My first brush with Rejectomancy

I’ve heard a lot about rejectomancy, the practice of puzzling over a rejection letter and trying to figure out what it means. I even critiqued a very fun story where the term was taken literally and the MC could always tell what was on somebody’s mind from any sort of rejection, be it verbal, electronic, or printed. But I guess I’ve never really gotten into the act until today, where I sorta tripped over it backwards.

I’m not going to share the market with you all, but it’s a pro market that takes science fiction and fantasy. I submitted ‘Tough Love’ to them a week ago, and got an email back this morning saying no thanks, it didn’t push enough boundaries for them, and actually suggesting that I read what they publish to get a better feel for it. (D’oh!) I did read a few stories from this market before I submitted, but I guess I didn’t pick up on how much they liked really weird stuff, or I put it out of my mind because I thought ‘well, I can’t tell how weird my own stories are.’ Maybe that’s true to a certain extent, but now that I’m really thinking about it, I have to admit that Tough Love is not particularly weird.

One of my Odyssey friends suggested that I should write something weirder next time, but I’m not sure if I can be weird on command. My natural inclination is just to not bother submitting to this market again until one of two things happens: either somebody else suggests them to me as a market for a particular story, or I spontaneously think, “Oh wow, this story is so weird I have to submit it to [Market]!”

🙂

IWSG: Getting back to drafting

Hey there! It’s time for the September 2013 edition of the Insecure Writers Support Group! First of all, I’m excited to report that I crossed almost everything off my September to-do list before I went to bed on Monday evening, including submitting a story! A revised version of “Tough Love’ has been entered for Writers of the Future!

But I’m still feeling like I haven’t been accomplishing as much as I’d like to in terms of writing and revising. I only got a little over 1000 new words written in September, finishing off one story and starting another.

I’m taking a break from the Team Ambitious critiquing this week and next. (I’m not the only one. Somebody decided that submitting to WOTF was an acceptable substitute for submitting a new story to be critiqued.) And I’ve resolved to get the first draft of ‘Steampunk Roswell 51’ finished by the morning of Canadian Thanskgiving. I want to do some serious revision on ‘Love is a Masterpiece’ or ‘Gotta Have that Look’ too.

If only I can avoid spending all my time for the next two weeks playing with my new Nexus 7 tablet. 😉

June Goals update

Okay, eleven days into June, and I feel like I’ve got a fair bit to show for it!

• Four stories finished for Camp Nanowrimo/Summer of Shorts, and a fifth one started with a few hundred words.
• Three stories sent in for the CSSF workshop later this month.
• A dozen stories from my fellow workshoppers converted to ebook format so that I can read them through SOON and make notes without needing to have a computer nearby.
• Living room table mostly cleared off so that I can use it for manuscript editing after I get back home in July.
• New ending to ‘Tough Love’ revised and sent in to update the critters.org manuscript queue – it’ll be going out to the critters on Wednesday this week!
• Questions for the Ninja Spotlight FINALLY organized and emails sent out to my four Ninja volunteers so far!
• Eight of my own stories or scripts converted to e-book format for my own review and re-reading pleasure.

That’s all I can think of, but it’s not bad, huh? Have you been able to make a dent on a to-do list this summer?