morganb wrote:If your stories keep showing up during final reviews again and again, an editor's going to look at them and say, "This guy's consistently good enough and he's got more than one story in him. Let's publish him." At least, in my own mind that's how it's going to happen; I'm not published anywhere yet. lol
I'm going to disagree here, but with good reason. Editors will never, ever publish you out of pity: they will only publish you when the story is good enough and right for them. And the reason it's important I disagree is that one day soon the brain weasels will start to whisper
"they only published you because they felt sorry for you... you're not really good enough..." and these are VICIOUS LIES, as with all brain weasel whisperings. Once you're published, it's because that story was so awesome they couldn't let it go, and they were compelled to give you money for the right to be the ones to show it off to the world. Ain't no pity involved.
But if your stories keep showing up during final reviews again and again, you're increasing your odds that one of them will be the right story for a market. Once you're writing at a pro-level (which it sounds like you are), submitting becomes a lottery--have they just accepted something similar or not*? Has it caught them in the right mood? Has it just been squeezed out by a sudden influx of incredible stories?--and all you can do is keep entering, over and over. Keep writing stories, because every one of them is a ticket.
*funny story: I once had two rejections in a row from Shimmer (for two different stories, obvs) that said "Yeah, we liked it, but we're about to publish/just published this other similar story..." and pointed at
the same story both times. Like, god
damn. But in happier news, author of said story is a friend and particularly awesome, so it's hard to feel a grudge. And in even happier news, one of the said rejected stories just got accepted at Arsenika, so y'know. Keep entering that lottery :)