Discussion: Q1 Volume 40

Oh, I can only laugh, but —clever, clever me— I just submitted my story to Q1 Vol 40 WITH MY NAME PROMINENT AT THE TOP OF PAGE ONE.

Don't ask me how I managed this, let's just say it happened.
So... What, if anything, do I do about it (besides wait for the reject, I figured that one out myself!)

Is there any way to "fix" this faux pas?

Posted by: @angelslayah

Oh, I can only laugh, but —clever, clever me— I just submitted my story to Q1 Vol 40 WITH MY NAME PROMINENT AT THE TOP OF PAGE ONE.

Don't ask me how I managed this, let's just say it happened.
So... What, if anything, do I do about it (besides wait for the reject, I figured that one out myself!)

Is there any way to "fix" this faux pas?

 

@jason would know. Jason Toth is their tech guru, and a great guy.

@angelslayah Hello, no problem. As the system locks your submission once submitted I will have to help you. If you can direct message me I will instruct you on how we fix this.

Does anyone else assume @jason wears a cape while he's on the forum? #realLifeSuperhero

What's a Wadmin? ? 

Posted by: @ease

What's a Wadmin? ? 

Never heard that before. Looking at the design I came up with a guess, winged administrator. 

Posted by: @wulfmoon

Jason Toth is their tech guru, and a great guy.

Wow. Is he! 
Thanks @Jason, you are my hero!

So, after putzing about most of the month I went back to my story, hated the opening, so deleted it.  Then I skipped what would end up being the first 3 - 5 pages, started writing, and realized that MIGHT be the place to start.  Still probably to early, but at least it's flowing better.  We'll see if the whole thing plays out well, I'm having doubts about it, but we'll see.

Also had a realization while reading a novel that  one of my weaknesses is my try/fail.  My character's failures tend to be more "ah shucks, that's frustrating.  Ah well, let's try again" vs. "Your hopes and dreams turned to failure, and because of that your mentor died!"

Posted by: @ease

Does anyone else assume @jason wears a cape while he's on the forum? #realLifeSuperhero

No, but he has background-explosion-styled dark glasses.

Posted by: @angelslayah

Posted by: @wulfmoon

Jason Toth is their tech guru, and a great guy.

Wow. Is he! 
Thanks @Jason, you are my hero!

@jason and his wife Sarah are priceless gems. They do so much work behind the scenes during workshop week, working sixteen hour days to make sure everything runs smoothly for the winners and guests. When I did the WotF workshop week blog, I’d get my copy in by midnight, and Jason would still be at the ASI offices, sifting through hundreds of photos to post to the blog the next day. He and Sarah do the room setups, they do the take down, when everyone is walking away to go to lunch or dinner, they’re quietly hauling materials in or out of the meeting rooms, always with a smile as you pass by. Those rolling cases winners get with their trophies and author copies and promo materials all neatly packed in? Jason and Sarah are part of the team that packs those and brings them in for winners to take home. That gorgeous stage you see every year? Yeah, they work on that, too.

Jason does all the IT work you see here, and for the entire WotF website, including the submission portal. Every video you watch, every podcast you listen to? Jason is the technician that makes those presentations shine. He is a supremely gifted man with a humble, kind, and positive spirit that makes him a pleasure to know and to be around if you have the good fortune.

There are many great people working at ASI/Writers of the Future. The ones in the forefront get much recognition, and deservedly so. Their dedication to helping aspiring writers succeed is stunning. But Jason is the guy that makes all the machinery shine, and fixes it if something is not. He literally builds the stage that others stand upon to have the spotlight turned on them. So this year, I decided he needed a spotlight of his own, and wrote about him in the acknowledgements of my first Super Secrets of Writing publication.

He deserves it.

Ok I correct.
he has NO-background-explosion-styled dark glasses.
Because true heroes prevent the explosions from happening

Anyone else have mixed emotions about which story they should enter if they're perhaps writing more than one story for more than one submission (WotF and something else)?

My Q4 V39 entry was actually a story I started writing for another contest that was due in a few days, but since my entry for WotF was way too short (an excerpt from a novel in progress that I was writing; was like 1000 words), I switched the stories and entered WotF with the longer story which was an original and not an excerpt to any novel I had.

