Word Count? I don't Know Her

i’m avery and consistency is my enemy they/them | 28 | i follow as lesbegays

[ivynightshade]

fatima aamer bilal, excerpt from moony moonless sky’s ‘i am an observer, but not by choice.’

[text id: my fist has always been clenched around the handle of an invisible suitcase. / i am always ready to leave. / there is not a single room in this world where i belong.]

[jewfrogs]

this is so mean but sometimes i see published writing and suddenly no longer feel insecure about my own writing ability. like well okay that got published so im guessing i dont have much to worry about

[naamahdarling]

I have a friend who is an editor, and gets submissions of mostly poetry and short stories.

I have had a glimpse into her slush pile, and let me tell you, the contents were unbelievable and immediately disabused me of the notion that reading through submissions is in any way glamorous. People have the nerve to submit unhinged paranoid ramblings, fetish porn, and a seemingly endless supply of poems about masturbation.

I no longer feel like my fiction is somehow an imposition on the people who read it. It may be forgettable, but at least it isn't typeset to look like sperm.

Do not be afraid to submit your work. Your competition is not only worse than you think, it's worse than you ever imagined.

[silverhand]

Do these three things to get to the top of the slush pile:

The place has a style sheet. Use it. They say they want your MS in 16.5 point Papyrus italic with 0.8 inch margins all around, guess what you're doing before you send it off? Save As, reformat, send it. In the absence of a specific guide: Courier 12 pt (Times New Roman if you must), double spaced, align left, tab 0.5 at each new paragraph.

Check the word count. Don't submit novellas to 2500 word short story venues. BTW, you format the MS in that old style above because the question isn't literal words. Courier 12pt double spaced gives you 250 words per page for typesetting purposes. 2500 words is 10 ms pages, 5000 is 20 pages, etc.

Don't send your romance to Analog or your war story to Harlequin. If it's a cross-genre story, be sure there's enough of what the publication is focused on to interest them, but breaking through is hard if that's not something they usually do.

That's basically what every single editors' panel at every con I've ever been to has boiled down to. And invariably, someone tries to get up and argue with them, not realizing it's not a discussion.

Bonus tip: Don't be in any way cute in your cover letter. Just the facts/Luke Skywalker's message to Jabba the Hut in ROTJ.

Enclosed/attached is my story <Title> for your publication <Magazine>. It is x (rounded to the nearest 500) words. I can be reached at <email> (that you check regularly and isn't likely to dump things into spam) and <phone>.

(If submitting a hard copy: The manuscript is disposable. A SASE is enclosed for your response./A SASE is included for return of the manuscript and your response.)

Thank you for your consideration.

If submitting a novella length piece or greater, a brief and complete summary is appropriate.

In the midst of an interstellar revolt against an evil galactic Empire, vital weapon plans fall into the hands of a farm boy on the edges of the galaxy. With the help of an aging warrior from the Old Republic, and a smuggler with a dark past and his imposing alien copilot, the four set out to deliver them to the rebel forces but are instead flung into a rescue mission to save the beautiful princess who stole the plans as worlds are destroyed by the might of the Empire's weapon, the Death Star.

Captured by the Death Star on route to deliver the plans, they manage to escape the base with the princess, the old warrior sacrificing himself to make this possible. As the Death Star approaches the rebel base, they use the captured plans to stage a desperate final stand. In a fierce space battle of single-pilot ships over the surface of the moon-sized weapon, the farm boy manages to make the critical shot with an unexpected assist from the smuggler, destroying it.

Never under any circumstance put a cliffhanger into a query letter summary. There is no faster way to get the entire MS binned than doing that.

Happy writing.

PS "Top of the slush pile" means into the top 25% of manuscripts received. Three quarters of the submissions don't take the trouble to do even those three basic steps.

Now, that still means 25/100 submissions or 250/1000 submissions, but it still improves your odds and forms the basis for starting a relationship with the publisher for the next piece you send them.

PPS This is obviously about prose. Poetry certainly has its own submission rules, and I know none of them. If you're writing poetry, find out what they are.

[dduane]

@silverhand's reply is right on.

[canthaveshitingotham-crucified]

i hate it when i cant even write a poem about something because its too obvious. like in the airbnb i was at i guess it used to be a kids room cause you could see the imprint of one little glow in the dark star that had been missed and painted over in landlord white. like that's a poem already what's the point

[canthaveshitingotham-crucified]

you get it. you get the themes. i dont have time to do it justice. just look at it its on the ceiling

[brenna]

[teaboot]

[wheresmyphonemp3]

[i-just-want-to-destroy]

[Text ID: I do not want to be a saint. / None of this is my fault. /End ID]

Confessions, Kanae Minato (trans. Stephen Snyder)

[averysometimeswrites]

Julie Buntin, Marlena

[fellshish]

@ fic authors what do you personally consider a successful fic? What’s the bar?

[sherl-grey]

actually writing the fic down

[chandajaan]

Miracle fish by Ada limon

[write-on-world]

[big-blog-of-cheese-day]

[ccorinthian]

Sometimes you gotta get down to brass tacks

[forestgreenlesbian]

Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

[kaylewiswrites-deactivated20180]

How I think I’m writing: Using eye contact, or lack thereof, to display emotions such as intimacy, shock, denial, or nervousness. 

How I’m actually writing: She looked at me, and I looked away. I tried to look back, but she was already looking at the sky. “Look,” she sighs, looking back at me for a split second. “I don’t know how to say this.” We looked at each other and time stopped, but then she looked her lookers at something else to look at, looking tired. 

[mr-dirtlord]

day 23

[eliamatrell]

— WENDELL BERRY, “A Meeting.”

[sentimentalbot]

— James Baldwin, from, “If Beale Street Could Talk,” originally published in 1974

[kosmo-mckogane]

rereading my own writing is just a constant fluctuation between "damn, girl, you wrote this? (affectionate)" and "damn, girl, you wrote this? (derogatory)"

[aurevoirblog-deactivated2023082]

I am also “damn, girl, you wrote this? (forgetful)”

[roadmotel]

Ted Hughes, Being Christlike

[blossomfully]

Sue Zhao