Young Writers Society

Sureal Tiptoeing into the World of Short Story Publishing

Being the over-ambitious, more-confidence-than-actual-skill sorrta writer, I’ve tried my hands at having some short stories published. Originally this was an attempt to strengthen my University application - I wanna study English Literature with Creative Writing - but now I’m doing this simply because I want too. Presumably it worked for the whole University thing though too; all six of the Universities I applied to accepted me.

So far I’ve had two short stories accepted for publication, have three rejected, and one more awaiting a response. I’m gonna list here, and update every now and then, the acceptances and rejections I receive, plus any points I learn along the way, so that you may learn from my mistakes.


Acceptances and Rejections:

‘After Life’ -- Delivered -- Acceptance -- Payment in free copy of magazine

‘Santa is the Devil!’ -- Twisted Tongue Magazine -- Acceptance -- Payment in free PDF of magazine

‘First Contact’ -- AlienSkin Magazine -- Rejection -- 'Writing needs work'

‘Differences in Opinion’ -- Forgotten Worlds -- Assumed Rejection -- No Reply

'Crawford' -- Fantasy Magazine -- Pending Response -- Sent 26/5/07

'Differences in Opinion' -- Fusion Fragment -- Rejection -- Standard Form Rejection


Learning Points:

--> When emailing a short story to a magazine, for the love of god make sure you’ve remembered to attach it. If you do happen to make this mistake, blame Hotmail.

--> Read the magazine’s website multiple times. Make sure you’re doing everything they ask.

--> Actually put some effort into the stories that are to be sent off.


Useful Links:

www.duotrope.com -- this is your god. Is a database of magazines that published prose and poetry, with lots of information on them.

www.shunn.net/format/story.html -- a useful guide to how to format your manuscript. If you look professional, you’ll (hopefully) increase your chances of publication. Although, anything posted on the magazine’s website takes precedence over this.


And there we are - you’re up to date with my adventures within the world of short story publishing .

Rock on sur!

Awesome, I'm just getting ready to write a few short stories, I'd love to get 'em published... I wonder if it matters whether its in Australia or not though.

Awesome Sureal. I hope to be sending off some short stories at some point, so this will help me immensely.

Awesome, I see you have been sucessful thus far.

Jiggity: No, it shouldn't matter. Most magazines will accept submissions from all over the world.

Thanks for the links, Sureal! If I ever manage to edit any of my short stories to my liking, I might send some off, and this will be so helpful. I wish you the best of luck!

Oh, congrats on getting published, I'll be sure to check the above links for the short story I'm planning to send off.

I was just looking back over the stories I'd sent off.

With the comedy After Life (accepted by Delivered), I noticed a number of punctuation errors and some poor writing. But despite this, there are still some pretty good jokes in it.

Here's a quick conversation from it, after the protagonist - Charlie - wakes from being knocked out:


‘Charlie, dude, you okay?’ a voice asked. The sound sent a sharp pain through Charlie’s head and he grunted in reply.

‘Sir? How do you feel?’

Charlie sighed. ‘Like I’ve just passed through the bowels of Satan.’

‘In that case, I reckon Satan feels worse.’

XD

Oh dear... sick humor!

lol! Typical British humour.

LOL!!

Oh, and it is awesome you've gotten things published. Good luck!

Yay, my first rejection letter .


We have all read, reviewed and discussed your submission, First Contact, and
we have decided to pass on the story.

Although the story fits within the genres we publish, the tale just didn't
interest us. We feel the telling of the tale still needs work.

We do thank you for considering AlienSkin Magazine for publication and for
allowing us the opportunity to review your work.

On a personal note, I do apologize for the delay in this reply. Generally,
we strive to maintain a 2 months or less response time, but an unexpected
flood of submissions caused us fell behind in our replies.

Do try us again soon.


To be honest, I was kind of expecting them to reject it. 'twas a terrible piece of work I sent off to them, and I'd have been extremely surprised if they had accepted it.

The story had poor writing, no origionality, poor characterisation, next to no description, dull dialogue and the science I used in it was incorrect.

My excuse for this poor piece of work? It was free-writen, in a single day, with very little editting, and had to be under 800 words - and I'm not really a fan of flash fiction. The most positive thing I can say about it, is that it had no spelling or grammar errors in it .

Now that they're back open to short stories, and not just flash fiction, I may have another go at submitting to them. And this time, actually put some effort into the work.

Do we even get to see what you send off to publishers? Meaning, are you posting them on YWS?

No, I prefer not to - makes life easier that way. No potential copyright problems.


For some reason, AlienSkin Magazine decided to send me another email, rejecting my story again, this time giving different reasons for the rejection. Odd. I think something's gone wrong with their database or summit.

An in other news, Forgotten Worlds (the other magazine I submitted too) is going through 'finanical troubles' at the moment, and is giving everyone the option of with-drawing any submissions they've made.

I'm tempted to with-draw the story I sent them. Not because I'm bothered by the longer reply time, but because I read over the story again a little while ago and found problems with it, such as an over-use of the passive voice near the end, and so expect it to be rejected anyway.