Epic adventure was epic, and has so far resulted in multiple new adventures, one of which was WisCon. I don’t even know what to say about it. I got to meet so many awesome people, and connect with several who I met last year at WFC, and perhaps most notably I finally met my dear friend (because we can become that on the internet in this day and age) Adam Israel in person. Yes, he is just as awesome as he seems.

The other highlight, of course, was kicking off the launch of Lightspeed. Editor and Overlord John Joseph Adams introduced the magazine with a packed reading by four of his authors, all of which were brilliant, though I think my favorite reading was by Genevieve Valentine. (Just wait until you read this one. It’s in the July issue.)

Lightspeed officially launched on June 1 and has so far been a resounding success. The site is beautiful, thanks to Jeremiah Tolbert. June 9 marked six months since I started working for the magazine, and it has been so gratifying to see it take off the way it has. (I confess I kind of miss the slush. One month ’til we reopen! Jordan and I will be ready. I hope you’re polishing those manuscripts!)

Right before that two of my beautiful sisters came to stay for a week, which was phenomenal; we are 19 years apart in age (they are mere minutes apart from each other, being twins) so this was really our first opportunity to spend some real time together and get to know each other better. They are both just dazzling beings of light and energy and talent, and I am honored to be their sister. I wish we had more time, and I can’t wait to see them for Sisterfest 2 in August.

And now my beloved co-adventurer and Significant Other is here visiting until Monday. Life just keeps being awesome.

But the reason that I decided to post today instead of any other day is because today I reached a milestone in my writing career that means a lot to me. I’ve written before about the role of SFWA in my life over the past eight years. I credit them with giving me the information I needed to calibrate my expectations. They gave me the basic tool kit for behaving like a professional. I am so grateful for the many articles they have posted on their website; for being an organization made up of people who love genre; for just giving me a place to start. In 2009 I got to pay back a little of my debt to them by volunteering for some stuff, and it felt great to be able to participate.

Last week Prime Books–who is publishing the anthology that I made that sale to back in February–became a qualifying market for SFWA. So today I became an Associate Member.

It’s one sale, and one sale does not a career make. Associate Membership does not make me a professional any more than that one sale does. Enough hard work and perseverance to match what I’ve put in since 2002 might–but this is still a milestone. It is something I’ve aspired to for as long as I’ve known they exist.

Thanks so much to everyone on Twitter who offered their congratulations.

What do I wish for next?

I am about to embark on an Epic Adventure, to visit a friend I haven’t seen in six months in a place I’ve never been before. It is actually spectacularly rash and insensible of me, which is precisely why I think it’s a really good idea.

Naturally I’ve fussed and obsessed over details, from getting the house and pets taken care of (yay house-sitting family members! thanks Dave) to making sure everything I need will fit in my bags (yes, I DID do two Packing Practice Runs, why do you ask?) Performed some foot-wear checks (must be able to spend a day at the zoo AND outrun zombies.) Got my Starbucks Via to take into caffeine-free territory. And don’t even get me started on what went into wardrobe selection. But all of this neurosis serves a good purpose: now I don’t have to worry about anything at all while I’m gone.

It’s a heavy agenda comprised of equal parts NYC tourism and hard core at-home slacking. Given that I work in one form or another 10-16 hours a day now, just getting to watch a DVD without guilt is a big deal. I’m looking forward to that as much as I am to seeing Central Park, or going to what should be a pretty righteous metal concert.

And since we scheduled the trip around the date that submissions closed, I won’t even have a reason to be online! That likely won’t stop me (the netbook is coming with me–I’m hoping to write on the plane) but if I wanted to I could spend the whole six days unplugged without serious repercussions.

So I’m out of here for a bit. Off to spend some dedicated time with a truly magnificent human, see the sights, decompress, recharge the creative batteries, and do some serious slacking in the form of Rock Band, movies, and t.v. viewing.

Off to have an adventure.

(Thanks to John Remy for reminding me of that xkcd a few weeks ago. It’s perfect for the occasion.)

