Another rejection for A Friendly Farewell.

It didn’t crush me or anything. But it was very sweet of Chris to try to cheer me up.

Now I have to figure out where else I can send this.

Again…!

I mailed A Friendly Farewell just now to Fantasy & Science Fiction. I mailed it SAL (economy air), and it only cost me ¥180. Otherwise it’d have been ¥260. For a five page manuscript, it seems awfully expensive to pay ¥260.

Anyways…it takes about 2-3 weeks for the manuscript to arrive in the States, so now I wait.

When Sun rejected A Friendly Farewell, a super short SF story I wrote not too long ago, I’ve been a bit down, thinking, My writing’s just not good enough.

I heard from someone who writes for them that they’re discontinuing all short stories. So maybe it’s not me, but rather their not needing any more short stories. I’d been avoiding sending A Friendly Farewell out again for various reasons one of which is that I didn’t have any confidence. But you know what? I realized that if I never send it out, I’ll never know.

So on Monday, it’s going to Fantasy & Science Fiction.

My Diva mentee just quit. I wonder if my comments on her first chapter had been overly harsh. I really didn’t mean to be overly critical, but it was her first novel and needed some substantial revision IMHO. Still…it sucks. Somehow I feel abandoned, which isn’t her fault because I’m quite sure that wasn’t her intention just as my initial comments / critique of her work wasn’t intended to be harsh or mean.

At the same time I wonder if this is why I can’t get a critique partner(s)?

I really want someone who’s not afraid to tell me what’s wrong w/ my story and lets me know if there’s anything I do well in terms of the overall story structure. I feel like my stories are getting better, but at the same time I can’t help but think that maybe there’s something wrong with me and my writing because I can’t seem to write effortlessly or well enough to sell, and I hope I can find a critique partner or two who can help me. (And hopefully, I can return the favor.)

Or maybe I feel this way because A Friendly Farewell was rejected within 48 hours by Sun.

At the same time, I look at other people who’d written four, five, six, or even ten manuscripts before selling. With each novel, they learned something and improved their craft. Yet there are others who hasn’t sold anything after having written over ten novels. I wonder where I fall in the spectrum.

I retitled Roger to A Friendly Farewell and sent it to Sun just now. Chris helped me out a lot because when I was sick and sleeping, he did the edit on the computer (transcribing the paper edit to the file). And I didn’t even ask him to do it! :wub:

I rewrote Roger, which was originally an 8K long short story, to an 800 word-long one. It took me a while, but it’s better for it, I think. The biggest challenge was making sure the main character, Alex Demming, came across as a sympathetic man who loves a woman he could never have.

The game plan is to have Chris take a look, revise, and submit to Sun. From what I heard, they respond fast.

Nothing grand. I just want to write at least twenty four hours this week.

I printed out the hard copy of Roger and read it again. Oh. My. God. It sucks.

I couldn’t decide if I should be deliriously happy or deliriously unhappy. Why?

Happy because I’ve obviously improved a lot as a writer and now I can see any glaring errors or problems.

Unhappy because Roger sucks.

It’s still revisable. The basic structure and the concept are sound. It’ll require 2 days or so of reading, writing, and polishing and mailing it to Asimov’s. I thought about sending it to SF&F, but I think I want to send it to Asimov’s first.