401 creaking, tortured words, not suitable for much of anything except existing as words that I've managed to write. However: I do feel, somewhere in my diaphragm, a kind of glimmering energy, and I recognize it. It's what I used to feel when I had a project going that I was excited about. It feels like the glow in a puff of tinder that's been sparked by the friction of a bow drill, and I'm huddled around it at the mouth of my cave, blowing gently on it lest I snuff it out. It's windy and overcast outside my hovel, and rain still spatters the earth. Must make fire big. Big fire!
A friend of mine has suggested that I'm being too hard on myself. So, in that spirit, I'll make a little list of what's happening, rather than what's not.
This weekend, I'd like to get Movement (or whatever I decide to call it) out the door, finish the rewrite on You Can't Go Back, Mr. Mountain and, if I can, find a potential home for it as well. Plus write something new, of course.
I guess I am doing some stuff, after all. Still doesn't feel like enough. I read wonderful pieces like Kent Meyers's Rudy Valen's Second Life (Georgia Review, Fall/Winter 2006) and realize how very far I have to go.
See, also:
Catherine Tudor's interview with Kent Meyers.
A friend of mine has suggested that I'm being too hard on myself. So, in that spirit, I'll make a little list of what's happening, rather than what's not.
- Anchovies. Flash fiction. Accepted for publication, will appear in August.
- One Sunday in Kentucky. Short story. Submitted. Response pending.
- Deflecting Lives in Flight. Short story. Submitted twice, rejected once, response pending.
- Unrelated Incidents. Short story. Submitted. Response pending.
- Movement. Short story. Submitted once, rejected. Researching markets. Oh, and it really needs a new title.
- Prophet. Short story. Submitted once, rejected. Needs a rewrite.
- The Test. Short story. Submitted once, rejected. On its 6th rewrite.
- You Can't Go Back, Mr. Mountain. Short story. Not submitted. 1st rewrite in progress.
- Walk of the Night People. Novel. In progress. 23,000 words
- The Steady State Man. Novel? Fallow. 23,000 words.
- Boomtime. Novel? Fallow. 13,000 words.
- Carnival. Novel. Way fallow. 25,000 words.
This weekend, I'd like to get Movement (or whatever I decide to call it) out the door, finish the rewrite on You Can't Go Back, Mr. Mountain and, if I can, find a potential home for it as well. Plus write something new, of course.
I guess I am doing some stuff, after all. Still doesn't feel like enough. I read wonderful pieces like Kent Meyers's Rudy Valen's Second Life (Georgia Review, Fall/Winter 2006) and realize how very far I have to go.
See, also:
Catherine Tudor's interview with Kent Meyers.
I've mostly written for professional publications and have little grasp of how to approach the fiction market. I tried Orson Scott Card's book on writing fiction, but his advice for short story writers was like, Omni. Omni hasn't been available in years, has it?
I'm interested in writing on two subjects:
(1) Organizational structures' impact on representative systems. The idea is to explain why corporations' shareholders and governments' voters don't get the sort of diligent representation they would like -- in a way that offers a single class of coherent principles that cross private, public, for-profit and not-for-profit boundaries. In other words, I don't want to bitch about evil corporations or crooked politicians, I want to look at the reasons human institutions fail to reflect the will of ostensible stakeholders.
(2) Fantasy fiction embedded in otherwise-realistic worlds. I'm still working out things like how the bad guys' evil scheme works, but I have some characters and scenes that seem promising. The current project is set in the town where I went to undergraduate school, and I plan keeping it in places where I can keep plausible local flavor.
So to my question: where does one do research into where to publish a particular piece? The other work I've done has benefitted from referrals, but are for a length of work I'm no longer doing and in subjects I've little interest in revisiting.
The absolute best way to research markets is to read extensively in the genre you're working with. You can take the shotgun approach and send stuff out to every market that has a SciFi/Fan icon next to it, but you'll usually be wasting your time and the editor's. In addition to providing familiarity with the markets, reading like a fiend also has the benefit of nurturing your creative bits.
In my opinion, the quickest way to locate publications to read is duotrope's digest. It doesn't have as many markets as the Writer's Market annual, but it's much easier to search and follow the links to the publications' websites. Because it's online, it's updated more frequently than the annual.
So: do a search based on your genre or general inclinations, start perusing the search results, read the editor's blurb, go to the publication's website and read the submission guidelines, then do yourself a favor and order a sample copy (if it's print only) or read through the archives (if it's online). Many publications change editorial staff or direction on a regular basis, so the blurb you read on duotrope might not reflect its current philosophy. Furthermore, many lofty editorial statements are dragged into the muck by the reality of the material they actually choose to publish.
I believe that the best indicator of whether a publication is right for your work is when you read one or more issues and find they're full of stuff that you love as reader and seems to fit into the world you inhabit as a writer. For example, I subscribe to and love The Georgia Review, but there's nothing in it that resembles what I'm writing these days, so I wouldn't submit to it. (Also, I haven't got the chops yet, but we'll ignore that for now.) It's one thing to dig a publication, and quite another to assess whether your work fits in with what they've got going on.
And yes: Omni in print folded in 1995, and the online incarnation died in 1998.