And this wasn’t just any old rejection, it was my 100th. In the end what does this mean?

You might think this depressed me, but honestly, at this point after 100 rejects I’ve become somewhat immune to the process. I’ll make this more clear. I haven’t been rejected 100 times for one piece of work. I haven’t submitted any novels yet, only short stories to many markets.

I spent a solid year simply writing and not worrying over submissions. However, the following year I began submitting, hesitantly at first, and by the end of that year and up to the present, I have on average ten short stories out on the market looking for a home at any given time.

I won’t lie and say that for certain stories at markets where I feel they’re a great fit, I allow myself to be angry for about a minute, and then shoot the story off to another market. I have a story that has been out consistently for consideration since 2009. Writing requires patience.

Luckily, I always have another story or two in the works so I do not hinge my success or failure on one lone story. I have too many stories inside me fighting to be written that focusing on one story seems silly to me now.

So, back to the original question I asked: does 100 rejections mean anything? Yes, it means:
* I submit a lot.
* I write a lot.
* I’m not afraid to show first readers/slush readers/editors my work.
* 100 rejections dedication and resilience.

Those are all positives, and I’m probably leaving off a few. I suppose I’m lucky in that throughout my life I’ve been rejected at every turn. I adapt, and I learn, and eventually I overcome the obstacles placed before me (whether they be my own limitations or the roadblocks others place before me).

Are there negatives to rejection? Yes. Being rejected! There are others, but over time they do not even matter if you’re dedicated and you keep writing. That is the key here: keep writing. Keep your butt in the chair and produce new words as much as you can.

So, I had hoped to get published before #100, but it didn’t happen and now that I’m there I realize it’s just a number. Kind of like when I turned 40. Really, it’s just another number and is what you make of it. Everything in life is what you choose to make of it and how you choose to handle it.

This is my second Honorable Mention in the contest to go along with my one Finalist nod. Not bad. Where a Finalist means you were in the top 8 out of over 1,000 entries (typical # of entries per quarter), an Honorable Mention is somewhere around the top 10% of all submissions. Not bad at all. Overall I’m very happy with the HM, but after a Finalist in Q4 of 2012, almost anything would be a let down. To be fair, my entry in Q1 was a re-worked story that was over a year old. There is no doubt that my writing had improved since I first wrote that story (hence the finalist story that was much newer), and I suspect after taking Dean Wesley Smith’s Character Voice & Setting Workshop in March, the stories I write now will be even better.

Anyway, writing is a pursuit that can never be truly mastered, and for someone like me that is very appealing. Boredom sets in very easily with me and with writing I never feel that way. Writing is a daily challenge that pushes me and I love that sort of stimulation. Anyway, my Quarter 2 story was submitted on March 31st and I suspect that it’ll be a while before anyone receives those results. Right now I have a few stories done that could be good for Q3, but that deadline is the end of June so I have plenty of time to pick the story I feel is best for the Writers of the Future Market.

Until then I have a few stories to work on that have deadlines as well as novels to write.

Good luck to all my fellow WotF submitters who have not heard anything yet!

Many things have happened since I’ve last posted:

First: I was very saddened to learn that the coordinating judge of the Writers of the Future Contest, K.D. Wentworth passed away last week. I never met Kathy, but had always heard such wonderful things about her and only interacted with her on the most superficial level on her SFF.NET forum. Her passing really hit me and I found myself thinking about her quite a bit this past week. Kathy was the first editor that looked at my writing and said it was good enough to be published. She told me this by making one of my stories a finalist in the contest, and in doing so said that it was a publishable story. I had always hoped to meet Kathy, but only got to know her a little more by reading some of the wonderful tributes that have been posted as well as her obituary. Of course, she’s touched so many lives in so many ways, but I’ll always know her in only a couple of ways: her writing and her discovery of so many writers and their works. Perhaps many of those discovered writers would have made it anyway, but they definitely got a nice shove forward when she chose them as finalists.

