made me an instant choice for photos to put on their website (you know, because they wouldn’t have to pay me :)). That picture is at least 3-4 years old at this point (I think, memory is fuzzy), so it was time for a more modern shot.
So, finding Nikki (both of us being unemployed meant neither of us had anything better to do), we headed out to a local park where I could get shots in nature without interference with modern technology. We also then drove out to the country to locate a run down barn to get some more photos. What resulted were some awesome shots, one of which you can see over on the About page. Good stuff. I also updated my bio over there, mainly because, well, I could, and I wanted it to fit my picture.
So, keep your eyes peeled for Bull Spec #5, and you may find me and my picture in there. You may also find a familiar title on one of the sections…
In other news, Indigo Rising put my story “Harvest Moon” (originally published on their website back in January) into issue X of their print edition. You can pick up a copy for $5 from their website, if you wish. It’s worth it, I think.
End of 2010
I’m still here, fair lurkers, I’ve just been occupied with unemployment and the holidays. I wish I could say I’ve been getting writing accomplished in the three weeks I’ve been out of work, but so far the most I’ve completed is a poor excuse for a short story and about 1500 words on my novel. I want to work on these things, but I cannot either find the time or the will. Hopefully, next week will allow me to settle into some sort of a routine, and maybe I can get a dedicated writing space setup, so I can have a real “work” area.
At the beginning of 2010, I laid out some goals for myself.
- Have three short stories on market (Optional: sell one)
- Have a novel on the market (Optional: sell it)
I knew the second one probably wouldn’t happen, but I had it there to have a point of reference. Also, in some way, since I knew it wouldn’t happen, I could use it to spur me forward into 2011. Something like “Well, Joe, you failed to do this one last year, you going to let that happen again this year?”
So how did I do? Well, lets see…
- Six stories were on the market at some point in time (“Goliath,” “Harvest Moon,” “Karma,” “Last Man Standing,” “The Duel,” and “The Odd Case of Mrs. Phillips”)
- I sold one (“The Duel”)
- Several book reviews published in Bull Spec
- Several book reviews published online at Tangent Online
Not too bad, if you ask me, for my first year out of the gate in seriously pursuing a career in writing. I also wrote over 236k words between January 1 and today, and would’ve been more had I been more motivated in kicking my ass into gear during some of the summer months. But, I’m learning important lessons about the craft of writing and most of all, the job itself. Things like you have to write every day, make it a habit, and if you miss a day, you have to make up for it on the back end. There is no getting ahead. You are either current, or behind. And so on.
Despite my falling short on many things, I feel I did well, and I am looking forward to 2011 being an even better year.
Oh yeah, Bull Spec #4 is out, and in its pages you can see my reviews of The Horns of Ruin by Tim Akers and The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder.
Happy New Year, everyone. I will make a post with my goals for 2011 once it gets here.
Finish What You Started
Robert Heinlein penned a set of rules for writers way back in 1947. It was in his essay, “On the Writing of Speculative Fiction.” And here they are, in their entirety…
1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
4. You must put the work on the market.
5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.
Pretty simple. Look around on the internet and you can find people debating how valid these are 63 years after they were written, especially rule #3. But at their core, they are relevant. I’m not going to blather on about 1, 3, 4, or 5. Maybe another day. Rule #2 is what I’m targeting today. First, let me explain why it has stuck in my craw enough for me to talk about it…
Tuesday I was informed that today would be my last day at my current job, as they couldn’t afford to keep me on staff. So, once the initial shock wore off, I started looking at the positives in all this. One of which is that I can spend a good deal of time improving and working on my writing. I’m working on a book and have a ton of story ideas to work on. I can take breaks from the book to write the stories and…
Wait, I’ve said that before. If you open my Work in Progress folder, you will see 23 folders, each for a story. 7 are marked with a tilde, denoting that its just an idea and I haven’t actually started to work on it yet. So there are 16 unfinished stories in there. Additionally, if you open the Editing folder, you will see 11 folders there. Keeping score? 27 stories that are in various stages of unfinished, with 7 more not even started yet.