Submitting to short fiction markets can be very scary for newcomers, and there is a whole lot of confusing advice out there. I’m here to help.

First, though: you guys with the long lists of publications, who have your editors on your Christmas card lists and are now submitting reprints and selling rights I’ve never even heard of, you can wait over there in the bar. And you too, you newly-minted pros who have been doing the submission/rejection slog for a few years now–you should go buy those other guys drinks and network a little. We’ll come join you in a minute.

The rest of you, huddle up.

We’re going to talk about our cover letters today: those things that we agonize over, that First Impression that we are all SO WORRIED about. Do I sound like a real writer? Did I rank high enough in that contest entry? Do my college credits count as professional credits? What about my work as an astrophysicist, that surely qualifies me to write SF, doesn’t it?

Have you picked up the theme for this blog yet? What do we think of ‘worry’ here at Inkhaven?

I will tell you a secret: when submitting fiction to SFF markets, your cover letter is meant to do THE EXACT OPPOSITE of what it’s supposed to do in the rest of the world.

I’ll explain.

Out There–in the job market, academia, whatever–your cover letter is meant to impress. You are expected to drop names. You are supposed to include the most tangentially related accomplishments you can think of. You are meant to inflate it with every credit you can muster. Out There, cover letters become masterful works of fiction: spells cast to cloud the reader’s perception, to convince them to trust us and believe that we are the right person for the task. It is absolutely natural to assume that the same holds true when writing a cover letter for an SFF market.

Natural, but wrong.

The information on the internet reinforces the myth of the Inflated Cover Letter. You’ll see this perfectly reasonable-sounding advice given to writers on a regular basis. Sometimes it’s even in the submission guidelines of your favorite publication:

- Include your publication credits

This is terrifying to a new writer who doesn’t have any. We want to do it right, so we wrack our brains, thinking we have to put something there. Do I include my high school newspaper experience? What about that essay I published in our local Arts & Entertainment paper? I placed 15th in that one fiction contest–that means I was better than the other contestants who placed lower, right?

I know! It’s a horrible mental knot that we tie ourselves into, but the answer is really very simple: Leave it out.

If you do not have semi-pro or pro publication credits, anything less is not a substitute for them. This includes college courses, workshops, contests, university publications, and anything else that did not pay you Actual Money of at least 3 cents/word. Those other things are not examples of professional quality work, and including them can actually hurt you if the reader has a low opinion of any of them.

There are exceptions: there are fanzines with immaculate reputations; a contest that comes to mind that is considered very credible in the field; workshops that most of us would give our eyeteeth to get into. You know which ones those are, if you’ve published in them, placed in it, or attended them. If not, don’t list lesser ones.

And then there’s the advice that sends us all into sweating fits of anxiety:

- Explain why you’re the best person to write this story

No. Stop. Just…NO.

I’d seen this advice treated on the internet as general wisdom for years, but it never made any sense to me, not for what I was writing. What comes of this ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE advice are sorrowful, worry-filled cover letters that say things like “I’m a stay-at-home mother, but I’ve been reading SFF for as long as I could read, and have taken several creative writing classes at Local Community College.”

When an agent at a conference offered it up again to the workshop I was in, I seized the opportunity to clarify. I said approximately the following:

“WTF. I’m writing about DRAGONS/WIZARDS/ZOMBIES/VAMPIRES/SPACESHIPS/ALIENS. I do not have direct experience with any of those things. I’m the best person to write this story because…I have an active imagination?”

He changed the subject. It was almost as if he himself didn’t know why he was advising it. Or it might have been my demeanor, which was admittedly exasperated. Either way, my class didn’t get an answer.

What I’ve since learned is that it’s advice that came from non-fiction publishing, where yeah, your experience with your subject matter counts. It does not scale to SFF. Ignore it. STOP WORRYING. NOW.