Second: In March I attended a wonderful workshop taught by Dean Wesley Smith out on the Oregon Coast in Lincoln City. The workshop was devoted to Character Voice and Setting. Wow. I cannot say enough good things about Dean, the workshop, and the workshop attendees. Dean is a wonderful instructor and just a great guy. His wife, Kris Rusch (you may have heard of her) dropped in from time to time to assist as well as just to sit around and chat. Dean and Kris craft workshops really make you produce. In that one week we had to write two complete short stories (between 3k-6k) as well as writing exercises that ended up being another 2k words a day, and read everyone else’s short stories. A ton of work, but it was glorious. The two short stories I wrote while I was there are as good or better than short stories I spent a week or two on at home. I spent an afternoon on each short story: the first one was about 4k words, the second about 6k. Not bad at all. A tiring, but rewarding week. I could go on and on about their workshops, but I came away from that week a much better writer than I was going into it.

Third: My day job has been absolutely brutal of late and really saps my energy. Despite all that I’ve been managing a decent word count every day. On a bad day it’s simply 250 words, but hey, it’s something. On a good day I’m averaging over 1k. Great word counts considering the 12 hour days I normally have at the day job (that includes the commute though, about an hour each way).

Fourth: I currently have two stories under consideration as Writers of the Future: Quarter 1 and Quarter 2. Judging for Q1 was probably either completed by Kathy before she passed, or was very close to being completed. Results have been coming in for over a month now, but very slow. I believe we’re at the end of the Q1 judging period, and so far I’ve not gotten a rejection. Of course, there haven’t been any Honorable Mentions or Semi-Finalists yet, which also probably means that Finalists have not been called. So…I’m obviously hoping for another finalist, but an HM or a Semi would be nice as well. I feel pretty good about my Q1 and Q2 stories, but we shall see, it’s almost impossible to guess, and a writer is never a good judge of his/her work.

That’s enough for now, and for any fellow WotF submitters reading this: if you’ve gotten a rejection keep on submitting! I have many, many WotF rejections under my belt, and if you haven’t heard results yet, then good luck to you!

My story, as I’ve posted before did not make top 3 and was not chosen for the anthology as a published finalist.

I have an entry in for Q1, but this time it’s a fantasy story. I don’t write too many fantasy shorts, but this one was critiqued by Jay Lake at World Con last summer, so I feel pretty good about it. But, we’ll see as every editor has different tastes.

Where did that leave me? Well, if there is room in the anthology, or it needs a certain type of story, the coordinating judge can pick one of the non-winning finalist stories for publication. So, where did that leave me? My story wasn’t chosen for publication. I was assured by the contest administrator that it had nothing to do with the quality of the story, since the coordinating judge wouldn’t have chosen it as a finalist if she didn’t think it was publishable. The choice came down to length of story and/or the need of the anthology. My story was near future science fiction, so it’s very possible they had a lot of that, or that it didn’t quite fit the overall theme of the anthology this year.

Hey, at least I made finalist though! That made me (and still makes me) feel really good about my writing! I have another entry in for Q1, and soon I’ll be submitting for Q2, hopefully I make finalist again this year and win!

On a side note, this has freed me up to attend another Dean Wesley Smith and Kris Rusch workshop being held in March. This one is the character voice and setting workshop. I’m looking forward to it since after attending the short story workshop last year I felt that my writing took a major leap in quality.

Today a list came out announcing Finalists and Semi-Finalists for the Writers of the Future Contest, and I’ve known my status for over a month now. My finalist call actually came on Thanksgiving Day, however, that call went to my voicemail at work. I dragged my butt into work that Friday (I almost took the day off), and there in my voicemail was the message that my story was a finalist! I was so glad that I’d gone to work that day. It’s been very difficult to not blurt it out to people, but now that the coordinating judge let the names loose, I’m free to at least talk about being a finalist!

So, what does all this mean? The Writers of the Future Contest (WotF) is the best known contest for writers in the science fiction and fantasy genre looking to turn Pro. The contest is judged blind (meaning only the contest administrator knows which manuscript is yours, the judges do not). The manuscripts (I’ve heard that over 1,000 entries are submitted each quarter) are read by the coordinating judge who chooses 8 finalists. Those 8 stories are then sent on to 4 judges who rank them. The top 3 out of those 8 stories are called “winners” and definitely published in the yearly anthology. If there is room in the anthology there is a chance that a “non-winning” story could be published in the anthology.

So, my finalist story is now being looked at by four more judges (these judges are all huge names in the sci-fi/fantasy world) and I just have to hope that they like it enough so that I place in the top 3.

What does winning the contest mean besides the obvious professional publication?

1. Money. WotF pays more than almost any other short story publication, and even more if you’re the Gold Award winner. The Gold Award is about the same as many advances for a full novel!

