We’ve Never Had It So Good!

Earlier, the thought was posed to me that the process of submission for the working or prospective writer is so very much more doable now than it used to be. I remember photocopying manuscripts and sending them off in envelopes many years ago, and if that model is applied to the present day the equation changes – a lot.

There are still places which accept printed submissions, but they are in the great minority. The electronic revolution has streamlined everything – not only do we have the means for instant submission via email, we have escaped the whole cycle of printout, package it, post it, then wait for a physical response. Now, obviously, the time saved is the first thing you think of, but what about the cost?

                       

Assuming at least a dollar’s worth of paper and ink for a fairly typical short story, you can add on the cost of an A4 envelope plus international postage by air… A cursory check of present postal services did not find the old “large letter” rate and services for packages by economy air from Australia to the US, where most of the market outlets are, begin at over $15. If manuscripts were unlucky enough to fall into that category, well, you can already see it’s an expensive game. Let’s say it was only half that, it’s still steep enough the average writer would be rationing submissions to a certain number per week, and feeling the pinch. The submissions I’ve made in the last year would have set me back thousands, and thus been impossible.

Email has changed everything. Functionally free from one day to the next, instantaneous – one can make submissions without any constraint on cost or time. We live in the age of the overnight rejection, which is a stressor all by itself, but at least we don’t suffer a hefty price tag associated with it, because the evaluation criteria would be just as stringent. Perhaps the simplicity of modern submission means editors are bombarded with material as never before, but at no time in the past was it exactly easy to get into print. The crestfallen writer papering the walls with rejection slips might be a stereotype but it was rooted in a very common reality.

The internet is a dimension of our lives we could not properly imagine back in the 90s, when so much was still traditional. I’m composing on a computer which is internet-linked, and will post this text on a “web-log” and then advertise it on “social media” to reach my readers with reflections on how I use the same tools to create and channel product to outlets… It’s almost a science fiction story all by itself, a scenario the old-time writers did not predict, though by the 1980s the “personal computer” was starting to appear and it was confidently expected a day would come when everyone had one in the house. How times change! Where will the next twenty years take us? There’s a challenge for the current generation of writers: what’s next?

Cheers, Mike Adamson

The Patience Factor

Lately I’ve had the number of stories out on submission as high as 57, but I now seem to be up against a natural barrier. The number of appropriate marketplaces for the material I produce, which are both currently reading and pay a rate I’m happy to court, is finite. If I was okay with letting my stories go for a fiver, a tenner, I could submit to maybe ten more markets, but there is a bone in my head that has difficulty doing this very often. My preferred lower limit is $25, but that’s still well under 1c/word for most stories, and when one recalls that professional rates begin at US6c/word, there is a world of difference at work.

Subtracting around fifty-plus markets (those already supplied) from the available pool, while specifying markets paying at least 1c/word, are currently reading, and able to handle genre material up to, say, 7000 –10, 000 words, the result is a fairly short list, a dozen or (maybe) two as a rule. Among these show up niche-specific markets for disabled writers, writers of colour, regional affiliations, alternate sexualities, or thematic specifications such as a horror-slant on everything, feminist issues to be foregrounded, experimental prose styles preferred, or specific themed issues. Obviously, these requirements further erode the scope for a general-market piece and it is not unusual to look down the list, as generated by the search engine at The (Submission) Grinder, and cross out every title for one reason or another, from the top of the market (shooting too high) to the simple expedient of one’s story (or oneself) just not matching the requirements.

One day a short fantasy came back from a likely venue, illustrating just this point. Taking 1c/word as the minimum fee, the search returned 26 markets and I eliminated them all on the various grounds above. It’s not a children’s story, it’s not a ghost story, it’s set in neither the present not a disastrous future, it doesn’t feature ancient gods, it’s not a detective story… Trying to find a market that fits the piece one has written can be a trying process. I can expand the scope by specifying a fee below 1c/word, but will have to accept giving up my work for less in exchange for the credit. A case can be made for an early career writer that the credit is more important than the money, and one is obliged, in all fairness, to take this aspect seriously.

It can be very frustrating, as you’d imagine. Say a story is declined by your prime choice, you look around for the next best bet – and there are times you can’t spot one, and in desperation find yourself looking at letting the story go for a tenth the figure it might otherwise have earned. The considered response is to hold onto it and target it carefully to markets sussed out in advance, even if it takes months, to clamp down on the gut-reaction to simply get every property out there as much of the time as possible. This is probably the better course of action, despite the “buzz” of having so much work under constant consideration.

