Five Minute Rant

[george nik.]

Commiserations, Dustin. Better luck next time!

I'm at 124 days at A&A right now and I'm past even hoping.
Anyway, it's my longest wait ever so every day I'm setting a new personal record...

[LDWriter2]

Hmmm, I don't recall any of my stories to A&A taking that long. I thought I had one there now but if so I can't find it on my list. Of course I could have forgotten to add it, I've done that before a time or three.

But I would say that all of mine have been sent back in less than a hundred days. I can't say that positively but I think I would recall one taking as long as you guys have had.

[Imagination Vortex]

And so it begins...

My Q2 HM story came back from asimov's today. Form rejection.

This was my first time submitting a story to a market other than WOTF. Oh well. As soon as it came back I turned around and sent it off to another one!

[AMcCarter]

And so it begins...

My Q2 HM story came back from asimov's today. Form rejection.

This was my first time submitting a story to a market other than WOTF. Oh well. As soon as it came back I turned around and sent it off to another one!

Good luck at the next market.

[MJNL]

I absolutely appreciate personal rejections. However I do find them rant worthy when it's clear the editor missed a crucial element--like the fact that the protagonist is four. He sounds really young? You don't say... I think a conversation the character's mother had about elementary school threw them off. Perhaps I need to put the nix on that.

[Martin L. Shoemaker]

And so it begins...

My Q2 HM story came back from asimov's today. Form rejection.

This was my first time submitting a story to a market other than WOTF. Oh well. As soon as it came back I turned around and sent it off to another one!

Good! Not the rejection, but the turnaround!

[LDWriter2]

Been keeping away from here since I had were ordinary rants...I could fill up this board with just mine...but F&SF sent a rejection that deserves a rant of at least a minute.


As some of you may know or recall I sent in around eight to twelve stories to F&SF in a row...one per week. But I slipped off for two weeks before sending in another one. Well, I received the rejection for that one Monday, right on time. However the next day I received another one. Wow, did I send in two SASEs? Was the one the day before actually for another market? No, I remembered Stephen Mazur's name on the rejection. Finally I opened it to see. It was for one I sent in at least three weeks before. Obviously, I had forgotten and didn't realized I never received the rejection for that story. I checked on my list of stories to see when I sent it in and evidently I had also forgotten to list it. So I'm not sure exactly when I sent it in but it had to be at least three weeks ago. Usual rejection letter: Stephen didn't like it at all.

So did my one story remind them they never sent out the rejection for the older story??? I think that is the second time that has happened. I received a rejection for an older story after the rejection for the latest story. And nothing to indicate why. Not even a personal rejection or a "sorry this is late".

[E.CaimanSands]

I've gotten three, "This story didn’t quite work for me, I'm afraid," rejections from F&SF in a row now.
I forget who said there were three types of form rejects from Stephen, but I did a bit a Googling and it certainly looks like there's at least a "This story couldn't hold my interest, I'm afraid," type of rejection according to an obnoxious blogger writing in Jan 2012.

And yes, before this looks like rampant rejectomancy, the reason I'm obsessing about the form rejections from this particular market is to establish if it's worth still sending the blasted rainforest-clearing manuscripts across the pond. If Stephen isn't even reading past the first paragraph, frankly I won't bother, but if he is I guess I should carry on.

[Strycher]

My Q2 HM story came back from asimov's today. Form rejection.

This was my first time submitting a story to a market other than WOTF. Oh well. As soon as it came back I turned around and sent it off to another one!

Congratulations!

. . . the protagonist is four. He sounds really young? You don't say...

Next. Market.

If Stephen isn't even reading past the first paragraph, frankly I won't bother, but if he is I guess I should carry on.

"Didn't grab me" is the phrase that indicates he didn't read it to the end, from what I understand.

Aaaaaaand I'm at 78 days at IGMS, which is the longest wait I've had at a non-WotF market. I'm now an outlier according to Duotrope and the average acceptance time when including outliers in the calculations is 101 days. Sadly, all of the stories that I've heard of who have been accepted past the 100 day mark were well over 100 days. So . . . NNiNN. Blah.

[dantzel]

Yeah, I've had a 91 day form, 1 day personal, and 34 day form from IGMS.

[katsincommand]

I've gotten three, "This story didn’t quite work for me, I'm afraid," rejections from F&SF in a row now.
I forget who said there were three types of form rejects from Stephen, but I did a bit a Googling and it certainly looks like there's at least a "This story couldn't hold my interest, I'm afraid," type of rejection according to an obnoxious blogger writing in Jan 2012.

And yes, before this looks like rampant rejectomancy, the reason I'm obsessing about the form rejections from this particular market is to establish if it's worth still sending the blasted rainforest-clearing manuscripts across the pond. If Stephen isn't even reading past the first paragraph, frankly I won't bother, but if he is I guess I should carry on.

Didn't grab = gave up early on
Didn't hold = didn't finish reading it
Didn't quite work = read the whole thing but, eh.

