Discussion: Q3 Volume 38

@physa Almost without exception, bad numbers like this are a spoof, generally indicating a junk robo call. It's not too complex to fake the calling number (so some systems will pretend to be a phone in your area, I'm sure you've seen that one already), and sometimes they do pretend to be stupid 14 digit numbers--I've had this happen to me before too, a similarly long, junky not-really-a-phone-number as the caller.

(Side note, I was getting so many junk calls at one point that I screened Joni's finalist call to voicemail when a number I didn't recognize showed up. But it wasn't a 14 digit horror, so no fear of that here!)

Anyone had an email yet?

@pdblake 

Not yet. I keep poking my head onto this forum, too. Jason said he might let us know if they post the results on the WotF blog before emails all go out.

Nothing yet. No dramas. I'm sure it won't be long. 

Not yet. I keep poking my head onto this forum, too. Jason said he might let us know if they post the results on the WotF blog before emails all go out.

Nothing yet. No dramas. I'm sure it won't be long. 

The day is young!

Posted by: @scott_m_sands

@pdblake 

Not yet. I keep poking my head onto this forum, too. Jason said he might let us know if they post the results on the WotF blog before emails all go out.

Nothing yet. No dramas. I'm sure it won't be long. 

Nothing yet here, but I figure today or tomorrow.

And... I cleaned up my Q3 story and it's been submitted to another market. :). Fingers crossed.  

@physa yup. Just did some word chopping myself to make QTR 3 fit word count of another market and will send off tonight or tomorrow.

Posted by: @morgan-broadhead

Kary—I have a question, and I understand if you aren't able to answer it, but it's something I've always wondered about.
What percent (roughly) of quarterly entries do you see that are completely unreadable? Like, the author wasn't even trying to take this contest seriously. What they sent in wasn't even a story. Maybe it was a marriage proposal, or hate mail about the US, or a letter from some Nigerian prince asking for bank routing numbers to wire you a small fortune. Stuff like that.

Apologies for the delay. They had me chained in the slush dungeon and it took me while to chew my way out. (And yes, y'all should be inferring something from the fact that I appear to be out.)

Very roughly, some 3-5% of entrants leave their names on their stories. Instant DQ. 10-15% are some combo of things we don't accept - novels, novel excerpts, already published work, poetry, screenplays, chemistry homework, Amtrak tickets, memoirs, cookbooks, genres that aren't SFF, not written in English, fan fic, etc.

Another 10-20% are very basic attempts at writing, think 1-2 pages, might not have paragraphs, punctuation or anything resembling a structure. Might have a structure, but the tropes are terribly cliche (e.g. and then I woke up. The End) - that sort of thing.

Does that help?

Once you're at the HM level or higher, you're really not competing with the mumbledy-thousand stories from the whole quarter. You're competing with the 300 or so stories that are getting HMs or more.

Once you're getting Silver and higher, you're competing with roughly the top 50-60 entrants for that quarter.

Once you make finalist, it's really not about competing for who has the best story anymore. Once you make finalist, there's an element of luck to it. If you wrote a purple unicorn story, and one of the other finalists is a red unicorn story, the final judges might split the vote and neither of you win. If you wrote fantasy, and 4 other finalists also wrote fantasy, your odds are lower than whoever might have written sci-fi that quarter. If your four judges have preferences that align in some way, your specific sub-genre might get locked out. Example: in the days where Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle judged together, fantasy, especially traditional epic / high fantasy, just wasn't going to win that quarter.

So once you make finalist, it is even more important to keep entering. You have to hit the right quarter, with the right judges, with the right story, and sometimes that takes several attempts. So hang in there, keep writing and don't quit. 

And if you do quit, come back. Martin and I both quit writing for more than 20 years.

Never give up! Never surrender! 

Posted by: @physa

Speaking of weird numbers on a cell phone. Yesterday I got a call several times from: 15335318347558.

Joni calls from a blocked/private number or a Los Angeles area code. Depends on whether she's using her office phone or her cell. 😉

Anyone hear anything on QTR3?

@karyenglish 

I also get calls from numbers that are only one or two different from numbers as I know (such as mine or my wife's). That ain't no accident. If only these people would turn the energy they obviously use into something else - what great stories they might write!

Posted by: @karyenglish

And if you do quit, come back. Martin and I both quit writing for more than 20 years.

Never give up! Never surrender! 

Solid advice! I can't say over 20, but I did quit writing for around eight myself. Then got sparked to return by a 48-hour Twilight Zone marathon (I'd never seen the Twilight Zone before--no mistake that my earliest short stories from then are very Twilight Zone-esque, and at least one of them has a rather Rod Serling-alike devil as a  character in it).

I have a friend who quit writing, and I keep crossing my fingers for him to return. He used to be a considerably better writer than me, and I would still love to see what he might do if he returns to it.

@karyenglish 

Hi Kary! (waves) since you're here, I've got a question I've wondered at for some time:

All my straight Rs have come after my finalist, so I've always figured I'm not in the name on MS, or poor formatting category, so what, I wonder, got me bumped in pages 1-3? 

I imagine there's an element of -get your spec in there-, but specifically, how much does -not for this contest- weigh into straight Rs? 

An example might be, to go extreme, a graphic romance, or a gore horror story. Beautifully written and executed on the first three pages, spec, but zero chance of making the antho. R, or HM?

