Its been eight months since I wrote Dark Lord Rising (recently retitled to The Captain and the Dark Lord, for consistency in the milieu). To be brutally blunt, I’ve been living in denial with this piece.
Fantasy Magazine gave me my first nice rejection with this piece, leaving a personal note that was very encouraging. Beneath Ceaseless Skies was also great, taking the time to actually point out the flaws of the story in addition to encouraging me onward. But did I listen to this advise? No! Of course not! I plowed ahead and sent the story to Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, who got back to me late last night with another rejection, repeating a lot of what BCS said.
There were other rejections before these, but these last three stand out for me because A) they were the last three, and B) in each case, the overworked editors took the time to send me a note with the rejection. In all cases, they welcomed new works for review, rejected this story, and gave me some advise on why this story failed for them. The sad thing is that after sending the HFQ, I started taking what Scott at BCS said seriously, recognizing the flaws he pointed out. But by then, as they say, the die was already cast and the story was already sitting in the queue at BCS.
What I’ve taken from these three editors is the reassurance that my writing isn’t crap, that when I sit down and tell a story, its still a worthy read. The problem in this case is that the story itself has intrinsic flaws that make it unsalable, at least in respectable markets.
Working against my lofty New Year’s resolution right now is that I’ve spent most of the year, when I’m actually writing, working on a novel. A novel that isn’t showing a lot of progress, although in the last week I’ve had a mental break through that should get the story moving forward again. My goal, for the bored, was to either be published this year, or to finish a novel. As it stands right now with over half the year past, I won’t make either goal. And that kind of stings.
I wish I was better at multitasking and juggling my schedules. Rationally, there is no reason I couldn’t write a few more short stories, release them into the wild, and work on the novel at the same time – while balancing family/work/life. Other people do it all the time. What I think I lack is discipline. Because there is no burning mandate to achieve these writing goals, the fate of the family/work/life don’t hang in the balance of my success, I let myself be distracted (LeftForDead2 anybody?).
And I don’t think this is something I’m going to answer in this blog post. But that’s where I stand.