[Strycher]

Yeah, I've had a 91 day form, 1 day personal, and 34 day form from IGMS.

IGMS works in mysterious ways? I think the inconsistent response times are because they have slushers, then assistant editors, then Kathleen A. Bellamy, and then Edmund R. Schubert. So if you're subbing into the slush that's four rounds to get rejected in and if you're bypassing the slush that still 3 rounds. (This is rejectomancy, I don't actually know this to be fact.)

[dantzel]

Yeah, I've had a 91 day form, 1 day personal, and 34 day form from IGMS.

IGMS works in mysterious ways? I think the inconsistent response times are because they have slushers, then assistant editors, then Kathleen A. Bellamy, and then Edmund R. Schubert. So if you're subbing into the slush that's four rounds to get rejected in and if you're bypassing the slush that still 3 rounds. (This is rejectomancy, I don't actually know this to be fact.)

I actually received my personal rejection directly from Schubert, so who knows.

[DavidK]

Not ranting, it is what it is: I had an Asimov story out at 80 days, and got a form rejection *sigh* I did have some hope for something more, but they've been busy...

but after 19 days I did get a personal rejection from Shimmer, my first sub there, and I have to say that it was nice.

Two rejections but all the same - neither story is good enough

[george nik.]

Incidentally, I also got a rejection from Asimovs and a personal rejection from Shimmer, plus rejections from DSF and AE in the same couple of days, as a bonus.

It's not a rant, however. If you send many stories out, rejections are forthcoming.

[Strycher]

Yeah, I've had a 91 day form, 1 day personal, and 34 day form from IGMS.

IGMS works in mysterious ways? I think the inconsistent response times are because they have slushers, then assistant editors, then Kathleen A. Bellamy, and then Edmund R. Schubert. So if you're subbing into the slush that's four rounds to get rejected in and if you're bypassing the slush that still 3 rounds. (This is rejectomancy, I don't actually know this to be fact.)

I actually received my personal rejection directly from Schubert, so who knows.

Mysterious indeed!

[dantzel]

Not ranting, it is what it is: I had an Asimov story out at 80 days, and got a form rejection *sigh* I did have some hope for something more, but they've been busy...

but after 19 days I did get a personal rejection from Shimmer, my first sub there, and I have to say that it was nice.

Two rejections but all the same - neither story is good enough

I'm at 44 days with Shimmer - but I don't have high hopes. Apparently I was sorted into the Weird Tales pile because, unable to come up with a better genre, I categorized my story as a weird tale, so there it sits. MAYBE it's gone further by now, but I think it unlikely.

Not because I don't think my story is awesome, but because that's just the way things go.

[Imagination Vortex]

Ok this is a part rant/part question. I was going to submit a story to daily science fiction, and I get to one part of the submission form. That's when I find out you don't upload your story, you have to copy/paste it. So I do, and the whole story alignment is all off. Some paragraphs aren't indented, and others are indented too much. I wasn't sure if what I was seeing was what they were going to see, so I started to go through and fix every paragraph. After a few minutes I realized this was going to take hours. Plus it would mess everything up anyway if I were to miss fixing a paragraph at one point. So I just gave up and submitted it to another market. So my question is, does this happen to everyone or am I doing something wrong? I tried to change my story from double to single space but when I pasted it I still had problems. Maybe I need to change the font type and size? Right now it's courier new, 12 font. It's really frustrating, I'm not sure what to do.

[MJNL]

Happens to me, too. I've found that if I save my word doc as a .txt file before I copy and paste, it generally preserves a more readable format (but I still have to make tweaks by hand).

Actually, this is part of the reason I'm looking to change e-mail providers. Yahoo is eating everything I cut and paste into it, garbling my cover letters. I subbed to Pseudopod yesterday and they want the story in the body of your e-mail...man was that a pain in the ass and a gigantic time-suck. Damn yahoo.

[trdixon]

Happens to me, too. I've found that if I save my word doc as a .txt file before I copy and paste, it generally preserves a more readable format (but I still have to make tweaks by hand).

I ran into the same problem and did the same thing. Doesn't get it exactly, but it's closer than .doc formatting.

[Imagination Vortex]

Thanks Marina, I'll try that next time I submit something there. I know in the submission guidelines it talks about how your story should be plain text- not sure what that means but could that be part of the problem? My story is in rtf format right now, I'll be sure to change it when the time comes. Or if the time comes. I'm hoping where I submitted it right now will be the end of the road for it.

[LawrenceVanHoof]

I find the most reliable way to remove wonky formatting is to use the nuclear method described in the Smashwords Style Guide. You lose centering and italics/underlining but for submitting to daily science fiction the former doesn't matter. You lose centering anyway. If you have a lot of italics, though, it would be a pain in the butt to put it all back in.

I haven't had any problem submitting word documents online, but I always use the nuclear method before publishing something myself to ensure formatting is one hundred percent uniform.