My Q1 V40 hasn't been written yet, but I've got mixed emotions because I wrote the start of something that a lot of people liked, and I don't know if that would be better for WotF. I'm feeling a bit lost and confused. I better crank out the stories and then decide.

Posted by: @wulfmoon

Posted by: @angelslayah

Posted by: @wulfmoon

Jason Toth is their tech guru, and a great guy.

Wow. Is he! 
Thanks @Jason, you are my hero!

@jason and his wife Sarah are priceless gems. They do so much work behind the scenes during workshop week, working sixteen hour days to make sure everything runs smoothly for the winners and guests. When I did the WotF workshop week blog, I’d get my copy in by midnight, and Jason would still be at the ASI offices, sifting through hundreds of photos to post to the blog the next day. He and Sarah do the room setups, they do the take down, when everyone is walking away to go to lunch or dinner, they’re quietly hauling materials in or out of the meeting rooms, always with a smile as you pass by. Those rolling cases winners get with their trophies and author copies and promo materials all neatly packed in? Jason and Sarah are part of the team that packs those and brings them in for winners to take home. That gorgeous stage you see every year? Yeah, they work on that, too.

Jason does all the IT work you see here, and for the entire WotF website, including the submission portal. Every video you watch, every podcast you listen to? Jason is the technician that makes those presentations shine. He is a supremely gifted man with a humble, kind, and positive spirit that makes him a pleasure to know and to be around if you have the good fortune.

There are many great people working at ASI/Writers of the Future. The ones in the forefront get much recognition, and deservedly so. Their dedication to helping aspiring writers succeed is stunning. But Jason is the guy that makes all the machinery shine, and fixes it if something is not. He literally builds the stage that others stand upon to have the spotlight turned on them. So this year, I decided he needed a spotlight of his own, and wrote about him in the acknowledgements of my first Super Secrets of Writing publication.

He deserves it.

Can confirm everything Wulf says here. Everyone from ASI is amazing, working SO hard during the workshop week to make everything happen - and working year round. All the praise and appreciation for Jason and the team!

Posted by: @annax

Anyone else have mixed emotions about which story they should enter if they're perhaps writing more than one story for more than one submission (WotF and something else)?

Always.  Every single time I'm torn.  I always try to do at least two stories a quarter, and its always a struggle on which one is better to submit.

Okay, that's not true.  There was one time I was confident which one was the best (it ended up getting a reject by the way, so I may have been wrong there).  So, yeah.  I totally can empathize with that.

@wulfmoon 

Joni handles that sort of thing, (leaving name on manuscript) not Jason. 

Posted by: @jonilabaqui

@wulfmoon 

 

Joni handles that sort of thing, (leaving name on manuscript) not Jason. 

Joni, you are the best! Thanks for all that you do for WOTF,

@physa Joni is the best. It’s true.

Joni refers to herself as Joni.

Because she is Joni. ? 

? She is the one and Joni ?

Posted by: @axeminister

Joni refers to herself as Joni.

Because she is Joni. ? 

If I refer to myself as Joni, too, then things will start to get really confusing...

(And more seriously, thanks to @jonilabaqui for also sorting out my certificate for Q2 after I completely messed up--I received my Q2 and Q3 certificates together today, thanks so much for that!)

@jonilabaqui Good to know! Thanks!

Both @jonilabaqui and @jason do a wonderful job. Thank you both.

Thinking about failure.

Yeah, the big F, the rejection, DNP, etc., you know the drill. I open the publisher's email with all of the hope in the world and read it through while growing numb. Then there's a shiver in my chest as my heart pulls up stakes and leaves. I don't share the pain of rejection with family or friends because, God bless them, they'd ask me to quit.

I don't quit. I read stories that are currently being published. I read one of my favorite books on writing and maybe an article or ten concentrating on areas identified by critiques. And I continue writing and sending stories for publication.

I tip my hat to those of you who continue to write, to learn, to struggle forward toward publication.

And, for those of you who are considering a different course of action, read Failure and Flourishing by David G. Myers in order to bolster your confidence. Recapture that nugget of belief you had when you judged that story fit for publication (It's a good one, anybody would want to read it. Hell, it's so good that people will PAY to read it.). Yeah, that belief.

