07.19.2008
...that I am still very much alive. I just have not received a rejection in well over a month. I know, it's strange, right? This radio silence is making me nervous all over. As such, today I sent a story to Fantasy & Science-Fiction where I'm bound to get one and get one fast.
There are a couple of reasons for this, actually. The first is, as I think you may all know, that I have not been writing as much. I've completed three whole stories all year. Hence the reason I killed the monthly statistics. It just got too depressing to see "0" every month under "stories completed". I've been writing but it's all been world back story and no one is interested in publishing that.
Secondly, I've been waiting for some rejections to roll on in. I've got Ayla Athena waiting for rejection number seven from Zoetrope: All-Story. It's been waiting just over two months and it's making me wonder whether I included my self-addressed stamped envelope in the package. And Skin has been at Abyss & Apex an amazing seventy days, certainly a record for them. Up until now they've been averaging a respectable twenty-nine.
Thirdly, I've submitted so madly over the last few months that I'm starting to run out of stories for rejection. I mean, sure, I could send them to Joe's E-Zine of the Fantastic but it's not quite the same. Also, half of them just aren't in the kind of shape I feel comfortable sharing with others.
Which leads me to what I have been doing.
I've begun rewriting my old stories. Yes, sir.
I got some very good notes back from my buddy Dan's wife, Sasha, on your favorite and mine, Drug Enforcement. And when I say "good" notes, I mean fucking great. She nailed all of the problems with the story that I felt were there but could not see. Additionally, since I finished Company Town, I've been disappointed with the way description was handled in everything else up to this point, with the possible exception of Varad Ranjani.
So I took an ax to Drug Enforcement and rewrote according to Sasha's notes. And the results were incredible. The story became longer, about four hundred words or so, but it also became tighter and the character interaction much more real. I also removed characters that served no other purpose but to transition from one interaction to another. I was very, very happy.
So I began looking at my back catalog, for one that really jumped out as needing a rewrite and for which I had the inclination to do it with. And then it hit me: They Who Cast The First Stone. Yep, the first story I wrote in the whole goddamned series. I mean, I finished that fucker back in October of the year six for Christ's sake. But it only had five rejections and nine more places left to go on its list of tyranny.
So I opened her up and got to work.
I think I spent all day, yesterday working on it. Then, I printed her out and went over her with a red pen while playing movies in the background at night. Like Drug Enforcement, First Stone gained an additional four hundred words but that was after rewriting everything else. And I mean "rewriting" damn it.
I worked with Word's "track changes" feature on but set it so that the red lines wouldn't display--you know, so I could actually read an unbroken sentence while working. Then, at the end, I changed it back to show my alterations. The fucker was so struck-through and red it looked like I'd taken a knife to the document and it bled.
It was awesome.
And also, the story rocked. I mean, I always liked it, of course. But now it rocks. It reads like my current work and is tight all over. The action runs through it without writerly interference and the dialog sounds as natural as you and I talking.
And I finished it by about two o'clock today. (It's four now, if you want to know.) So I printed the sucker out with a letter, stamped an envelope, stuck all three into a larger one, and walked my ass to the post office. And right now, it's winging it's way to Hoboken for Fantasy & Science-Fiction to do their magic on.
Yes, sir. I have a new story for circulation.
It's kind of like a naval retrofit in my mind. An old clunker sails into the yard, its knees shaky, its timbers rotting. Then, a few months later, out sails the sweetest ship on the sea. The keel was always sound, it was the structure around it that was falling apart.
And that's what I've been doing with my summer vacation.
And now that I've posted this, it's time to bang around on The Three Lives of Slugger Joe. After all, the more stories I can circulate, the more rejections I can post here for your entertainment and edification. Right?
Cheers, kids.