Submitted a Story

I don’t often submit stories to Pro magazines. 5 cents a word is not much and hasn’t changed in 30 years. If you figure that John W. Campbell was paying a penny a word back in the 1950s, and that there has been a bit of inflation since then, 5 cents is just awful. In the 1950s a short story sale was the equivalent of a month’s salary. Anyway, I write for glory, not money.

I submitted my story Speed Trap (23 rejections and counting) to Asimov’s, today. I don’t think that the story is very marketable, but over the years I have learned to love this dark little tale, and I think it has a chance somewhere. I have purposely not sent it into the free venues where I know it will be published. I want better things for it.

What prompted me to submit it is that I was testing my Weasel Word Checker. I ran it through the software and found about 30 vague or empty words that I eliminated. I also fixed all the grammar in the dialog. I wrote Speed Trap back when I did not know the correct dialog rules and I shudder to think what editors thought of my story. I then ran it through MS Word’s style checker and fixed up about a dozen instances of passive tense. I did a reread and got rid of some awkward sentence structures and shortened some long sentences.

I used the Asimov’s electronic submission form and sent them my bright shiny new version of Speed Trap. I have high hopes for it.