Following up

It pays to follow up with submissions from time to time. I had an offer to appear on a writing web forum next year and the publisher asked for an unpublished story. I had two that were in submission elsewhere that seemed right, so I inquired with the markets where they were pending to see about their status.

The first market responded that they had rejected my submission back in June—I never received the e-mail rejection, though they were able to forward it to me, so it got lost somewhere in the ether.

The second responded that they had no record of my submission at all. They’d had some e-mail problems in July, so it seems that my submission was lost. In that case, an autoresponder had confirmed that my e-mail submission got through to them, but something ate it later.

So, as it turns out, both those stories were lying dormant for over three months. The good news is that I sold one of them to the writing forum, and it will appear there in January. More about that later, once the contract is signed and their 2008 schedule is announced.

I think I have the new/old story ready for submission. I sent it off to my first reader this afternoon after spending the day editing it. A sentence from the story percolated in my thoughts overnight and it made me realize something about the viewpoint character that helped me add a new level of depth to the story. I love it when that happens. A lot of it was already there, I just had to recognize it and massage it a little more. Some of the phrasing that’s been there for a long time supported this thematic element. It was a real joy to see some of them blend in so smoothly with the new material I added.