(Untitled)

[apiphile]

Jess has been successfully poured onto a train to Paris, and I have written myself a horrible to-do list featuring mostly things I kind of want to do and one thing I would rather eat my own legs than do. As is the way of to-do lists, it has become a branchy to-do TREE, and I am writing this entry in between typing up the missing scene from BBB that

Comments

[minervasolo]

I was trying to think of more SF mags the other night. The other really big one is Clarkesworld, but their word limit is 8k. I have a bunch of links on my old spreadsheet, but I don't know how many of the following still exist/still take 10k stories:
http://www.hd-image.com/submissions.htm
http://www.byzarium.com/guidelines
http://afterburnsf.com/SubmissionGuidelines.aspx
http://www.allegoryezine.com/submissions.htm
http://coyotewildmag.com/CoyoteWildGuidelines.html
http://www.ambitmagazine.co.uk/

[apiphile]

Ooooh, thank you. The word limit is an irritant partially because I really want to short story properly and I have this near-inability to get anything SAID in less than about 5000 words. :(

[minervasolo]

The advantage of SF is it's much more accepting of longer word counts, so there's more 10k option than other genres, though a lot put 7.5-8k as a max.

[apiphile]

I wish I was capable of being more concise though.

[marika_kailaya]

using spreadsheets and ten thousand notepad files

i keep downloading cool-looking story software thinking "yeah features yeah" and then i keep deleting it and writing half of my shit on actual post-it notes which i then stick onto my desk.

my goal is to get rejected by more people than a specific one of my friends

IT WON'T BE ME. NOBODY HAS MORE REJECTION LETTERS THAN I DO. EVER. ALL THE SHITTY HACKS OF THE WORLD COMBINED CANNOT TOP MY REJECTION LETTER COUNT. I MIGHT BE EXAGGERATING but otoh i don't have *any* acceptance letters.

magicians is a good plan. yeah. you sort out bbb & magicians and i'll properly read them under the pretense of betaing which is now the only way i can ever get any pleasure-reading done without feeling like i am wasting time. *settles in* yeah.

[apiphile]

Yeah, post-its work for me too. Or actual notebooks and diagrams. I am too old and too grumpy and too unenamoured of most of the software I've encountered to actually write using them. Also, you know, I write from the beginning of my books to the end, so I don't really need to "keep track of where I am in the book".

Nope, it's my friend Abbi, who was rejected by 48 agents. I need to beat that. Currently aiming for fifty before I go "nah fuck it" and self-publish.

BBB looks like a goer so far and Magicians has one chapter already anyway. :D

[dragged_up]

Did I ever point you to Nightmare Magazine for short stories, darling? I don't know if it's remotely relevant for what you're submitting at the moment (and their submissions are closed atm anyway, although reopening on the 20th) but they'd be good for body horrorish things.

(ccleaner might help a tiny bit with the netbook?)

[apiphile]

You did! That's the thing I'm waiting to submit to!

Ah, thank you. It's already on the netbook, I shall give it a going-over in a bit.

[wolfy_writing]

Ooh, excellent plan on the submissions! That way, if you get rejected, you win, and if you get accepted you lose in the best way!

I'm supposed to be finishing up a story for that self-published writer's anthology thing I agreed to, but so far I've been writing inappropriate stories about women having sex with elements (wind, water, and fire, but not earth because earth bores me, and not titanium or gold or real elements, because then I'd need to do a million stories).

[apiphile]

That was the only way it was going to happen at all. ;)

Well if you claim the women represent earth that gets you out of putting earth in there, certainly. :D

[wolfy_writing]

Tricking yourself into stuff is actually a major life skill.

That would probably work if I ended up distributing it anywhere and anyone actually went "Wait, you are totally doing it wrong!" (I'm not sure if I will. I've got two pieces of suggestive build-up followed by a rather cliche climax, and one rough beginning to something that has no plot and would probably squick absolutely everyone.)