2. Workshop. The contest pays for all its winners to attend a week long workshop followed by an awards ceremony usually held in Hollywood. They pay for the airfare, limo from the airport, hotel, and the workshop.

3. Networking. Not only the other winners, but one-on-one time with professionals during the workshop and I’ve heard at the bar after hours.

4. A wonderful professional writing credit that will help when I submit other short stories and novels to publishers.

So, at this point I have to wait and see if my story made top 3, hopefully I’ll know soon. And one more thing: I can’t thank Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith enough, since I wrote my finalist story after taking their short story workshop!

This post is way easier to write than the life goals I just posted. Here I can really put some numbers down, and shoot for some quantifiable results.

Production:

1. Write daily with an average word count of 2,000 words. This isn’t too difficult for me, but may be ambitious depending on how crazy the day job gets. Other factors include those days when I’m trying to plot, or life happens. Maybe I’ll go for this then: 2,000 words/day, or 10,000 words/week. I know they aren’t the same, but at least with 10,000 words a week it gives me some leeway.

2. Short Stories – complete 12 short stories. This should be workable, and I would have set it higher if I didn’t want to concentrate on novels this year. In 2011 I stopped working on novels (the closest I came was a novella, but a short one really).

3. Novels – complete 3 novels. This too, shouldn’t be too difficult as I already have the ideas put together in my head or already somewhat plotted out. This gives me 3 months to write the novel, and 1/2 month planning in the beginning, and a 1/2 month for revisions at the end. This may be ambitious, but it’s something to aim for.

General:

4. Workshops and Conventions. I almost feel like I’m cheating here. I’m already signed up for World Con in Chicago as well as World Fantasy in Toronto. I’d love to attend the Kris and Dean Character Voice and Setting Workshop in March, but depending on how something else works out I may need to axe that one. Hopefully I’ll know soon if that work shop will be feasible for me this year. So, I think this goal is attainable one way or another, meaning: attend at least 1 workshop and 2 conventions.

5. Submit. Everything I start I must finish and then submit until the appropriate markets are exhausted. At that point, I’ll dive into e-publishing, but only once I’m satisfied the pro markets and select semi-pro markets are done.

6. Social Networking. Keep the website, blog, and Facebook up to date as well as Tweet a little more. This also means that I need to link these things so they update each other. I will also comment on other people’s blogs a little more. This is more of an ambiguous goal, but I’ll try to be better!

So, these are the writing goals I can think of right now, but it’s a starting point and now it’s been written down so I’m stuck!

I could also go on and on about diet, and perhaps there I could make some adjustments, but you know what? I like eating cookies and chocolate, as well as having a beer or a mixed drink when I want one. My rigorous workouts allow me to indulge from time to time, and really the answer for me there is to simply not have it (junk food) around the house. That is easy enough, I have pretty good control when I’m at the grocery store. For diet though, I never go “on a diet”, I simply just try to be reasonable with my portions and try to keep the furnace stoked.

LIfe goals that mean something. While I was at church this morning, the words of my priest regarding resolutions made me think. The sort of goals I’d like to set for my life would be more spiritual. I want to be a better person, but that isn’t specific enough. What I really mean is that I want to be more kind to others, and not immediately think the worst of people, and if they somehow wrong me, not to simply retaliate. This is easier said than done. I don’t know how many times I’ve chastised myself for thinking or saying something about someone while driving, only to then turn around a few seconds later and do it again!! It’s crazy, and I know I’m doing it, but it just happens. I’m ultra-aware of when I’m being mean, nasty, or sarcastic, and at times it’s even funny, but it isn’t really a good way to be.

So, for my life goals it’ll be hard to really track how I’m doing, but as long as I’m thinking about my actions versus reacting all the time I’ll be on the right track. There are other goals I’d like to try, things such as keeping more in touch with friends and family. You’d think with all the various social networking tools, email, phones, etc. that it’d be easy, but I’m horrible at staying in touch. I’m lucky though, that most of my friends, and my family don’t seem to mind, but I really do need to improve in that area. My problem is that I’m so over saturated with daily interaction with people at work that I find it undesirable to be Mr. Social in the evenings.

My life goals seem simple, but they’ll really be a daily struggle for me, and most people won’t even know how hard they are for me. It isn’t easy be a good person, but maybe it isn’t supposed to be.

