Saturday, September 13, 2008

Hiccups of Impatience

In the last month, I sold two stories, received six rejections, had two requests for fulls for novels (one agent, one small press), and got a strange note from an editor who rejected me this spring telling me it would probably be another month before he got back to me on the story and is that okay? Uh, yeah, sure.

None of this makes me feel any less impatient. I know it's unrealistic, I know editors are busy people and they receive way too many submissions. Only three of my Duotrope submissions are red, and two of those are stories I suspect I'll never hear back on. The other one's a novel that's been out 287 days, and I did get an update in June from an editor saying it's in for a full read. So I should be happy, right?

Right. I'll be happy when I no longer have hiccups and get acceptances for all the stories I've got out, immediately. Although right now, I'd settle for just the hiccup cure. (At least this is an excuse to go nom a heaping spoonful of sugar. You know that really works, right? But you have to eat the sugar dry. No chewing or sloshing it around in your mouth first. Just force it down, jimmy.)

2 comments:

Cate Gardner said...

I think we all feel like that.

If I go more than two days without a reply from someone (acceptance or rejection) then I'm itching.

K.C. Shaw said...

Me too, particularly if I haven't had an acceptance in a while. Right now I don't have very many stories in circulation, either. I need to get cracking and finish the ones I've started, just so I can get more responses.