I imagine an HM means you are close -for WotF-. Not generally you are close, you are writing well, this is a good story, but -we considered it for inclusion for a second, minute, hour, etc.-

Granted, this is why we are encouraged to know our market, not just with WotF, but any market. Analog won't take even the most amazing high fantasy story, right? That's an R. So, if you can share, how often do you see something you might otherwise like/appreciate, but have to bump it because it's just not ultimately right for the pages of WotF?

Thanks.

Today is last day of week. Maybe we will find out results of Q3. . Sending out Q1 for review and working on KYD for Q2.

Posted by: @karyenglish

Posted by: @physa

Speaking of weird numbers on a cell phone. Yesterday I got a call several times from: 15335318347558.

Joni calls from a blocked/private number or a Los Angeles area code. Depends on whether she's using her office phone or her cell. 😉

Good to know, thanks Kary! :). I wasn't expecting a Joni call. But I do have my fingers crossed on getting an HM. If I get an HM on a WOTF story, that would make my day.  

Wondering - based on the update in the Q4 thread - if we might end up hearing our Q4 results before our Q3 results. That would be a first

I did see on Submission Grinder that someone reported an acceptance and there are a couple rejections reported. Wonder if the rejections are received or just folks from here who have assumed it based on the info in this thread.

Oh well - whatever kind of rejection I have forthcoming for this quarter my story got sent on its way to another market today.

@physa same here. I would love to get a certificate of some flavor.

@craydimensional 

Yeah, a cert would be nice. Always writing to win. Certs are great encouragers!

My story is off on the rounds now too.  I wonder if the speculative fiction-only markets experience a noticeable bump in submissions when WOTF results are released, and if I should adjust my strategy in accordance.

Posted by: @czing

Wondering - based on the update in the Q4 thread - if we might end up hearing our Q4 results before our Q3 results. That would be a first

I did see on Submission Grinder that someone reported an acceptance and there are a couple rejections reported. Wonder if the rejections are received or just folks from here who have assumed it based on the info in this thread.

Oh well - whatever kind of rejection I have forthcoming for this quarter my story got sent on its way to another market today.

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. Q3 and Q4 are starting to blur together. I'm not sure if I like my Q3 or Q4 better. 

If they get it to me in time, WotF can be my 200th rejection of 2021! Otherwise that honor will fall elsewhere...

Posted by: @angelslayah

If they get it to me in time, WotF can be my 200th rejection of 2021...

Too late! 

A note on receiving 200 rejections in a single year:
In the same year I made my first Pro Sale, had two Requested Rewrites and two "Held For Consideration"s -all with pro markets. 

It doesn't make me a better writer, to have so many rejections, but it makes me more read!

A note on receiving 200 rejections in a single year:
In the same year I made my first Pro Sale, had two Requested Rewrites and two "Held For Consideration"s -all with pro markets. 

It doesn't make me a better writer, to have so many rejections, but it makes me more read!

I like your attitude. I'm up to about 65 rejections in this year, but I restrict my subs to the SFWA-qualifying pro markets. I try to keep the queues full; as soon as I get a rejection, I send them something else—and send that story somewhere else.

I have heard that the mags receive on the order of 600 subs for each issue, publishing 10-12. That means the success rate is only 1-2%. But that's the world in which we live and write.

Posted by: @ehonour

I'm up to about 65 rejections in this year, but I restrict my subs to the SFWA-qualifying pro markets.

I wonder: What do you do with a story that has made those rounds? There are plenty of respectable periodicals, some of them Hugo or Nebula winners that don't pay the magic rate and are not SFWA certified -others that don't pay at all which I admire for my own reasons.
Some of these even offer "notes" with rejections, which I find valuable.
Do you just "retire" a story after its last go at SFWA markets?

I just broke 100 rejections for the year. That's somewhere around 25 stories with various numbers of rejections each. I like aiming for 100 as it's a nice round number, but it's rough! I set aside Monday mornings for sending out stories that have been returned, so I'm not doing it every day, and on the first of each month I go through and see if something has been to enough places it's time to send it out to pasture. Sometimes I do that after 4 rejections sometimes its 14, it depends on the story. None of them are deleted though - they're all there ready to be edited and sent back out if I change my mind someday.

@rschibler You are ahead of me. I haven’t written or submitted as many. Spending time writing and rewriting as I learn craft.

@craydimensional I've been at this writing thing since January 2017, now, and have built up a lot of stories - plus I started sending mine out right away instead of waiting, as might have been wiser. We're all on our own journeys--it's not a race

@rschibler 

For sure not a race. I'd say we're even running different courses, so varied is the market.

I'm at around 65 rejections for this year. I'll be aiming for 100 next year. 

Posted by: @angelslayah

I wonder: What do you do with a story that has made those rounds? 
Do you just "retire" a story after its last go at SFWA markets?

I haven't retired any stories yet, although I've got a couple that seem to have exhausted the markets at 8c/word. I have submitted some to markets beyond SF&F, because they are literary enough that they may be of interest to other markets. I am gathering the stories toward the goal of self-publishing a couple of anthologies. (I'm also working on a novel.)

Tales of Verdant encompasses a flock of my stories that are all placed in a future world that is falling apart; the lives of people who still want to enjoy life and love while their world destroys itself. The novel Not Like Us is also placed in the same milieu, so there should be cross-leverage there.

The others are waiting for inspiration toward an anthology theme.

@physa I got a strange call like that the other day. An 818 area code and when I called it back the call wouldn’t go through. Pretty sure it wasn’t Joni. Probably about my damn car warranty. ?