I like the way Dean Wesley Smith discusses goals on his blog. He further breaks down goals by pointing out what should seem obvious regarding goals you can’t control. Things such as: I’ll sell a book to a publisher. That is more of a dream than a goal. A goal is something more concrete (at least in my writing world), something like: I will write and submit 20 short stories this year.

Anyway, I’m going to post two more times on goals: Life goals and then writing goals.

First, like many writers who are on the road to publication, a conversation will inevitably lead to this:  ”Oh, you’re a writer, are you published?”  I, and I’m assuming many other writers, hate this question.  No, I’m a writer. Published or not I’m a writer.  I know these people probably don’t mean anything, but it’s almost like you’re not really a writer unless you’ve been published–and not by a vanity press, or yourself.

This leads me to the next point:  writing requires, no it demands patience.  Most people in this day and age lack that virtue.  I know I lacked it when I was young.  I probably lacked patience all the way up until my early 30s.  There’s nothing wrong with that, I think it’s just a fact of life, but it isn’t getting any better.  Look at movies for instance.  Back when I was a kid and a movie like Star Wars came out, you couldn’t watch it again unless you saw it in the theater or you were lucky enough to catch it on television, and often years after it had its run in the theaters.  Today?  Shoot, you can be watching a new movie at home the day it hits the theaters (not legally of course).  Today’s world breeds impatience.  I believe this is funneling to readers and writers as well.

Many readers are impatient and want what basically equates to a movie in word form–and an action movie at that. Writers are impatient in other ways.  Many other ways.

Self-publishing and e-publishing are two of those ways and often become one way.  Patience is the key to writing and publishing.  Writing is a life-long journey.  If you’re writing a book simply to get published, receive accolades and make a lot of money, well, you’re in for a huge disappointment.  There are many other careers that are more stable, more lucrative, and provide benefits–but that point has been made many times by many other writers who have been in the field for a long, long, time.

I read many blogs about self-publishing and e-publishing and I will consider those options.  I mention that only because I don’t want anyone to think that I’m against that type of publishing.  So, are there people out there that can essentially decide they want to write, sit down craft a novel, maybe do another draft or two and then find an agent or a publisher?  I’m sure there are, but here is what typically happens, and I know this because I’ve spoken with people who have a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or perhaps even themselves that have written ONE story, or ONE novel and sent it out only to be rejected. I’ll add this caveat though: congratulations on finishing a story and then sending it out!  How many people start writing only to quit?  Most people.  Very few people ever finish writing a story.  And I know this because I was guilty of this when I was much younger.

Now, they send a story out, get a rejection or two and get antsy.  They spent all this time writing a novel, months, or years even and now they’re getting rejects. What’s next?  Rather than work on the next story and continue to send the story out they complain and obsess about the book they’ve already written.  And here it comes:  ”Screw it, I’ll publish this myself.”  Or  ”I’ll start my own publishing company.”  Or (heaven forbid) “I’ll pay someone else to publish my book, and I’ll hand sell it myself.”  Guess what?  Those are probably not good ideas at this stage.

If you’ve written many, many, words and you’ve been at this writing thing for a while, then I agree, there is no harm in self-publishing.  And if you have been at it for awhile, then you’re probably already aware of your options.  But if you’re a noob writer, you have to realize, writing and self-publishing is a lot of work. And if you don’t read in the genre you’re writing in, and have no clue how the publishing industry really works, well, you’re pretty much screwed.

I follow Dean Wesley Smith’s blog as well as Kris Rusch’s–they blog a lot about the new world of publishing and how to self-publish, etc.  They also teach classes on self-publishing!  Links to their websites are also in my sidebar there to the right. Check them out.

Kris and Dean also recommend that writers should pursue both traditional and self-publishing routes.  I maintain that a writer needs to have patience.  If a book took you years to write, well, what’s the rush?  Submit that book as many times as it takes.  If there are 50 publishers out there that publish your genre, well, you better submit it 50 times–even if it takes years.  I have short stories that have been on submission for two years–not to one market, but to over a dozen.  Patience.  If I exhaust the pro markets I feel a story would work in, well, I will then self-publish that story and do it right.

I could write about this all night long, but I think I’ve made my point.  Have patience and keep at it, if you’re a real writer, you’ll realize this is a life-long pursuit.