20th Original Story Publication: "The Nana Inheritance"
Hello, subscribers!
I'm delighted to announce my 20th original short story publication, "The Nana Inheritance" is up at Nature: Futures!
Nature: Futures (and much of the rest of the Nature site) is now putting articles, including short stories, under the subscription paywall once they past a month old. So please check out the story while it's still free to read.
Once again, my "behind the story" thoughts are up with the story itself, so as with "The House, the Witch, and Sugarcane Stalks" last month (which Alex Brown at Tor.com selected as an April Must Read!), I'll instead include some...
Stats Talk
Number of drafts before submitting: 5
Time from brainstorming/drafting/revising to submission: 4 months
Number of submissions: 2
Months on submission before acceptance: 4.5
Months from original idea to acceptance: 8.5
My "Time from brainstorming... to submission" was not four months of active work/work solely on that piece. According to my writing log, I spent around six devoted writing sessions on "The Nana Inheritance."
What else was I working on during those approximately 120 days? Quite a lot, apparently! I wrote "Nana" for a contest, got initial feedback, then switched pretty immediately into final edits for the book I'd soon query, plus some agent research and work on my query package. Then I sent queries. (Note: readers may recall I did indeed gain an agent, Paul Lucas, and the book is now out on submission.)
I also worked on edits for another flash story I submitted later that year, plus edits on two stories I had due back to editors before publication. And I began drafting what became a secondary-world fantasy novelette I have on submission now; then also wrote a horror SF story that's on mental docket to edit this year. Plus, I pulled together a couple of newsletters.
It was a very productive fall, apparently! (It's not lost on me how this coincided with my kid starting preschool for the first time, and brings to mind the utter lack of support for artist parents [all working parents, actually] in the United States , but that's an entirely different newsletter.)
Since I now need all my fingers and toes to count my original short story publications (not really but you know what I mean) how about we segue into some...
Lifetime Stats
I started submitting short fiction for publication in December of 2014, after I attended Viable Paradise. (Till Hell Won't Have It!)
Since then, I've had:
277 rejections
26 acceptances (including reprints)
A smattering of withdrawn or no-response submissions I'm too lazy to go back and check for specific numbers)
My record for highest number of submissions before acceptance is 17; the runner-up is 16. My lowest is 1, and I've managed that thrice.
My personal best for number of acceptances in a year is 5, and that's this year. Previously I'd managed 4 in a year, again thrice.
Once I started selling (I submitted work for over a year before anything sold), my longest dry spell of no sales was 14 months (and it was a solicited translation. Not counting that, the record is 18 months).
My shortest dry spell between acceptances is about five hours. I rode that high of "two acceptances in a day" for a week.
All this to say: Well, I'm aware that "writing for publication, especially paid, requires perseverance" is not a new insight. Rejection is always, always, the default. But just because it's the default doesn't mean a story is bad; it means the story wasn't right for a given market or editor.
One last number to leave you with, which I'm including because it relates to a future newsletter I'm percolating regarding the value, monetary and otherwise, of creative work:
To date, I've earned $4,380.67 from my writing, including the $500 stipend I received for the Snowed-in Residency earlier this year. Mind, that doesn't include payment for all of my 26 acceptances; I have some still pending (completely normal and in line with the contracts!). But it's close enough for government work, as the saying goes.
Till next time!
-Amanda