Have fun,

Kent

@kent I'm a bit odd in my approach to rejection.  I take to heart something I've worked through with clients and it had really helped me toonly take  rejection as a couple minutes of  "ah well, that sucks" and then I move on.  I tell myself I'm already not published.  No one has paid me a dime for anything I write.  Each time I submit and it's rejected I lost nothing, I'm still where I was yesterday in regards to my writing career.  Which is fine, i can not be any less published than I am today.  Worse case scenario is this afternoon I receiving another e-mail confirming nothing changed. 

But then, one day maybe, things will change, and I'll have a win.  Until then, I don't have losses, because I never lose anything by being rejected.  I can only win.  Are there disappointments? Sure.  But it was a disappointment, not a loss.  I've been disappointed a lot, and yet my life is still good.  Heck, yesterday I was disappointed my kids ate all their Twix so I couldn't steal any.  I had to setlle on Rolos.  But I took four in vengeance.

So, it's back to writing, because I have a boy on the cusp of discovering what it means to truly be a paladin, or maybe a robot about to discover what it means to sacrifice, or a dragon finding out what it is to love something other that himself. And that's fun to find and explore.  And maybe trying to figure out where else I can submit this piece.  Maybe not, as that spread sheet of submission histories is getting long and wading through it may be a task for the weekend.

Anyway, rambling talk about how I tend to deal with failure and rejection.  It's really helped me.

Posted by: @aivanther

Heck, yesterday I was disappointed my kids ate all their Twix so I couldn't steal any.  I had to setlle on Rolos.  But I took four in vengeance

I feel this!  

On rejection* I think of Stephen King's rejection slips on a nail story. He accrued a heck of a lot before he got published. Many other writers tell similar stories of rejection before success. But it is hard not to take it to heart when you have worked so hard on a story, but that is the nature of the beast. I look back at stories I wrote pre-WotF online workshop / critique exchanges, and can see how much I have improved even though the results may not back that up. Seeing my improvement, I just hold out hope that, one day, I'll be one of those writers who say "my rejection list was yay big before I made it, don't lose heart". This is where forums like this help, as there are many forumites who have gone on to be winners in this competition, and this competition does produce NYT bestsellers (as well as others making a living as professional writers), so you never know.

I am glad I have a spreadsheet of submissions with an entry "rejected" rather than a literal nail in my wall, or I would need to substitute a harpoon instead!

*a title of a book for aspiring writers if ever there was one!

Rejections don’t feel good, but without them, I wouldn’t feel compelled to improve my writing. I’m glad the first things I ever submitted to magazines got rejected because I’d be mortified if they had actually made it OUT THERE. I’m new to WotF, but if rejections start piling up then I’ll know I need to make some changes. My goal is to keep writing, keep reading, and keep submitting while working to get to where I want to be. Rejection means “Not this one. Not right now.” It doesn’t mean “Not you. Not ever.” Don’t give up, my new forumite friends.

@kent I got two rejections for the same submission last week! I was pretty upset for half a second when the second email came in. I was like 'wow, I don't even remember submitting to BCS again since the last one, and I've already got a rejection?!'

But the second rejection was long, and explained a lot about where my story fell short, so I'm actually really grateful for it. Plus, it makes hitting my goal of 'more rejections this year than last' even easier ? Now just to work on the 'more (read: any) acceptances this year than last!'

Posted by: @ease

@kent I got two rejections for the same submission last week! I was pretty upset for half a second when the second email came in. I was like 'wow, I don't even remember submitting to BCS again since the last one, and I've already got a rejection?!'

But the second rejection was long, and explained a lot about where my story fell short, so I'm actually really grateful for it.

BCS are wonderful for feedback. I try to pay attention to markets that offer good feedback, and I have both BCS and The Colored Lens up there for that, as they both make a point of providing clear and well considered feedback on what made a story work or not work for them.

Some other markets come and go where that's concerned, or fall down because of their response times (Leading Edge, who also have regularly given wonderful feedback, have such an awful response-time now that it's not really a selling point to me for that market). Back in the day, Ideomancer were also great for feedback (alas, now defunct), and I recall Andromeda Spaceways were good for it too, though it's been a while now since I sent them anything (mostly because their open windows and my available stories haven't aligned).

BCS are particularly unusual, though, because pro markets get a lot of submissions, so it's much more rare for them to offer any kind of detailed feedback. I really appreciate that they care enough about that specific part of their publication to keep up with it, as I can only imagine it must make every story read take considerably more effort.