One more thing you want to leave out of your cover letter is what rights you’re offering. If you read the guidelines (and you DID read the guidelines, and followed them TO THE LETTER, didn’t you?) you know which rights they’re buying. They are not going to negotiate with you on that. Including it tells the reader that a) you didn’t read the guidelines, and b) you are concerned that the publisher is going to steal your rights from you. They’re not. It’s okay. They’re professionals.

That’s what not to include in your cover letter. Let’s talk about what you should include. You’ll be shocked. Seriously. This is the easiest, most worry-free thing you have ever done. It never needs to take up another cycle in your brain that would be better spent making art. Ready?

Dear Sue Doe, [Editor's actual name. Many editors are INCREDIBLY PICKY about this. The Overlord is not, but many are. If there are many editors and sub-editors, use the name of the highest-ranking editor.]

Please find attached my short story “Epic Tale You Totally Want To Buy” (2500 words, Fantasy) for your consideration. [Title. Word count. Genre if market accepts more than one. If they only accept one genre, do not submit a different genre to them. Natch.]

My work has previously appeared in Realms of Fantasy and Fantasy & Science Fiction. [THIS IS OPTIONAL.] I am a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing workshop. [ALSO OPTIONAL.]

Thank you for your time and attention.

Regards,

Jane Smith
123 Main Street
Smalltown, PA 12345
jane.smith@somewhere.com
123.456.7890

THAT’S IT. That’s all. Do not inflate. Do not be clever. Do not include a bio unless the guidelines specifically ask for one.

So here’s the point: in the rest of the world, cover letters are meant to impress. In the SFF world, they just need to not bias the reader against you.

Look, we’re already up against how the reader’s day job went, how much sleep they got, whether their kids are driving them crazy, the state of their general health, their financial troubles, and whether or not their relationship is working. We’ve got a LOT working against us. As new writers and budding professionals we do not want to add to that.

I’m going to keep hammering these numbers home: 400-600 submissions PER MONTH. 2-5 available slots PER MONTH. They are not looking for reasons to love your words; they’re looking for reasons to cull them from an overwhelming pile. Do not give them a reason to doubt your ability before they’ve even seen your story. Let the work speak for itself.

So tell them what they need to know and tell them nothing that they don’t. Click Send, and update your submissions spreadsheet.

Now go take your rightful place over there in the bar with the rest of the writers. It’s where you belong. You earned it.

(And then get to work on your next story.)

I feel like it’s the last day of summer camp or something. I’m gonna miss you!

I started reading for Lightspeed the second week of January–casually at first, just a couple of stories a night. It quickly became apparent that I was going to need to step it up to keep it from piling up, so I made it my mission to clear the queue every night. I’m certainly not the only one who reads a lot–Assistant Editor Jordan (She Who Brings the Expertise) rocks the slush pretty hard on the weekends, and there are other dedicated volunteers who help out when time permits. But we promised a two-day turnaround, so I just made it A Thing I Do so the Overlord doesn’t have to worry. (We DO NOT LIKE WORRY here at Inkhaven.)

I’ve been visiting you guys every night for three months, and I’m sad to have to stop. It’s become a habit to check on the queue throughout day. I love seeing the stories come in. I love seeing you try again when the first one didn’t stick. I love getting my hopes up for the authors I recommend, and I’m genuinely bummed when I see them rejected. And those of you who gave us your very first submission EVER–what an honor. Really. Thank you.

I also love that the Overlord’s street cred is such that you trust him with your stories without ever having seen an issue. June is coming, and with it the launch of Lightspeed; then you’ll see that you didn’t have to worry about whether you were submitting to the right market. You’ll see that you were in good hands all along. Your trust was not misplaced.

I’ll still be doing other stuff for the Exalted One in the meantime, but I’m going to shift the time I spent reading into skilling up for a change in my day job. I’ll be ready when submissions open again July 15. I suspect it’ll feel a little like a reunion. :)

But first I’m going on vacation! I leave next week. You should take one too. A short one. And then you should get back to writing amazing science fiction to have ready for us this summer.

