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My writing blog |
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I don't have a muse, and never have. I'm afraid that if I did have one, she would be a small Chinese woman standing in the doorway, looking significantly at her watch every minute or so while I dug around in the sofa searching for enough loose change to pay for the chicken-fried rice. On the whole, I think I do better without her. |
Just an FYI. I was editor for two newsletters that came out today, "Poetry Newsletter (February 24, 2010)"  and "Short Stories Newsletter (February 24, 2010)" . Let me know if you enjoy them (through the newsletter feedbac, of course)Current status: 61 items in 69 submissions. Two new markets attempted, Silk Road and IOU |
| My poem, Whither Gods, Distracted? is listed on the front page on the right at Orson Scott Card's poetry magazine, Strong Verse . Woohoo! |
| I am working on a story which I think of as a steampunk zombie story, but only if you use the steampunk label to refer to a Victorian setting in the steam age, not alternate histories or steam-powered computers or that sort of thing. Some definitions encompass my way of thinking while others do not. What do you think? Current status: 60 items in 67 submissions. Two new markets attempted, jerseyworks and Abandoned Towers. |
| These are worth reading. I saw the links on Neil Gaiman's site: Ten rules for writing fiction, Part 1 Ten rules for writing fiction, Part 2 Current status: 51 items in 56 submissions. Three new markets attempted, Rose & Thorn Journal, Awkward and Metazen. For what it's worth, Metazen accepted in 14 minutes (a new record for me, breaking the 27 minutes by Twisted Dreams Magazine) |
| Magazine: Metazen METAZEN is an online fiction zine that publishes short fiction and poetry by various authors. Metazen is a flytrap for metafiction, existentialism and absurdism. It harbors all kinds of filth such as neurotic characters, obscure philosophies, love for inanimate objects and quests toward enlightenment. Lost Off Crucial Point - 236 word story on the theme, Brevity, scheduled for posting April 6 Humility reminder: Prior to this acceptance, Lost Off Crucial Point had been rejected at three different magazines. |
| Some months are busier than others. For me, November and December are particularly busy, so I have been unable to sink my teeth into NaNoWriMo, where lots of insane writers try to write a novel in a month. Many even succeed. My hat is off to them. Here at Writing.com, opto has an alternative which has run for a few years. It is Invalid Item , and in spite of the name, the goal is a bit more flexible. There is all the mutual support and excitement of NaNoWriMo, but people get to pick their goals, writing, rewriting, working on multiple pieces, etc. I am committing to 35K words, which is a bit more realistic than 50K for me given my writing speed. My plan is to add 20K words to my first novel, and also write three 5K+ anthology stories. If you are interested, come join in the fun and set your goal.Current status: 56 items in 61 submissions. Two new markets attempted, Tin House and San Pedro River Review. One market reattempted, six little things. (A few eagle-eyed folks might notice that my total submissions number has dropped from a high of 75 down to 61. This does not reflect my writing less, but my writing more and longer short stories. There is also a gradually diminishing supply of poems I have out that have not yet been accepted, as poems are getting accepted faster than they are getting written. The same cannot be said of stories, as I have several in some stage of pre-submission.) |
| My poem is up today at Every Day Poets. If anybody wants to stop by there and read or comment or rate it (no registration necessary), go to Gran's Wisdom . |
| As I have mentioned before, I am fascinated by numbers and percentages. According to Duotrope, I have an Acceptance ratio for the past 12 months: 19.33 % That is for all poems and stories, but I have been focusing on stories recently, and was curious how the numbers worked out there. There are multiple different ways of thinking about this. The first is the acceptance/(acceptance+rejection) method. I have had 7 acceptances and 18 rejections, so by that method, my fiction percentage would be 28%. It is higher than for poems because you only submit one story at a time, but you often submit 4-5 poems and they accept one or two of them, giving you multiple rejections even with your acceptance. The second method is to think of the number of stories that have been submitted and either accepted or rejected (pending stories that have not gotten a rejection ever are left out of this). Then, the percentage is accepted/(accepted+rejected) but multiple rejections don't matter. With this, I have 7 stories that have been accepted and 7 that have been rejected at least once, for a total of 50%. A third method is to think of the acceptances and rejections again, but to discard rejections for a story later accepted. Then, the percentage is acceptances/(acceptances+(rejections of non-accepted stories). I have 7 acceptances and 15 rejections for stories that have never been accepted, for a total of 32%. Do you think about acceptance percentages (or am I the only geek here)? If so, what method do you use to calculate the percentage? One last note. If I look at poetry, but look at every time a market accepted one or more versus everytime all the poems were accepted, I'd get a different percentage. I have had 16 acceptances and 61 rejections, for a 21% acceptance rate, but if you go by whether a market accepted anything, I have 7 markets that accepted something and 20 that accepted nothing, for a 25% acceptance rate. Both of which are higher than Duotrope because they take into account Withdrawn and Lost items in some fashion. Current status: 61 items in 70 submissions. No new markets attempted. |
| Magazine: Enchanted Conversation Enchanted Conversation is an online magazine, in Blogger format, that celebrates the art, history, analysis, charm, beauty, horror – well, you name it – about fairy tales. Enchanted Conversation is for lovers of fairy tales all over the world. We hope to entertain and enlighten our readers, and give opportunities to writers, poets, artists, and scholars to have their work published. There will be a theme for each of the issues. Only submissions that adhere to the theme for an issue will be chosen. Lucia's Wish - 1501 word story, Fantasy (dark fairytale) Humility reminder: Written for this magazine, so never submitted elsewhere. Current status: 62 items in 71 submissions. One new market attempted, Succour |
| Danse Macabre XXXII - Kismet has been released, and they have two of my poems, "More Lysol!" and "Sleepwalker". You can see them at La fortuna di poesia for now. Current status: 62 items in 74 submissions. One new market attempted, Enchanted Conversation |
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