Here’s the excerpt from the guide:

“First, make a backup of your manuscript (VERY IMPORTANT!) and set it aside in case the Nuclear Method fails you. Next, copy and paste your entire manuscript into Windows Notepad (usually found in Programs: Accessories) or any other text editor. This will strip out all your formatting. Close Microsoft Word. Then reopen Microsoft Word so it’s showing a fresh empty document. Next, in Notepad, type CTRL+A (press the CTRL key, hold it down, then press the A key at the same time) for “select all” then CTRL+C for “copy,” then paste into the empty Word document using either CTRL+V (for paste) or Edit: Paste (in Word 2000 and 2003) or Home: Paste (Word 2007). From here, reformat the book per the Style Guide. Remember to make sure you complete the previous steps, such as turning off “AutoFormat as you type” and “AutoCorrect as you type” covered above in Step 3.”

[austinDm]

Thanks Marina, I'll try that next time I submit something there. I know in the submission guidelines it talks about how your story should be plain text- not sure what that means but could that be part of the problem? My story is in rtf format right now, I'll be sure to change it when the time comes. Or if the time comes. I'm hoping where I submitted it right now will be the end of the road for it.

Plain text is a file in the .txt file format, so saving your word doc in .txt will put it in the right format for DSF. So that the paragraphs look right, before I save to .txt, I remove paragraph indents and double space between paragraphs. That way, when I copy and paste from .txt, it will automatically show up in block text format.

Can you tell that I've subbed to DSF a lot?

[DavidK]

I'm at 44 days with Shimmer - but I don't have high hopes. Apparently I was sorted into the Weird Tales pile because, unable to come up with a better genre, I categorized my story as a weird tale, so there it sits. MAYBE it's gone further by now, but I think it unlikely.

Not because I don't think my story is awesome, but because that's just the way things go.

Good luck with Shimmer.,, I received an excellent personal rejection and some general social chit-chat, which has encouraged me to send another story more suited there!

[dantzel]

I find the most reliable way to remove wonky formatting is to use the nuclear method described in the Smashwords Style Guide. You lose centering and italics/underlining but for submitting to daily science fiction the former doesn't matter. You lose centering anyway. If you have a lot of italics, though, it would be a pain in the butt to put it all back in.

I haven't had any problem submitting word documents online, but I always use the nuclear method before publishing something myself to ensure formatting is one hundred percent uniform.

Here’s the excerpt from the guide:

“First, make a backup of your manuscript (VERY IMPORTANT!) and set it aside in case the Nuclear Method fails you. Next, copy and paste your entire manuscript into Windows Notepad (usually found in Programs: Accessories) or any other text editor. This will strip out all your formatting. Close Microsoft Word. Then reopen Microsoft Word so it’s showing a fresh empty document. Next, in Notepad, type CTRL+A (press the CTRL key, hold it down, then press the A key at the same time) for “select all” then CTRL+C for “copy,” then paste into the empty Word document using either CTRL+V (for paste) or Edit: Paste (in Word 2000 and 2003) or Home: Paste (Word 2007). From here, reformat the book per the Style Guide. Remember to make sure you complete the previous steps, such as turning off “AutoFormat as you type” and “AutoCorrect as you type” covered above in Step 3.”

Ooo, ooo, ooo, pick me! What's the fastest way to replace those dumb curly quotes with straight quotes? I'd rather just have it set up to automatically use straight instead, but what's my best option?

[Strycher]

Ooo, ooo, ooo, pick me! What's the fastest way to replace those dumb curly quotes with straight quotes? I'd rather just have it set up to automatically use straight instead, but what's my best option?

You can use the find and replace feature to replace them. Enter a quote mark " in the find field and a quote mark " in the replace field. MS Word shouldn't auto correct them back to smart quotes since that feature detects changes to make as you type, not retrospectively.

[LawrenceVanHoof]

The “NO” smart quotes is kind of annoying. In my version, word 2007, you have to click the MS Office button > go into Word options > click Proofing > AutoCorrect options > Autoformat as you type > clear the box for the straight quotes to smart quotes.
Then you can use the find and replace function to turn all the smart quotation marks into straight quotation marks. Otherwise it'll simply replace the smart quotation marks with smart quotation marks.

It can be confusing because there's also an Autoformat category (different than Autoformat as you type) which also has straight quotes to smart quotes option, but it works slightly differently. I'm pretty sure you don't need to turn that one off when you use the find and replace function.

[dantzel]

Thank you Lawrence!!!

[george nik.]

Anyone's May submission still at Abyss&Apex?

I'm at 139 days now and I'm itching to query (they suggest querying after 90 days) but if there are others also in the same boat maybe it should be best to wait a little longer...

[Martin L. Shoemaker]

Anyone's May submission still at Abyss&Apex?

I'm at 139 days now and I'm itching to query (they suggest querying after 90 days) but if there are others also in the same boat maybe it should be best to wait a little longer...

After Analog lost Dawn's story and mine, I advise against waiting.