BOOK DONE! On submissions, plus a mini-rant
OK this seems like a good place to say a few things quickly.
First and foremost: huzzah! at long last I have finished the Opus, the Book That Would Not End, and it is now in the hands of my publisher. Irritatingly, in my relieved urgency to deliver it I sent her a copy that contains my personal editing tags and marks, so now I have to go back through said ms (a good day of work) and remove them all so she has a clean version to read, but...It's DONE. For now. Til revisions occur. Thank ghu for that. We are doing the happy dance over here.
Second: because of the aforegoing I'm late with my work to my writers' group this week, so please accept my apologies, that material will be on its way within the next 24 hrs. And here also let me say a big public THANK YOU for your feedback over the last year; as I mentioned in email it has helped me to fine-tune what and how I edit, and that really helped with the Book. Yay, you guys. :)
Finally (and here's my rant; stop reading here if such things tax you):
Why is it that some purported writers cannot comprehend the plain English of story submission guidelines? If you are told a story must have a werewolf as central focus and that challenging content is welcome, and you interpret that to mean an "unusual angle" is desired and therefore produce an emo fairy* who sometimes has the impulses of a werewolf - how, exactly, can you then reply to editor who is pointing this out and say, "you wanted unusual, or I wouldn't have worked with fairies." The mind boggles.
And this, when you ran your fairy concept past the editor who said "whatever", as long as it fits the rest of the guidelines? (and please let's go back and re-read that guideline: "werewolf is central to the story." This is not to say you can't have a fairy. It means the werewolf needs to dominate screentime. Central does not mean peripheral.)
Do you think perhaps you missed the boot on understanding what the guidelines were asking for? Of course not, because as you read it, 'challenging content' meant, insert your personal favorite "unusual" creature here, decorate with a little bit of the required story theme, and voila, submission complete.
This is a good way to fail to have your story accepted, thus wasting a month of your writing time and putting said editor behind on the wordcount target. FAIL. Not hearing editor's critique and putting it back on the editor, thus demonstrating your lack of reading comprehension? ("Your guidelines didn't say you wanted a whole lotta werewolf...") - DOUBLE FAIL.
The only good side of bothersome encounters like this is that people with that level of reading comprehension (and to complement it, equally questionable writing skills) self-select out of works where everyone else can read and actually understand what the guidelines and editorial correspondence are asking for.
FEH.
The moral of the story (and there is one): if you are submitting a story to an editor and they have submission guidelines out, read them meticulously and make sure you're crystal clear on exactly what they are asking for. If you fail to do this, you won't make a sale and you'll irk the editor. I learned this the hard way by going over the maximum word count on an anthology piece once, and being soundly lambasted for it in a letter (back when people wrote letters) in rather harsh language by Marion Zimmer Bradley herself (who was the editor). She started off by saying sarcastically, "You call yourself a professional writer..." and everything was downhill from there.
It hurt my feelings and embarrased me, but it also taught me some valuable lessons about Paying Attention that I've never forgotten.
_____
*No emo fairies were actually harmed in the writing of this rant. There were none in the story sub either. Both fairy and werewolf are proxies for other objects so as to keep this rant in the realm of anonymity. The points, though, stand as made.
First and foremost: huzzah! at long last I have finished the Opus, the Book That Would Not End, and it is now in the hands of my publisher. Irritatingly, in my relieved urgency to deliver it I sent her a copy that contains my personal editing tags and marks, so now I have to go back through said ms (a good day of work) and remove them all so she has a clean version to read, but...It's DONE. For now. Til revisions occur. Thank ghu for that. We are doing the happy dance over here.
Second: because of the aforegoing I'm late with my work to my writers' group this week, so please accept my apologies, that material will be on its way within the next 24 hrs. And here also let me say a big public THANK YOU for your feedback over the last year; as I mentioned in email it has helped me to fine-tune what and how I edit, and that really helped with the Book. Yay, you guys. :)
Finally (and here's my rant; stop reading here if such things tax you):
Why is it that some purported writers cannot comprehend the plain English of story submission guidelines? If you are told a story must have a werewolf as central focus and that challenging content is welcome, and you interpret that to mean an "unusual angle" is desired and therefore produce an emo fairy* who sometimes has the impulses of a werewolf - how, exactly, can you then reply to editor who is pointing this out and say, "you wanted unusual, or I wouldn't have worked with fairies." The mind boggles.
And this, when you ran your fairy concept past the editor who said "whatever", as long as it fits the rest of the guidelines? (and please let's go back and re-read that guideline: "werewolf is central to the story." This is not to say you can't have a fairy. It means the werewolf needs to dominate screentime. Central does not mean peripheral.)
Do you think perhaps you missed the boot on understanding what the guidelines were asking for? Of course not, because as you read it, 'challenging content' meant, insert your personal favorite "unusual" creature here, decorate with a little bit of the required story theme, and voila, submission complete.
This is a good way to fail to have your story accepted, thus wasting a month of your writing time and putting said editor behind on the wordcount target. FAIL. Not hearing editor's critique and putting it back on the editor, thus demonstrating your lack of reading comprehension? ("Your guidelines didn't say you wanted a whole lotta werewolf...") - DOUBLE FAIL.
The only good side of bothersome encounters like this is that people with that level of reading comprehension (and to complement it, equally questionable writing skills) self-select out of works where everyone else can read and actually understand what the guidelines and editorial correspondence are asking for.
FEH.
The moral of the story (and there is one): if you are submitting a story to an editor and they have submission guidelines out, read them meticulously and make sure you're crystal clear on exactly what they are asking for. If you fail to do this, you won't make a sale and you'll irk the editor. I learned this the hard way by going over the maximum word count on an anthology piece once, and being soundly lambasted for it in a letter (back when people wrote letters) in rather harsh language by Marion Zimmer Bradley herself (who was the editor). She started off by saying sarcastically, "You call yourself a professional writer..." and everything was downhill from there.
It hurt my feelings and embarrased me, but it also taught me some valuable lessons about Paying Attention that I've never forgotten.
_____
*No emo fairies were actually harmed in the writing of this rant. There were none in the story sub either. Both fairy and werewolf are proxies for other objects so as to keep this rant in the realm of anonymity. The points, though, stand as made.