As of Tuesday night, I’ve received 99 short story rejections. Number 100 could come at any moment. Maybe by the time you read this.<\/p>\n
Those rejections are for 17 different stories. That surprises me, because I didn’t think I’d written that many stories. (But now I see why I have such a big backlog of short stories to give to my crit group while they’re in between novels.) Lots of writers seem to spew out short stories as if they’ve got a three-shift assembly line in the basement, so I usually think of myself as not very productive. But my decision in late 2009 to write at least four a year seems to have resulted in…almost four stories a year. (I started slow since I was new at it, and have done more than four the past couple years.)<\/p>\n
They seem to be getting better, too. Who’d have expected that practice helps?<\/p>\n
99 is a big number. Every now and then someone expresses sympathy for a rejection. Very few of them sting even a little bit. You have to get numb. (Being a reporter helps there, btw.) My tiny but nonzero number of sales helps too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As of Tuesday night, I’ve received 99 short story rejections. Number 100 could come at any moment. Maybe by the time you read this. Those rejections are for 17 different stories. That surprises me, because I didn’t think I’d written … Continue reading