Journal mcgrew's Journal: No good story ever started with someone eating a salad 2
It was some time last year that someone on Facebook posted a graphic that said "Beer: because no good story ever started with someone eating a salad." There are a lot of them to be found in Google Images.
So I decided to write a good story that starts with someone eating a salad, although parts of the story do take place in a bar. How good is it?
Magazines like F&SF get a thousand submissions a month, and each bi-monthly issue only has half a dozen stories. Only the very best get printed, and almost all rejection slips are form letters that all say pretty much the same thing, no matter what magazine.
Out of over a hundred rejections, I've only gotten two that were not form letters. The first was actually the first story I ever submitted, "Voyage to Earth". A junior editor (or perhaps slush reader) wrote back saying that it was a good story and well written, but the beginning didn't grab her.
The story I'm posting tomorrow, "The Naked Truth" garnered a personalized rejection from Charles Finlay, F&SF's Editor in Chief! He wrote a very encouraging letter saying that the idea of a murder mystery on Mars intrigued him and it was well written, but he didn't like the ending.
It was very nearly in F&SF. That means it isn't just a good story that starts with someone eating a salad, but a VERY good story.
I'm putting magazine submissions on hiatus until I finish "Voyage to Earth and Other Stories". I want to publish it next year, some magazines hang on to stories for a really long time ("Dewey's War" was in Analog's slush pile for six months, Tor has had "The Exhibit" since December) and if they publish one, I won't be able to publish it for a couple of years.
I have five finished stories you haven't read, three of which nobody has. I'll probably post one every couple of weeks until I run out of them. I've been working on one story, "The Pirate" (which I may rename) for a couple of months. Writing's been hard since I smoked my last cigarette last New Year's Eve.
Whydja quit cigarettes (Score:1)
And I would think replacing smoking one leaf with that other one would make creative writing even easier.
Re: (Score:2)
I did the math. Pack and a half a day was costing $300 a month, and all I got out of it was temprrarily not needing a cigarette.
I actually quit once before, in 1999. I got stupid drunk with a bunch of smokers and got hooked again.
Although two beers and a puff of reefer does usually get me started writing. I think the pause in the muse is from breaking the routine; the cigarette break.
I got over it before, I'll do it again. Oddly, the first time I quit it didn't affect me as much. I wrote "How to quit smokin