[Writer Post] Wednesday Ramble
It’s Wednesday, and my family has had a series of body blows already this week, but looking forward to an awesome weekend at Sci Fi Expo. My emergency order of books came in early, so I’m well stocked and ready to meet new people – I also have a new piece of promotional gear that will appeal, I think to the high tech and low tech alike. Come see me to find out what it is, and as with other shows, the code word is “Cookies”.
As for writing, received another rejection this week (oh, hey, make that two). Both werea form rejections – one very polite and nice. That story’s gone back out to another market (and just come back). This story is one of the kinda frustrating ones – it’s one I wrote on a dare by a much bigger name. It’s good. It’s niche-y, so it’s tougher. But what made me want to completely flip off the author who challenged me to write it? A simple comment: Oh, you haven’t sold that yet?” Yeah, I’m not a Big Name. I don’t automatically sell. Especially at the top tier markets.
Um…yeah. It’s not that simple. If you look at my contact list on my phone, it looks darned impressive. At WorldCon, in the matter of about an hour, I was hugged by four or five major editors. Know what that means? It means they like me as a person, and that helps. Don’t get me wrong, it’s that whole “Don’t be a jerk” thing. They pay attention. And eventually they’ll buy something because it’ll finally be the right fit – and they’ll know that I won’t be a pain to work with.
In fact, when it comes to editing, I’m all for it. Unless someone wants me to change a story to something completely different to the story I wrote, I’m going to take the edits (at least to the best of my ability). If I can’t make something work, I’ll tell the editor that I tried and why I couldn’t make the change work. In fact, I still need to implement some changes to a story that C.C. Finlay turned down last week. There were NOTES!
And now to make something good come out of this week, because it’s only Wednesday. A lot of good can still happen.