Thanks for making the past three months so awesome for me. Keep making great art. I can’t wait to see what you come up with for the next reading period!

*GROUP HUG*

If that was your first visit to Inkhaven, though, I feel like I should introduce myself.

I’m a writer. I’ve been working hard since 2001 to learn the craft, and I finally made my very first sale in February. I’ve only been an editorial minion for three months, but I’ve been a struggling aspiring SFF writer for nearly a decade. I am still a struggling aspiring writer. I will probably continue to be for years to come, because that’s what it takes. That’s what I signed on for when I decided that I was going to take fiction writing seriously. That is who I am first and foremost, and what this blog has been about (and its previous incarnations on an old domain and on LiveJournal.)

I want that out there because I’m about to wade into very deep water based on some of the feedback I got on that entry. I want you to understand that I am in your shoes and on your side. Even so, with all that we have in common, there is still something we disagree on, and that is this: what an editor (or an editor’s minion) owes us in terms of feedback on rejections.

I say this as a writer, and an unsuccessful one at that. My opinion on this has never wavered.

They don’t owe us anything.

I’ve racked up the rejections just like everyone else. I’ve only had one story not rejected again and again. I know the head-spinning frustration of it. I know that we all want a reason. We want to know what that one thing is that we need to fix before it’s good enough.

I want you, Brave Writer, to take a step back from that for a minute. I want you to do something that does not come naturally for us:

I want you to stop worrying.

Having now taken a peek behind the curtain, there is one thing that I can say with absolute certainty about why any story is rejected.

Remember that an issue of our favorite publication only has two to five available slots. They receive roughly 400 submissions a month. If were are left wondering why our story was rejected, the answer is this:

Because it wasn’t one of the editor’s two to five absolute favorite stories out of those 400.

Doesn’t help much, does it. But it’s the real answer.

We need to stop wondering whether it was because we had a typo in our submission, or because we didn’t format to 12 pt Courier. We need to stop second-guessing that one paragraph that we labored over for hours and just knew we should have left the way it was. We need to stop spinning our wheels over whether it was because we used too many adverbs, or not enough description.

Editors are trying to find the stories that they love, so they can put them in their publication and share them with the rest of us and make their publication successful. That’s their job. Their job does not include critiquing my story. Not even a little.

And I don’t know why, but I’ve never thought it did. I’ve had critique groups for that all along. I’ve never felt that it was up to an editor to tell me that my ending was weak, that the first three pages are throat-clearing, that my dialog is unbelievable, or that nothing really happens in my story. Any or all of those things may be true, but it’s not up to them to tell me that. That’s the job of my fellow travelers. I’ve been a member of several different online critique groups, and of course my beloved and now in-limbo Santa Barbara Writers Conference, and that’s where I give and get that feedback.*

It’s up to the editors to find great stories to put in their magazines. Some day I hope to write a story great enough that one of them will.

We as writers put way too much emphasis on those rejection letters. We worry so much. I want you, my fellow writer, to stop worrying about why that story was rejected. It just was.

Find the next market and send it back out. Do the paperwork, and then start the next story.

It wasn’t their absolute favorite, and that’s all we need to know.

* You didn’t think I’d leave you just hanging like that, did you? Of course there’s a post on how and where to find a critique group coming up! :)

As near as I can tell this is largely the result of the tireless efforts of Matthew Sanborn Smith in getting the word out that it was even eligible as a Fanzine. Many wonderful and influential people took up the cause, and I’m so happy to see that it paid off.

Congratulations to all of 2010’s Hugo nominees!

I’ll expand on that a little.

Look, slushers and editors, I don’t want to make you feel bad. I just want you to stop making other people feel bad.

People know when they submitted to your market. They know what your turnaround is. They follow you on Twitter or Facebook because they either like you, respect you, or if you’re very lucky, both. They’re watching your Twitter stream closely, because they know you have their story. And then you say something snarky and belittling about it. They know what they sent you–of course they recognize themselves.*

Slushers, editors–how could you?!