Oh, but that’s not the end. Back up a few folders and you will see a folder called Novels. There are 6 folders in there, only one is marked with the tilde. Two are finished being written (Mist: City of Steam and My (un)Life as a Vampire). The last three are unfinished, and that includes my novel about Johnny Aurora.
So why is this relevant? Back around June/July when my employment situation started being uncertain, I tried to rely on my writing to help me cope with the stress. However, I would start writing something and then stop, unable to continue, my inner editor kicking in and telling me it was a steaming pile and I should stop. I would end it mid-story, some even getting up to 8k words or more before I reached that point. It would get kicked to the back and ignored. Then, to make it worse, I couldn’t bring myself to edit any of the stories I had completed. More and more would go unfinished, and my self-confidence as a writer would just fall off. By the end of the July, I had almost completely stopped writing.
I have gotten better some, over time, since that happened, but I’m still struggling with it. So, as I am staring down the barrel of the great unemployment gun, I find myself with a lot time on my hands. I’ll of course hunt for jobs and all that fun stuff, but there’s only so much time you can spend in a day looking for work. So, I will have time to get to work on my writing, and I hope I can get a lot done.
2. You must finish what you write.
As much as I want to work on the novel, I think I need to spend some time editing what I have finished, finishing the short stories I can finish, and finally tuck away the ones that I cannot. In this stressful time of unemployment, it sure would feel great to get 10+ stories on the market in the next several weeks.
“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you’re working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist.”
— Isaac Asimov
So yes, finish what you write. And when its finished, don’t let it sit in a drawer, eating it’s own head off. I like that quote.
Until next time…
Halfway there…
So, as you can see, I’ve earned that silly little image over there to the left. Despite me saying I wasn’t going to participate in Nano this year, I did anyway, and managed to get my last 2k words in to cross the finish line. However, the word count validator at the Nanowrimo website didn’t agree with the word count Open Office Writer gave me. Writer said I was at exactly 50k. Nano said I was only at 48.8k. Wow, that’s a huge difference. I had to write 1300 more words before it said I had indeed crossed the finish line at 50321 words. Yay me. My right hand hurts, I think I sprained it trying to finish quickly. LOL
But, the novel continues! As you can see on the counter over there, I broke the halfway mark and things are looking good. The story is well underway, there have been battles, kidnappings, and all kinds of mayhem. And our poor hero just wants to get back to his boring life as a cloudrunner. Ah, the plight of a hero.
This week continues on. I have finished a second book review and sent it to my editor at Bull Spec, and I am working on catching up on my reading stack as well as catching up on some of the smaller reviews I have outstanding with Tangent and Rise. Once those are done, I hope to coast the rest of the year out writing my novel and reading more from the ever growing, never shrinking, threatening to swallow me “To-Read” pile.
Oh, the word count over there, 51k, is what Open Office tells me. I think I like that number better.
So far this year I’ve written around 225k words, and I hope to add to that substantially as I continue to work on Johnny Aurora and the Stone Head.
Now, to ask a question I don’t expect an answer to. Months ago, I sent two of my stories, “Karma” and “The Duel,” out for consideration. “Karma,” never printed, went to one place, “The Duel,” printed in Golden Visions in October, when to an audio market that prefers reprints. At this point, I have heard nothing from either market about my stories. The point came where a query was acceptable to either market, and I sent one in to both. I just want to make sure my story is somewhere waiting to be read, that is all.
But both queries have gone unanswered. This is very frustrating, since one publication has you send it to their submissions address and I got be a confirmation email that says “Thanks for your Submission!” I had “Query” in the subject line, like their site asks you to do. And the other, went straight to the editor email address. Silence.
I guess I just keep waiting. I will wait as long as it takes, I guess. And since neither market has a way to check my submissions without bugging someone, I can only hope its there, somewhere.
