Don’t believe a word of it

 I’m trying to get my hit rate up for short story submissions, and this week I came across a listing of a dozen science fiction magazines to add to my own list of possible markets.

As I’ve been reading through their submission requirements, and reading some of the stories they’ve published, I’ve noticed that what they say they want doesn’t match up with what they actually accept.

There’s the magazine that wants ‘literary’ stories with ‘gorgeous prose’.  That says to me the stories will be heavier on style than plot, maybe using devices like alliteration or long, languorous sentences.  But when I started to read the stories they’d published…. Well, I wouldn’t describe them as literary at all.  I’d describe them as fluently but straightforwardly writers stories.  In fact, just the way commercially-focused short stories are written.

There are other magazines who describe certain subjects as hard sells - and who promptly go on to publish stories which deal with those subjects.

All this has made me far less fussy in choosing stories to send out to each magazine.  I check whether they want science fiction or fantasy, and that the subject of my story isn’t on the ‘hard sell’ list.  But I no longer worry about ‘literary’ or ‘gorgeous prose’ designations.  I know they don’t meant anything, and I ignore them and send my work out.

I’ve also come to think that my judgement about which of my stories are ‘strong’ and which are just entertainment doesn’t match editors’ opinions.  I say this because I have one story which I’d never sent out before which has languished in my files since it was written a couple of years ago.  I found it on my updating of systems, and sent it out for the first time.  I recently had an email from the slush reader for that magazine, telling me the story had been passed to the editor for review.  It’s not guaranteed that they’ll buy it, but at least I know I can get beyond the slush reader stage now.

The Imposter sits on my shoulder when I’m selecting stories for submission.  It tells me the ideas aren’t strong enough, that there’s nothing original in that story I’m putting out there.

It’s wrong.  I had a rejection this week which told me there were some ‘cool ideas’ in the story.  That came from a magazine which doesn’t usually give feedback, but which had made an exception to tell me this.

So I’ve decided to give up second-guessing what I think will sell where.  My research has shown me that I can’t believe a word of their submission requirements, so I’m just going to toss out every story to a suitable market from now on.