And there’s the catharsis of an acceptance to take into account – one feels less frustrated when a story is bought! For a few days the sense of expectation ramps up and excitement replaces doubt: a market may take a story at any moment! Statistically, though, one knows it’ll probably average out at a period of weeks and at least a dozen more rejections, before the next positive comes along. Hopefully the pattern will hold! Since my first story actually appeared in print, I’ve scored around two sales a month (there are exceptions, one in December, three in January, but it evens out) and I can certainly live with that – but it’s imperative to score some better-paying placements too. That’s my goal (hope, wish, expectation) for the second year of this endeavour.

Cheers, Mike Adamson

Research Revisited

I’ve spoken about the methods of research before but it’s a big topic and deserves further consideration. Unless working in a devoutly fantasy-based scenario, the writer deals with known quantities, and the question of accuracy arises. As an academic, research is a fundamental skill one learns, and it transplants well to writing fiction, though it’s not something unique to those who have haunted the dusty shelves of higher education. Research can actually be one of the most pleasurable things!

Enjoying the building of a library is a good start. I have been a book hoarder all my life, and my interests are well-supplied. I have had a lifetime interest in military history and the range of sources I have available is quite wide – 15 shelf-metres or so I would guess. The first question most ask is, have you read them all? No, of course not! But I work through them… I spend a lot of time on public transport and the best way to make a bus or train trip go by is to read. I have got through a lot of nonfiction over the years.

Academic research is now almost all electronic – students are trained to use the internet for research (a far cry from the ‘90s, when it was discouraged!) but also value physical books. Information is out there – it is calculated that the web is far larger than the casual visitor can ever know, as he or she only ever sees the “shallow web.” The “deep web” is where the specialists live, the technical and scholarly levels incomprehensible to laymen, and when that is totalled up as well it is estimated the entire WWW is currently around 7-point something (if I’m remembering correctly) “zettabytes” in size. According to Wikipedia: “The prefix zetta indicates multiplication by the seventh power of 1000 or 10²¹ in the International System of Units (SI). A zettabyte is one sextillion (one long scale trilliard) bytes. The unit symbol is ZB.” That’s a lot of information, and, obviously, you don’t need it to be a writer. I mention it for scale, so that when you are torn off a strip for getting a detail wrong in your story (as will happen eventually), you can keep a sense of perspective on just how localised and specific any knowledge base is.

The header photo is a collection of research materials targeted at the “Age of Fighting Sail” – having a historical project in hand set in this scenario means being familiar with the details, and it can be deceptive, when you come to seriously consider the events and specifics of a story you realise that here and there you are inclined to fall back on the fantasist’s stock in trade – to make assumptions and invent details to make the situation work, and this is absolutely verboten for historical fiction. You hit the books and websites, hit the forums, whatever resources are out there, and make sure you have it right.

The trick is of course not remembering everything in books, you can’t, it’s developing a mental map for where information was when you encountered it so you can navigate back to it when it’s needed. It’s a handy skill, and has served well enough so far. There is a temptation to let the internet become one’s “external brain” and run to it every time you need something – it’s easier to Google a fact than go through to the library and take a book from a shelf, and that’s sad, really. It’s lazy, and contributes to the phenomenon of the moribund lump in front of a screen which has become a modern malady, trope, caricature, whatever you want to call it. I try to use my books whenever I can, I bought them for a reason and that reason was not to occupy space in the house.

Cheers, Mike Adamson

Progress 01

It’s been a busy start to 2017 and yesterday was particularly active!

On January 4^th, my short story A Grand Succession was bought by the magazine Nebula Rift, and will be appearing in Vol. 4 No. 12, going active on January 18^th. Then, on the 9^th, my short Dreamlogger was accepted by the anthology First Contact. This is the second piece I have placed with this publisher, I have a story in their time travel anthology as well. Both volumes are still reading, I believe, but should be coming available in 2017.

Yesterday I also picked up another short-listing. My story Last Stop Paradise is in the second-reading group with the magazine New Myths, and there is an interesting aside goes with this. It had just come back from its previous submission, accompanied by feedback which, for the most part, was the most glowing praise, the negative points generally constituted minor edits – we’re talking jargon which might need explaining, like “EMP” and “goldilocks zone,” and whether the latter should have capitals… Pretty minor, right? One reader had an issue with the structure of the conclusion and I would have been more than willing to do a rewrite as I could see where they were coming from. Whatever, this was grounds for them declining. I redirected the story at once, as one does, and found to my delight it was shortlisted the same day. This sort of thing makes it imperative to remember that feedback is subjective (as many magazines, this one included, point out). A beginner would likely be inclined to take it at face value, but there are as many reactions as there are readers, and one might at times be rewriting material which is already perfectly welcome elsewhere.

