I thought I'd give an update to my 'days waiting' challenge. Before receiving a rejection from Asimov's earlier this week, I'd managed to pump my wait time up to 258 day, according to my calculator. I checked it twice, because it didn't seem possible that the number could have jumped so far in the course of less than a month. Turns out that having multiple stories on the market really does make a big difference. You would think this would be obvious, but math has never been my strong suit.
Basically, if you have one story and it sits for thirty days, you've got 30 days of waiting. If, on the other hand, there are five stories all waiting those same thirty days, that's 150 days of waiting. Color me educated. There is a real world mathematics application! (I kid--but this was still eye opening to me.)
Unfortutely for my numbers, the story that came back had been in the queue for fifty-one days, so that knocked my acculumated days waiting back quite a lot.
In the meantime, I now have two stories that have made it past their initial round of readings. One, at Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, has made it to the second round, and I should hear back in the next week or two with whether I have made it into the third and final round, where the editors make their choices from all the stories that have made it that far. The other is at Musa Publishing: Penumbra, and it has reached the final round. This story is for their September issue, which is Native American Folklore themed. According to what I've read, they finalize the issues about a month in advance, so I should be hearing back from them probably within the month as well.
After a long dry spell, save for one nice personal rejection from a senior editor at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, this is making me feel like I'm headed on the right path. There's every chance that neither of these stories will make it into the publications they are waiting to hear back from, but the fact that I've made it as far as I have is encouraging, and I'm looking forward to continuing to get stories written and submitted.
As I've been explaining to my son, the only sure way to fail is not to try.
I'm not going to go down that way.
I have heard, from writer's farther on the path than me, that getting personal rejections is a good sign that you are getting close. So congrats on that one! Especially from Beneath Ceaseless Skies, if I remember correctly that is one of the top 25 most challenging markets on Duotrope. Good job!
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