More on Friday. See you then.
Copyright and the Internet
Over the years, I’ve written a lot of stuff. Mostly reviews of books, music, movies, etc. Usually only posted to fan sites and such, I never really cared much what happened to them once I posted them. It was just fun for me to do. Well, even further back (1996), there was a video game that inspired me to do some work for it. Duke Nukem 3D was the game, and I wrote several help files for the Build Engine that shipped with it. It was the same design tool the designers at 3D Realms used to make the game, and it wasn’t the least bit intuitive. A large community formed around it. I had two help files in particular that are still available on the internet now. (Don’t click the next two links unless you really want to see what they contain. Trust me, its not that interesting) One contained the palette information for the textures in the game, and the other involved making sky and space scenes using the parallax features. I got a lot of good feedback from fans of the game and of the Build Engine. I also built several game levels and shared them out there for folks to use for death match play.
I worked as a manager at the local Electronics Boutique at the time. One day in a shipment was a “Duke Nukem 3D Construction Set.” It was a simple box with a CD in it. $19.99. Being an employee, I was allowed to check out software, and since we had several copies, I took it home that night to see what it had. When I popped in the CD, I was floored to see my files, along with many others from people I knew from the online community of Build fans, all on the CD. I opened my file on palettes and my files on parallax and saw all my words there, plain as could be, with all of the information about WHO wrote it stripped from the top of the page. Also, mixed in with some of the “new levels” were some of the ones I created, and like the help files, their author information stripped.
I was livid. As were many of the other people who found their hard work put up for someone else to make money off of. There wasn’t a single piece of original work on that CD. Since it was just a game I got mad for a bit and then moved on. By the time it came out Duke Nukem 3D was pretty much done and gone, and I was already playing something else. Well, some members of the community drafted a letter, sent it to the publisher, and waited. A week or so later while at work at EB, in the morning mail, was a list of returns to send back to corporate. Among that list was the “Duke Nukem 3D Construction Set” package.
Today when I read that someone had their work not only lifted from the internet, but then “made better” and published without their consent, I knew how they felt. However, to make it worse, well, go read the Live Journal post here. Nothing like stupidity and ignorance all rolled into a nice neat package for the idiots on the internet to kick around!
This is what writers fear the most – a dishonest editor. But we try not to think about it. We work our asses off writing a story, article, review, whatever, and we send it to an editor hoping that they will accept it. We trust that the editor has some integrity and honor about them. We expect them to read our work, accept/reject/suggest changes, and then we move on from there in whatever direction that takes us. And it doesn’t matter if we send it to Tor and hope to make 25¢ a word for our story, or if we send it to amphibi.us to get paid nothing. The editors should be someone you can trust to do the right thing. But when a dishonest editor shakes loose, we writers begin to fear that it could happen to us.
Judith Griggs, the new internet supervillian for the week, embodies that fear. She stole a story from the internet, and being rather unashamed about it in her blantant disregard for copyright laws and how they pertain to the internet. Not only has her credibility been shot all to hell, but her chances of find future work as an editor are blown away, and the entire integrity of the magazine, Cooks Source (which I will not link here), comes into question. How much else has this woman stolen and “improved” or even slapped hers or someone else’s name on it? Did she receive submissions that she rejected, only to print a year later under another name? What will her advertisers think of this activity?
For someone getting started, like myself, this is a scary thing to read. Copyright infringement of this sort is a very real thing, and while Judith Griggs was called on it and turned into a pariah, there are a whole bunch of others out there who haven’t been caught yet.
EDIT: Here is a link to a better article. Seems they’ve been stealing a lot of content. Food Network being one. Martha Stewart being another. I wouldn’t want to piss off Martha. She’s done time, after all. 😀
Progress, Maps, and Servitude
Been an interesting week on the writing front. I will just start from the beginning, as I feel it’s just easier that way.