In the evening of the same day the “galley proofs” came in for Nebula Rift, a .pdf mockup of the edition in which I read my story and comment on edits – a new experience for me!

And the final progress yesterday was not one but two solicitations. The magazine Scout solicited my short story Rebirth, which I queried with them, as, while it fitted their brief very closely in most respects, ran contrary on one other – I outlined the piece and editor asked to see it, so fingers crossed! And the new magazine Retro Futures, a themed-issues collection, has an upcoming theme for which my provocatively titled “Middle Stars” novella Annie Lustrum’s Psychedelic Shag Wagon may be appropriate, and the editor solicited it on my teaser. Once again, serious crossed fingers and all hopes for positive reactions.

The Nebula Rift proofs are done now, so back to writing for me today…

Cheers, Mike Adamson

PS: The header image is free stock art...

Taking Stock at the One Year Mark

I took my first real crack at the market with a submission to Liminal magazine one year ago today. It was a ghost story set in Roman Britain, and has been out a couple of times. It’s currently with a fiction contest in the UK. 365 days is both a long time and goes by in a flash – this blog has been running since October and I started it specifically to document my progress once I had some progress to talk about, the publication of my first sale, Lo, These Many Gods with SQ Mag on September 1^st, 2016. The sale itself was made on April 29^th. I started work a lot earlier, of course, I trace this whole endeavour back to my vampire short story Crimson Blade, written late 2013 and published in Spectral Visions: The Collection the following year. That one started the ball rolling, got me back into writing short fiction after a long absence, and I’ve kept going. By the beginning of last year I had enough stories in hand, in enough genres, to be worth beginning a program of submission, and it’s been a long process.

So, what do the numbers look like? As of the one year mark, I have made 301 submissions, which averages more than one per working day throughout the year; I have at this time 51 stories on submission (including two shortlistings) plus nine placements, therefore I have been rejected 241 times. Some of them have been near-misses, a few times editors have profoundly regretted the necessity of turning a story away, but the cruel fact is they can’t find a home for every good story they see. In addition, I have been awarded Honourable Mention in the Writers of the Future Contest twice in successive quarters. My overall acceptance rate is running at 3.73% of total rejections, which is somewhat ahead of the general industry curve to the best of my knowledge. I also have a novel under consideration in the UK.

What of productivity? During calendar year 2016 I completed 52 stories, ranging from flash to half-novel length, and have three more incomplete at this time, for a total wordage on the year of 297, 781 words.

Where do I go from here? More of the same, keep up the intensity, continue to research markets, keep writing. Fingers crossed for a breakthrough to better-paying markets, hopefully up in the pro range, and in time perhaps join the professional writers’ guild. The second year will be as much an adventure as the first; I began its first day by redirecting two rejections, and one of those submissions, interestingly enough, went to Liminal, which rather closes the circle of year one!

Cheers, Mike Adamson

In Print: January, 2017

I’m delighted to announce I have three stories coming available in the month of January. The first, Vital Dispatches, appears in Phantaxis #3, which was released on January 4th. It’s widely available in print and electronic formats, here are the order links as supplied by the publisher:

PRINT: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1541385497

DIGITAL: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N2ZLB9Z

The links above are for amazon.com, but the magazine is available on most other Amazon sites as well.

The issue is also available through: Barnes & Noble, kobo, nook, Smashwords, Scribd and several other retailers.

Also coming available this month is my horror short Fury Never Dies, appearing in DarkBorne Muse #5, which active on January 16^th. This title is a companion line to DarkFuse Magazine . The story is issued online a sa stand0-alone aso there is no issue cover to publish.

In addition, my most recent placement went active on January 18th. My SF short A Grand Succession has been accepted by Nebula Rift and is in Vol. 4 No. 12. Check out their cover gallery, very impressive! That's the volume cover above, and you can order at:
http://www.fictionmagazines.com/shop/nebula-issues/nebula-rift-vol-04-no-12/ . It's not even very expensive!

I have new essays coming, and hope to report new successes as the year gets under way.

Cheers, Mike Adamson

Happy New Year

Well, 2017 has dawned fresh and warm in the Land Down Under, and a new year demands a renewed effort on all fronts. There were no resolutions, other than to make this year better than the last, and as I roll up to the first anniversary of commencing my literary submissions (due on the 7^th) I have plenty of statistics to consider. I’ll do an anniversary post this coming weekend, and this blog will reach its first birthday in May.

New stories in the offing, lots of stories out and cooking, even a novel under consideration, my first interview done (with Helios Quarterly, accompanying the commissioned “spotlight” story, now delivered), and lots more to look forward to – may 2017 be a big year for us all, and let’s see where we are in a year’s time!

Cheers, Mike Adamson