Writing Groups

Sitting in my converted washroom staring out at a bare brick wall, it's easy to forget the social aspect of writing. So it was refreshing to meet up with my original Fellow Travellers in Beverley this weekend. It will be 6 years this Autumn since we all turned up on the Certificate course at Hull University - Department of Care in the Community, or Continuing Education, or some such.

It strikes me that the Masters courses, that a few of us did next, are very different things. It's great to be still in touch with people from my Masters, but I don't think it's a coincidence that with one exception, those I'm in regular touch with were never in the same Conference group - and that one jumped ship half way through.

Just too much blood spilled in Conference. But hey, hopefully we'll all one day be giving each other impossibly glowing reviews in the press - just like all the UEA alumni in the Guardian every Saturday.

It was the Certificate group, though, that had real common purpose. We were all in the same hole (Still are. Still digging) - all trying to work out what we were trying to do with this Writing thing. Common enemies, too. As someone pointed out - Creative Writing does attract a lot of mentally unstable people.

But it was the ability of this group to both honestly criticise AND find common ground and common references and suggest possible directions - to encourage with honesty but a minimum of pain - that was the true value. Michael's tutorship did the trick until it was unnecessarily cut short. As he said, it's good to start from the maxim of First, Do No Harm.

Finally, it's good to have people to drunkenly reminisce with to 4am.

Anyway, I'm hoping to drag them all over to the West coast for more of the same in the not-too-distant future. Maybe even bring some real creative work along as well as the plonk.

Compost

I have been (gently) nagged. Thanks, Val.

This blog has been sitting with the shutters closed and dust sheets over the furniture while I relearned how to self-edit and finally sent a couple of stories out into…

Into what, exactly?

One of the rejection-tracking websites calls it ‘The Black Hole’ – but that’s too solid. Black holes are there, affecting the physical universe, swallowing matter and leaking out Hawking radiation. But send out a piece of creative work and it’s just gone, in some kind of limbo – without form and void. Right now I’d feel more confident of a response if I’d rolled the MS up, stuck it in a bottle and thrown it into the ebbing tide. I can’t even do that now, I’d fall foul of No Simultaneous Submissions rule.

That’s strange isn’t it? It would make sense if Editors were heartless megalomaniacs who insisted on their right to ignore your manuscript for six months before consigning it to the compost heap, all the while owning some kind of right to prohibit someone else having any kind of composting rights.

Editors can’t be like that, right?

There are always the Competitions. At least they have deadlines, so you know when to give up. But competitions are so well-built, the outer defences – those volunteer readers - secure against anything innovative and original, the final judge(s) impregnable to anything but the most original and innovative. Anyone figured it out yet?

So back to the magazines – serious ones, no vanity publish-all websites. I’ve got a story that, on and off, I’ve spent (too) many hours on since its first conception two and a half years. Now, to my satisfaction, it is finished, ready to be sent out into the world.

Let’s say I send it to Shimmer – a good magazine, one which I’ve enjoyed reading. Guidelines include Standard Manuscript Format (pain) and No Simultaneous Submissions. They’re in the USA, so I have to figure out how to get it there with the right international postage on a SAE to get the rejection slip back to me. (Just because I want to be published in print does not mean I’m a LUDDITE. Not all the time.)

Duotrope lists Shimmers's average response time as an incredibly quick 12 days per rejection. So let’s have a look at the other markets otherswho submitted to Shimmer tried. Stick to things I’ve read… in no particular order…

GUD (Greatest Uncommon Denominator) – 20 average days per rejection.

Abyss&Apex – 36 days.

Strange Horizons – 42 days.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet – 212 days.

Imagine I strike it incredibly lucky. That carefully nurtured story has only needed 5 submissions to find a loving and accepting market . It’s only taken 322 days.

Wait – it takes a bit longer to receive an acceptance than a rejection. Plus there’s handling and posting and messing about. May even a minor rewrite.

Let’s call it an even year.

So, feeling optimistic, here’s to sitting here in January 2011 telling you about the marvellous, overnight success of a new short story.