I had as many as 7 stories waiting in slush piles last week, but the quick editors are starting to come back. One was a form letter from futurismic on a real clunker that I rewrote and sent out again. I have more ideas on how to fix it, so when it comes back I’ll do another rewrite on it.

I wrote a quick flash for a free site that needed some help. I saw some typos after I sent it out, but I am not going to annoy the editor by sending a rewrite so soon after a submission.

Another flash came back after 6 days. A zine called Ruthless Peoples (possibly the worst zine name I’ve seen) gave it a nice response, criticizing the exposition in the middle. I had to compress it to under 1000 words so I did a Tell rather than Show in the middle to tie up some loose ends and got called on it. The editor, was very nice and understanding and wrote:

I’m left wondering whether you have sacrificed too much to squeeze this scene and the relationships surrounding it into 1,000 words.

The editor hit the nail on the head. The story should be three times as long with well developed characters and motives and not a flash at all. That being said, the story is basically a bit of a joke with a punch line and does not deserve a longer treatment. I’ll see about fixing the exposition in the middle and send it out again as flash. The infodump in the middle is not a bad thing per se, but most editors have been brainwashed by Clarion and its evil spawn. Since infodump is easy to spot, they call you on it.

It is good, though, when an editor says something in a rejection letter that I can use – much better than the "This piece sucks but I can’t tell you why" type of response that means that they really wanted zombies or gay teenage angst stories.

I have five stories out now. Since these are mostly old trunked stories with many rejections behind them, they stand little chance.