One of my favorite ways to procrastinate on writing is to generate meaningless statistics about my writing. I’m a mathmatologist. I believe that somehow, numbers will reveal the future to me. Recently, someone asked me the average number of rejections a short story of mine receives before it is accepted. Read more…
Back in my dating days, I often had to deal with Dudebro Jerks. They would ask you out, and when you said, “No, I’m not interested,” they would demand an EXPLANATION. They would hound you looking for the solution to this asking-out puzzle like you were a stuck vending machine Read more…
The Zerg were a race in a videogame whose main strength was cheap units (Zerglings) and their main strategy was to keep churning them out until you buried your enemies in Zerg. I kinda loved playing as the Zerg. NB: if you google ‘Zerg Swarm” you get an adorable Google Read more…
If you follow me, you’ve probably noticed my Rejectometer. My sister Grace proposed it as a way to get me to shut up about how awful and unpublished I was. “I’ll buy you a present if you reach 100 rejection letters.” So I started counting rejections, and soon enough, I Read more…
I recently re-read an old blog post I did on my rejection statistics for sold stories. I had sold 9 stories at that time (March of 2016) and averaged 10.1 rejections on sold stories, with 22 highest rejections and 4 lowest. How has that changed now that I’ve sold 40 Read more…
On the writing chat boards I frequent to complain about all my rejections, I’ve noticed a particular way of talking about rejections that needs to be addressed. We all want to know why a story has been rejected. WHY?? It was beautiful and perfect and you rejected it, why?? And Read more…
A piece of advice I have often heard is that your story must clue the reader in to its genre quickly. “In the first line, if possible.” I remember getting quite tangled up in my thoughts, trying to introduce character, setting, plot AND genre in one sentence. Exhausting! Impossible! But Read more…