Large numbers ease the heartache

This week I've been sending off short stories to magazines again.  I've always admired people like Della Galton, who have around fifty stories out on submission at any one time.  I've never managed that.

I think that volume is probably easier to achieve if all the stories you write are the same length, and can be easily interchanged between magazines.  But I've not found that the case with SF magazines.  For a start, story lengths run from 1,500 maximum to  virtually no upper limit.  I was finding it hard to get a handle on this, until I hit on the idea of making a tale of magazines listed in order of maximum story length.

I've also got more organised about printing out each magazine's submission guidelines and putting them in a file for reference.  And I do need to refer to them every time.  I thought when all submissions went electronic things would get much easier, but it ain't so.  Some magazines take docx files, some only doc files, others only rtf files.  And one magazine even wants Courier Font too (which I absolutely hate).  So all this stuff has to be recorded, and as I'm using Word 2010, every story has to be saved in doc format as well.

So streamlining the process is challenging.  But I've worked out that the easiest way to do a batch of submissions is to go through my records and see what stories aren't out, then through my list of magazines, matching story lengths to magazines.  I make a list, and then blitz-submit.

It still takes ages matching stories to magazines, making the submissions, and updating my records, but I know I have to commit to this boring admin.  And I am getting better.  In the last couple of days I've sent off nine stories.  And I have a list of another eight which I plan to send today.  It's not exactly Della's 50 stories, but it's a step on the way.

It still stings when the rejections come in, but that slight sting is a lot better than the black feelings of desolation, despair, and the furious anger I used to feel just a couple of years ago.

Now I must make a start on the first of a batch of new stories to keep the ball rolling.  I'm finding that the bigger the number of stories submitted, the smaller the heartache as each one comes back rejected.