{"id":641,"date":"2023-09-15T17:19:46","date_gmt":"2023-09-15T17:19:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/?p=641"},"modified":"2023-09-15T17:19:46","modified_gmt":"2023-09-15T17:19:46","slug":"perseverance-and-publishing-short-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/?p=641","title":{"rendered":"Perseverance and Publishing Short Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>STORY SALE!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I offer this as a tale of perseverance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Neil Clarke at Clarkesworld has accepted a story from me, which is my first original sale to them. They previously reprinted a piece that Gardner Dozois chose when he was working as their reprint editor (it was a story Gardner also included in his YEAR&#8217;S BEST anthology in 2010).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They <a><\/a>have been using an online submission system since at least 2010 where I can view my submissions. I see that the story Neil is taking now is the 55th piece I&#8217;ve submitted to them. Many pieces made it to &#8220;round two&#8221; before being bounced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I like to think of the submissions process as being a kind of pen pal arrangement. I&#8217;ve sent Neil 55 long, self-revelatory letters in the last 13 years. While his responses have been somewhat shorter, and a little repetitive <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"16\" width=\"16\" alt=\"?\" src=\"https:\/\/static.xx.fbcdn.net\/images\/emoji.php\/v9\/teb\/2\/16\/1f642.png\">, I have enjoyed our continued correspondence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Almost all the other bounced stories found homes in other magazines. My submissions records at the major magazines who have taken pieces from me also contain WAY more &#8220;no&#8221; than &#8220;yes&#8221; replies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s the case for most authors . . . except the late Mike Resnick who claimed during a panel at a WorldCon that he didn&#8217;t know what a rejection from ASIMOV&#8217;S looked like, so he couldn&#8217;t comment on its tone when asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is my 190th short story sale since 1989.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image-1024x576.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-642\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image-768x432.png 768w, https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image-900x506.png 900w, https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image.png 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>STORY SALE! I offer this as a tale of perseverance. Neil Clarke at Clarkesworld has accepted a story from me, which is my first original sale to them. They previously reprinted a piece that Gardner Dozois chose when he was working as their reprint editor (it was a story Gardner also included in his YEAR&#8217;S [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,5,6,3],"tags":[4,52,8,15,9,7],"class_list":["post-641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marketing","category-publishing","category-short-stories","category-writing","tag-james-van-pelt","tag-marketing","tag-publishing","tag-science-fiction","tag-short-stories","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":643,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions\/643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}