Rejection Success!

In a previous post I  wrote about my goal to get twenty rejections before the summer was out.  I put six short story's into the submission mill and every time I got a rejection, I sent that story out again within the next day or so. I also got some nice treats from my loved ones to help ease the sting of rejection.

I found I needed those treats less and less as I went along. Maybe my skin got a little thicker. Maybe I just got too busy to treat myself to a walk in the rose garden off of Lake Harriet. Maybe the process of rejection-resubmission just became a habit.

Well, it's been about six months since I started on my goal and even though this beautiful weather may be deceptive, summer has indeed
come and gone.

I imagine you've all been on pins and needles: did she make her goal? Did she? Did she?

Indeed she did.

I logged 20 rejections on September 4th. After I had started back to teaching (my internal end of the summer marker), but well before the official end of summer.

Here's one of my favorite rejections:

Thank you for submitting "Old Glassy's Way." Although it's not quite the right fit for this issue, we very much enjoyed it. Best of luck with this piece, and please consider sending us more work in the future. (We will be guest-editing a second issue in the spring.) 

But I also like getting rejections like this one, because they help me improve the story:

I’m sorry to say that I don’t believe your story will be a good fit for our anthology. Thank you very much for your submission.

The following comments are not necessarily revision suggestions. They are intended to help you see your story from another perspective.

Notes:
- What do Otha and Bernie have in common such that they are peas in a pod? They look nothing alike, they are of vastly different ages, and “even there, in the recesses where things matter, Otha was nothing like her.”
- The opening of this story is quite the info-dump. The dialog and action don’t really get underway until a third of the way through the story. My interest as a reader began waning around page 5.
- Who is the narrator? Who is the audience?

I'm up to 33 rejections. 23 form rejections and 10 personal ones. Whoo Hoo! 

I use a really nice tool to find good markets and to track my submissions: Submission Grinder. 

Check it out!  And then come join me on the rejection mill! It's really the only way to get yourself onto the acceptance wheel!

A New Goal

Last weekend I attended Wiscon, aka The World's Leading Feminist Science Fiction Convention. I picked up some tips at a session on writing while parenting. I was awed by the Sierra Nevada mountain range during a slide-show presentation by Kim Stanley Robinson about the work of nature writer/environmental activist John Muir. I was inspired by readings and speeches by this year's Guests of Honor (the aforementioned KSR and Alaya Dawn Johnson.) I had the start of my WIP critiqued by fellow writers under the guidance of the very generous Delia Sherman.  I bought a pile of books. I sold two felted creatures. I connected with Wiscon friends.

All around another grand weekend binging on science fiction and fantasy.

But by far the highlight was a workshop on submitting your short story for publication. Here's the program description:

Bring your laptop and learn how to write a query letter, format your story, and choose markets -- and submit it, right at the con! A supportive Den Parent or several will be around for hand-holding and advice. Bond with your fellow writers just starting out, and take concrete steps towards getting published.

And was I ever in need of supportive Den Parent.

Before going to this workshop I had, of course, submitted my work many, many times. To my writing group, to my best friend, to my partner, to my mother...you get the drift: not so much submitting to the publishing industry. Well, good news, that reluctance has now been tamed into submission. I sent off "Birch and the Queen of Dirt" during the session.

Excited by that first step, I decided to submit "Old Glassy's Way" over lunch.

I still hadn't gotten enough; the next day, "The River's Edge" got zipped out into the world.

So far I've gotten two form rejections. Bummer, right? Time to sit around for a couple of days moping for sure.

But no! I took those two stories and I resubmitted them as soon as I got the news.

Here's what's helping me make it through the disappointment rejections inevitably bring and still hold on to the tenacity needed to keep submitting:

1. I've decided to make this a practice. When I get a rejection, I will find another potential market for the story and send it out again right away. I'm good with setting rules and following them.
2. I've been inspired by writing friends who have 80-100 rejections under their belt. You can't be published if you don't send your work out, after all.
3. I've given myself a new goal. It is not to get published; I've tried to set that target a bit to the side. Instead, my mission is to get 20 rejections by the end of the summer. If I get them, I'm calling it a success and I'm taking myself out for a fancy dinner.
4. I've also given myself a reward system for each rejection: my best friend, my sweetie, and my mother are all in charge of coming up with 6-7 ideas for small treats. When I get a rejection, I get to ask one of them what my next treat will be. So far I've gotten an invisible love poem (with the pen/light that makes the writing glow in the dark) and I've got another treat coming in the mail. So when I get a rejection my response is "Yippee, a new surprise treat for me!" I love surprises. I love anticipation. I love little treats. I will get those treats, I tell you. I WILL GET THEM ALL! 

I admit when I got the first two rejections, there was still a bit of "Dang, why didn't they love my story as much as I do?" But so far I'm still excited to be resubmitting.

And I'm already a tenth of the way to my goal.

ON SALE NOW - Harris by Jonathan Hansen

You may or may not have heard by now, but... my short story HARRIS has been available for download to your various e-reader devices for a few days now... well, pre-order, but hey... why would you want to waste time, right? Beat the rush. The early bird gets the worm, as the kids say.

But now the long pre-order nightmare is finally over, kids. Today. Finally. Today you can go online, you can order my story, and you can get it, all within moments. Think of the instant gratification! You know how much you like instant gratification, right? I know I do.

