New Story: "The House, the Witch, and Sugarcane Stalks"
Happy late April, readers, and hello from my new newsletter platform, Buttondown!
I’m happy to announce my debut in Lightspeed, and my first story of 2023, “The House, the Witch, and Sugarcane Stalks,” is now free to read!
If you’re interested in a Hansel and Gretel inspired morsel (under 1600 words) set in antebellum Louisiana, then please do check it out.
Normally when I have a new story out I’ve been including a little “Behind the Story” feature here on the ol’ newsletter. This time out, I’m honored to have been chosen for an Author Spotlight at Lightspeed, where I feel I covered the impetus for this story pretty well with the help of Laurel Amberdine’s questions! Read it here.
With the behind the story notes taken care of, how about some...
Stats Talk
Number of drafts before submitting: 6
Time from brainstorming/drafting/revising to submission: 1 month
Number of submissions: 4
Months on submission before acceptance: 5.5
Months from original idea to acceptance: 6.5
So, let's chat about these figures.
Six drafts of a sub-1600-word story might sound like a lot, as well as it taking me a month to get it submission-ready. It's not, at least not for me. My writing log shows that I was also working on the novel I queried later in 2022 (and which should be going on submission very soon!), and there was some wait time for critiques in there as well. While I have dreams of getting to a point where three or four drafts is my average, I am perhaps too much of a pantser for that to be realistic for me.
Number of submissions: Four is actually an excellent figure--my average is more along the lines of seven markets before acceptance. Even at 5.5 months on submission, hitting four markets is fairly "fast." It means most rejections were coming in at close to 45 days, when some markets measure responses in months, plural. Early on I also hit two markets that allowed simultaneous submissions, so I had two submissions pending at the same time. I like sim-subs (and in the alternate universe where I decide to run my own short-fic magazine I'll allow them), but for my own record-keeping purposes I usually won't sub a single to more than two markets at once.
As for months from idea to final acceptance, well, that's just a reminder that this industry moves slowly--even for short stories. Writing is generally not a profession for the impatient.
I feel like I should launch into a Discourse about the necessity of patience and strategies for achieving it, but that's a newsletter in and of itself.
Till next time!
-Amanda