Writing and Publishing Fiction

Snowflake-Like Fractal Cauliflower, Symbol of Fiction Publishing Methodology

The Snowflake Guy has a little quiz you can take to evaluate how far you are on your way to publishing fiction. (Is it just me or is pretty much everyone a novelist these days?)

Inaccurate Humpty Dumpty (wearing belt rather than cravat)

To paraphrase Humpty Dumpty and end up saying something complete different: "How many rejection slips do you have plastered to your wall or stuck in a drawer under a pile of half-used post-it note pads?"

If alcoholics can rely on denial to get by, why not the unpublished writer?
photo by dpade1337

Hello, my name is unpublished guy, and I am an unpublished fiction writer. Hundreds of thousands of writers submit their short stories to literary journals and publications every year and only five percent are published. (Please note that statistics are half-baked and hardly substantiated.)

photo by Pitel

Last week I was pondering what contests I should enter this month, and I created a short list of 24 writing contests based on due date and topic or genre of the contest.

This week I'll need to determine a basis for evaluating the remaining contest candidate and narrowing the list to 2 or 3 finalists. Since I am being shallow, I can think of no better criteria than calculating the ROI (that's return-on-investment in business parlance).

Does Entering Fiction Contests Feel Like Playing the Lottery?
photo by Jeffrey Beal

Last week I announced that I would rework the incomplete novel that resulted from July Novel Writing month to enter a short story contest. I could take one of two approaches to begin this task. I could be true to the vision of the artist and complete the story first and then shop around for a suitable contest. Alternatively, I could take the shallow route by selecting a fiction contest first and then rewrite the fiction to improve the chances of winning that particular contest. I'll be taking the shallow route.

To refresh my memory on the submission guidelines, I thumbed through my 2000 Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market. (I don’t have a 2009 copy or 2008 or 2005, or anything else from this millennium for that matter. I have been out of the game you might say).

In a nutshell, this is what the Novel & Short Story Writer's Market (Kuroff, Barbara. Writers Digest Books) had to say in 2000.

While most of the rejections I ever received were of the form letter variety (“not at this time” or “does not fit our current needs”), I did get two that encouraged me to keep trying, perhaps for longer than was good for me.

Rejection #1

The first rejection was for a story that I had written and revised in my first writing workshop while I was pursuing a BA. It included an encouraging note with suggested changes that would improve the story. Not only did this rejection encourage me to submit and submit, it encouraged me to resubmit this particular story over and over again.