Monday was like any other day writing. I got in my daily goal (which is 1500 words) and then some (managed to write 3000 words). I was cruising right along with the story of Johnny Aurora, and I finally worked out the story more –
Long ago, the world, destroyed by the people who live on it, began to eject masses of land into the sky. These pieces of land became floating islands, and the people who managed to survive formed the new world of Aiire. Over time, civilization returned to the floating islands, and great kingdoms and empires were formed. One such empire, known as Amarith, is one of the largest, and without question, the most powerful.
When Johnny Aurora, captain of the airship Empyrean, unwittingly escorts an exiled princess back to the capital of Amarith, he finds himself embroiled in a power struggle between the Emperor and a fringe revolutionary group known as “The Jones'” As he tries to avoid getting killed, he must contend with assassins, pirates, and a new threat that no one is prepared for. Long ago, magic was part of the world, and now, it is reawakening…
And a title – Johnny Aurora and the Stone Head.
Tuesday, realizing I had a lot of place names but no idea where they were all located, I decided to make a map. AutoREALM for the win! Here’s the map…
Nothing fancy at the moment, but it will help me keep places and names straight. The original map, hand drawn on paper, is funny to look at because it has a list of names on it from the book, as it is so far, as well as some notes I took while on the phone with someone.
Wednesday brought in a new sort of fun, as MG Ellington, Marketing Director and Blog Editor for Apex Book Company, mentioned she needed as assistant to help with the work she had for the book publisher. I of course threw my name in on that, because I’m curious about such things and really want to get more experience of any kind in the publishing business. After several emails, and some careful consideration, I have agreed to be her lackey for some tasks. I get paid in books. Better than I expected, which was not being paid at all. LOL
After map drawing on Tuesday and basically not feeling like writing on Wednesday, I was behind. So on Thursday, I smashed through with a 4900 word day.
And here we are on Friday. I got in 1800 words this morning, and as you can see over there, I broke 20k overall! Progress!
Everyone have a good and safe weekend. Enjoy Halloween!
Rejection
Oddly enough, I have come to enjoy rejection when it comes to my stories. I send something to a publisher, then I have to sit and wait and worry. And its all silly things to worry about, really. Thing like..
– Did I follow their submissions guidelines properly?
– Did I word my cover letter well enough, or did I say too much?
– Maybe the publisher isn’t looking for stories about skeletons that fall in love with sea sponges?
Then there’s the wait. Some places are fast to turn it around. For instance Clarkesworld typically gets back to you in a day or two. Lightspeed the same. So far, Abyss & Apex wins the speed contest with a 4 hour rejection. But, not everyone is so quick. Typical turnaround is 30-60 days, though with electronic submissions these days, most get back to you in less time that than.
Enter Duotrope’s Digest. A valuable tool for writers to find someone for their work, along with a cool tracking tool to know what you sent to whom and when, as well as how long you’ve been waiting and what the average turn around time is. It’s not perfect, but it helps a lot and works better than the spreadsheet I tried to use at first. Problem is, I think at times it may be too much information. If you see that a market usually replies in 30 days, and you are on day 45, you wonder if they are holding the story for acceptance consideration, or are they just behind on their slush pile?
Finally, an email appears and you rush to open it. More often than not, even for published authors, its a rejection letter. 9 times out of 10 this rejection is the (often poorly worded) “Sorry, this didn’t quite work for me” type form response. Just print it and drop it in the rejection pile, and then send the story to someone else. But, it removes a bit of worry from your mind. So in a way, even rejection is a victory of sorts, because you can eliminate that from your list of things to worry about.
Of course, if you immediately send the story out to someone right after you get the rejection, you just start the process all over again.
I think all writers are masochists in some way. 😀
I received two rejections this week, one for “Last Man Standing” and another for “Goliath.” Not a problem. Just shuffle them off to someone else, print the rejection and add it to the stack.
Oh the glamor and glitz of being a writer.
The Clockwork Pen 