And you can find it all right here.

Muy convenient, huh? You're god damn right it is. Check out my sweet cover too. Totally sweet, right? Now, some of you out there probably remember the last time I was talking about this story (remember?), back when it first came out in the local sci-fi anthology Cifiscape Vol. 2--which is still available here, btw--Well, this is the same story, almost the same. I've added some new content, nothing major, just a bit of fleshing out here and there. If pressed, I'd say it's a deeper experience... but if pressed. If you've read it before, you probably won't notice, so read it again, what are you doing that makes you so busy, huh? And if you haven't read it before now, oh boy, are you in for a treat. And let's not forget about the price? $.50 direct? $1.00 from Amazon? Come on, man! That's a bargain, baby... That's a bargain!

Also, if you love it, leave a review.

Thanks,
Jon

How to pop your clutch

Sometimes that blank page is a killer, right?

Sitting there, staring at you, empty and seemingly determined to stay that way. People say: "Just start writing," and honestly, that's probably the best advice you'll get (except for what I'm about to blog about, of course...). Just start writing. It's just that simple. Don't worry about your amazing Opening Line until later, until after you've started. That's just a stall anyway, y'know, not starting your project because you just can't think of that perfect Opening Line? It's a stall, a smokescreen. It's nonsense. Just start, you can always come back and fix stuff later, in fact, you have to come back and fix stuff later. I mean, it's called a First Draft for a reason, right? Just start. Don't worry about where anything is going or what it all means, just cut those break lines and shove off down hill. Why not? What's the worst that can happen? It turns out to be nothing? You delete it and start something else? Big deal. Just start. No one's watching, what do you care?

Ah... but then, sometimes that blank page seems to actively resist that, right? Just start? Sometimes that is easier said than done.

So what do you do then?

Basically--I have found--you have to trick yourself. Think of it like starting a car with a manual transmission while rolling. Sometimes you have to trick your process to life, the idea being that once you get your pen going, chugging away under its own power, you're golden.

But what's the trick, you ask?

Well, admittedly, it could be anything. What works for you, works for you, right? But for the purposes of this specific blog, we'll focus on this one thing... SO... when you inevitably find yourself in that situation, as we all have, here's a hill to pop your imagination's clutch on.

Follow this link here.

On the other side of that link, you will find Io9, a sci-fi website, and one of the things it does on a semi-regular basis is listed under the tag: Concept Art Writing Prompts. I may have mentioned this link before. It's a lot of random drawings and pictures akin to the book The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. And like that well known book, the prompts you will find there are odd and interesting, and all capable of sparking an idea or a world, maybe short story, maybe even a novel. It's a fantastic resource, who knows what you'll see.

Here's a smattering of what you will find there:

Crazy, huh? What do you see? World War 2 era Russian soldiers dragging the head of a downed robot back from the snowy front? Just another day at the Super-Science Factory? Explorers in the ruins of a long gone world? A street vendor selling the latest in cool nostalgic tech? An off-world Farmer's Market? The last gas before entering the jet stream? The old world huddled in the shadow of the new?

So many possibilities. So if you're out there and you find yourself stuck, unsure, scared and can't get anything going? Well relax, take a deep breath, there's no one looking, it's just you and a bunch of cool and weird pictures. Pick one and start rolling down hill.

Just start,

Jon

Soon!

I'm sure all of you long time, hardcore Scribblerati-heads will probably easily recall me announcing my first sale a few months back. But for all of new fans out there who are probably going "What the holy heck is this crazy som-bitch goin' on about" right about now, the long and short of it goes like this:

Yours truly (Jon)  wrote a short story called Harris. I then turned around and submitted it to a genre fiction anthology called Cifiscape (It's pronounced Sci-fi scape), because the anthology's central idea was to write about the future of Minneapolis, a dystopian future to be specific, but one with a little bit of hope. So this is what I kept in mind when I sat down and put pen to paper, hoping to put together a little something-something that would fit the bill.

And apparently I did.

You see, a few month ago my story was accepted and in the time since, the book has been making it's way though the publishing progress. If you are already one of the few, the happy few, the band of brothers who follow my Author's page on Facebook or my Twitter, then you've probably already caught a whiff or two of the building anticipation that is permeating the Internet. For those of you who haven't, allow me to lay down the low-down, cats.

It goes like this: the Cifiscape website first put up an Author's Announcement page for me. Then they put up a Story Synopsis page a few weeks later and then we did a little Q and A session for their Author's Spotlight page. It's good stuff, man, it's all really good stuff, pure entertainment, you should check it out. Seriously. Now, granted, I'm a little biased. Okay, okay, maybe I'm more than a little biased, but you know what? Ask my mother, she'll tell you the same thing... Go ahead, ask her. I'll wait...

See?

Anyway, the best news of all showed up late last week.

The book is ready. It comes out next week. Oh yeah, you heard me right. Next week. It will be available for you--the great unwashed masses who I love so, so dearly--to purchase next week. Next week, kids.

How excited am I?



Jesse Spanno don't have nothing on me!

But what does that mean for all you kids, the average, everyday Scribblerati fan? How can you stay informed? Where do you go for your up-to-the-minute publication/release schedule? Calm down, people, calm down. Just keep your eyes on the Cifiscape website here and until the big day, here's a schedule of some upcoming Cifiscape Volume 2 centered events.

Get ready,

Jon