I finished a story today named If Wishes . . . that wound up being 6400 words. This is a long story for me. I wrote part of this last year and then started over from scratch because I didn’t like the way it started. I have learned that you can’t just start a story at the beginning and go to the end. You have to set a tone and get the reader involved right at the start. You can’t go backwards and fill in details. The story has to work from the start without explaining things. This is not easy and as soon as you have to explain something that happened in the past, you risk losing the reader.

I submitted to lightspeedmagazine.com because they respond in 1 or two days. I should get rejection in a few days. It is normal to feel remorse and go back and alter the story. Since lightspeed responds so fast it is impossible to succumb to the need to withdraw and resubmit a rewrite. When I get the story back I will go over it once more before submitting it to the next market on my list. As I get each rejection I typically will polish, tweak and fix the story before sending it out again. The story changes the more it is rejected.

Pro Markets I submit to and response time:
Lightspeed – 1.5 days
Clarkesworld Magazine – 3.5 days
Futurismic – 14.7 days
On The Premises – 29.2 days
Apex Magazine – 31.3 days
Asimov’s Science Fiction – 33.1 days
Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show – 41.1 days

I will run out of the pro markets in almost 5 months. Since a 40 day response is as much as I will tolerate, I will start with the faster semi-pro markets after that and probably sell the story by the 10th time out.

I want this story for my anthology so I may go right to the semi-pro markets so it gets published and then I can include it. I want to release my anthology before Christmas.