You just hurt the feelings of an aspiring writer, someone who looked up to you, someone who desperately wants your approval. Someone who is just like you once were.

I get it. You’re venting, because you’ve seen the same mistakes over and over again. But there was a time when you didn’t know the things that you know now, when you were making those mistakes yourself. If they knew about the clichés you’re making fun of, they wouldn’t be using them. It takes years of hard work and careful study to learn the dos and don’ts of spec fic writing. And you’re making fun of them because they don’t know what you have learned over the course of years. They don’t know yet because they haven’t discovered the resources that would tell them. It all seems obvious to you now, yes, but you’re forgetting that you learned it. None of us sprang fully formed from the brow of Zeus.

They submitted it because it was the best they knew how to make it right now. A year from now they’ll submit something better, but for now, this is where they’re at. They did the best they could.

Griping about typos and homophones and the misuse of the occasional word is just as bad. They are not being lazy. They are not stupid. They made a mistake. Maybe they’re actually dyslexic! There’s often a copy editor who cleans up after you, too.

I once twittered something about a submission I was reading, and I realized belatedly that it sounded snarky. It wasn’t meant to. It was about a cover letter that came with the story. It was 700 words long, and I twittered something about how the writer didn’t need it. I didn’t mean for it to be sarcastic at all–I was genuinely bummed for that author, because he put so much effort into that cover letter, because he just didn’t know that he didn’t need it. The thing is, I remember when I didn’t understand cover letters either, when the advice I was getting was bad advice (”Include why you’re the best person to write this story!” This is fiction. That advice doesn’t apply here.) I remember sweating over it, not having a reliable source of information for someone in my position.

And I thought: What if that author follows me? What if he saw that? What if he took it as sarcasm and thought I was making fun of him?

I decided after that I just wouldn’t twitter about what I was reading anymore.

There’s another factor here: I represent the publication I am reading for, and perhaps more importantly I represent its editor, and what I do and say on the internet reflects back on him. I am fortunate enough to work for an editor who is interested in your story, not your typing skills (do not use the Overlord’s benevolence as an excuse to not proofread!) I work for an editor, in fact, who actually edits, and is damned good at it. He’s human (I know! I was as surprised as you are) and he gets that you’re just another human being making art. Lightspeed needs to be a safe and accessible place for you, both as a reader and as a writer. You should not be afraid that you’ll be mocked on the internet when you submit to us.

Slushers and editors, you are the face of your publication–how do you want it to be seen?

Personally, I don’t submit to editors who publicly mock writers anymore. That probably doesn’t matter to anyone but me. But I also don’t subscribe to their publications.

I’ve actually had to sit on this post for two days, because when I originally wrote it I was very angry. I’ve had to unfollow a lot of people who are relevant to my interests because their streams were just too upsetting when they slushed. (I’ve since discovered Muuter. It is handy.)

I hope that I’ve groomed the worst of the anger out and left the important part: I implore you, please, be nice or be silent. The world is already full of reasons for writers to give up. It is such a steep climb. The years of rejection letters are bad enough. If you can’t make it better for them, at least don’t make it worse.

I see those same mistakes that other slushers are snarking about, but I think there’s a better way of informing writers about them. I’ll do what I can here. I need to bulk up my own Resources page on the site, and I’ll start posting some entries that might be helpful. I talked to the Overlord and got the go-ahead to blog about the slush, with some fairly obvious guidelines (no talking about specific stories or authors, etc.) I’m still new at this, but if there’s anything specific you’d like me to address, feel free to hit me up in the comments and I’ll do my best.

In the mean time, keep making the best art you can, and don’t let the snark get you down. We’re all on the same side. We just might have to remind a few people from time to time.

* This has happened to people I know.

I choked on my tea and said thank you about a half dozen times.

A month later, having asked him repeatedly if he’s absolutely sure, I’m finally starting to feeling like it’s real, and am updating things from “slush reader” to Assistant Editor.

