Posts Tagged: The Merger

Anatomy of a Sale, Pt. 2

<< Read “Anatomy of a Sale, Pt. 1”

Previously on “Anatomy of a Sale,” I made my first short story sale and then had no luck for almost five months. But then I made sale after sale after sale, I got an anthology invite, and I was asked to be Assistant Editor of a magazine. Things were happening!

And then nothing happened for a couple months.

Draft 1: 6/5/2014

Draft 2: 1/5/2015

Final (Draft 6): 2/9/2015

Submission: 89

Rejections: 2 (80 lifetime, 2 from this market)

Rewrite Request: 4/20/2015 (30 days)

Resubmission: 4/25/2015

Acceptance: 4/28/2015 (38 days)

Draft 1 to Sale: 327 days

Final to Sale: 78 days

Sale #5 – “Marcie’s Waffles Are the Best in Town”

Last June several of us Bay Area writers formed a small community on Twitter, dubbed #baywriters by Christie Yant (who is not in the Bay Area but is generally a positive influence on writers). We organized writing sprints, and one night when we were getting ready to write 1000 words in half an hour, I asked for a prompt. I got this.

Sometimes a bizarre Twitter prompt turns into a silly story about a psychic alligator, and sometimes it turns into an emotionally devastating story about a woman in a post-apocalyptic diner. I cranked out a first draft (826 words) that night.

And then I didn’t touch it for six months. I worked on other projects, but in the back of my head, I knew that I had a viable, compelling piece there that I wanted to revise one day. Normally I don’t wait so long to revise because it can be hard to recapture the voice and the world, and I may have lost my initial grip on the narrative, but I was very pleased to be able to come back to this piece in January and whip it into shape over the course of a month.

“Marcie’s Waffles Is the Best in Town” is my fastest sale since my first, selling on its third time out, and it illustrates what I was saying above about personal rejections. Read More »