What this has involved so far apart from reading a whole lot of slush (and we do have other people who read some when they’re available) has been varied. I’ve done some proof-reading and some brain-storming; I’ve given some second- and third-opinions; came up with questions for an author interview; done whatever minioning needed doing, and on one notable occasion actually made an editorial pass at a story.

I feel really weird about it. Elated, but also humbled. I’ve only been doing this for three months. I won’t short myself and deny that I have worked very hard, but it’s still an honor I don’t really feel I’ve earned yet.

The solution to that, of course, is to just keep working hard. I figure by the end of the year I won’t feel like a total fraud anymore, right?

Right?

The most notable immediate change is the writing. I completely changed my process recently. I used to barrel through a draft and hope for the best, knowing it would suck and would need a ton of revision. I found over time that when I do that I can’t see the forest for the trees, and editing takes months.

Disclaimer: I am not advising that anyone try what I’m doing right now. Writing at top speed to get a draft down works very well for many people, maybe most people. It just wasn’t working for me anymore.

So what I did this time was write something that isn’t quite an outline. I took one writing session to write a couple of pages of the things I see in my head, grouped in roughly the structure that I think I want the story to have. It looked a lot like a poem on the page when it was done, but it had the images, it had the beats, it had the structure and hinted at the pace.

Then I started writing based on that, filling in the prose around it. I’m only writing about a page a night, and I’m laboring over sentences and word choices in what is essentially a first draft. But the thing is, I’m not hating what I have so far. That’s pretty exciting. It will still need a lot of work, but I think it’s a better first draft than most of mine historically have been. It will be easier to edit, too, I think, because it isn’t nearly as over-written as my past efforts have been.

There was a time when one page a night would have been unacceptable to me, but right now it is progress and I need that sense of progress to keep the Fail at bay. Besides, it worked for Cory Doctorow, I don’t see why it can’t work for me. I am hoping that even at this slow pace I will produce a submission-ready story once a month. (They still need to go through revision and critique, of course.)

This story is another challenging one, and I’m writing without a net, but I like it that way. Reading slush has really made me want to stretch beyond what I was doing. I know what bores me as a slush reader now (and for what it’s worth, I am not a casual couple-of-stories-on-the-weekend slush reader. More on that in a moment.) I am at war with mediocrity in my writing right now, and it’s a war I intend to win.

Speaking of slush, I finally started tracking what I was reading. The system I’m working in doesn’t really allow me to get stats on how much I’ve read and recommended, so I started a spreadsheet of my own. I wanted to do this both for the satisfaction I get in seeing the numbers (Useful Yant is Useful!) but also because I wanted to remember the ones I recommend. I can tell you that in the past 10 days I’ve read 79 stories and recommended 13.

Naturally I thought to do this three weeks before submissions close for the season. Ah well. I’ll have it at the ready when it reopens in June.

I suspect that there are some topics I could pull out of the slushing experience that would be of interest to some of my friends out there. I’ll talk to the boss and see if it’d be cool if I blogged more about that.

Anyway, we have normality. My friends are back from their respective cons, I’m writing, I’m staying caught up on the other stuff, I’m doing a bunch of responsible grown-up stuff to keep things running smoothly, and it’s all okay.

Whew.

Some swift changes in my financial and personal life this week have sent me into a bit of a tailspin of self-doubt. Compounding this is the fact that I don’t have any fiction on the market at the moment–I’m not counting that one for McSweeney’s, I think I should consider that one lost at this point. That’s just a little too much failure in too many areas at once for me. Taken as an aggregate it makes me want to bench myself for a while. It is very tempting to just hide and despair. Years ago that’s exactly what I would have done.

That’s not how we’re doing things today. I am combating this by staying connected, being of service, and when I can, on getting this new short story done. I put an hour into it last night, and I think it’s working well so far.

The answer always seems to be the same: take care of the basics (food, exercise, sleep, environment), focus on the work, and wait it out. Because life will inevitably change just that fast again.