get my work out there

After some prodding by meditation7 and some of my other friends, I submitted a short story of mine to the local critiquing circle which will meet tomorrow night. I have to admit that I’m incredibly nervous about it.

You’ll notice that there was a long hiatus between a couple of the entries on this goal. In between the amusing email from my thesis supervisor and noting the potential of an old story, I spent some time helping a local group put together an anthology. After finishing with the proof reading, I went through all of the author bios and made a list of the magazines they’d been published in. This afternoon I spent some time googling these publications, checking out what genres they accepted and what their word limits are.

I now have a very useful list.

Think about submitting Siren Songs to Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Interesting to note that I haven’t written anything on this goal in ages.

Anyway, there’s a short story competition I would really like to submit something to. I ran an old piece of mine past a friend, who thinks it has potential. I shall work on getting it into shape and then run it by the local crit circle.

I had an amusing email from my thesis supervisor today. It was amusing because she was gently reminding me to submit my bio for the university anthology, which she also organises. I hadn’t received an email to say I’d even been accepted, let alone asking for my bio. Suffice to say that one of the pieces I submitted made it. Now it’s a matter of finding out which one!

The crit circle went well. The general consensus was that my writing style was good but the piece itself had a weak ending that needed some work. I rather knew that myself already, but I guess I just needed to hear someone else say it before I could accept it. At least now I have a few vague ideas about alternative directions.

So overall, it has been pretty positive.

The local writing group is having a crit circle this week and I have submitted a short piece for them to have a look at. I’m a bit nervous about it all!

It’s not quite getting my work out for publication, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

A local writing group is putting together an anthology this year. I’m determined to submit something before the deadline closes at the end of October. It’s going to be tricky because my thesis is due at about the same time and I don’t have anything that fits the theme so I shall have to write something new.

I’m determined to submit something, though. This is a great opportunity, after all.

Still waiting to hear back from uni. I imagine it should be in the next month or so, the beginning of next semester at the absolute outside.

The last submission wasn’t accepted.

Today I am sending off six submissions to the annual anthology published by my university. I had poems published with them in 2005 and 2006. None of the pieces I sent feel expecially strong to me, but I figured it was worth a shot. I have until about April 11th to come up with anything else under 2000 words I’d like to send off to them.

I got a bulletin from my local writer’s group today. In it was an ad for a sci-fi/fantasy anthology with an upper word limit of 10 000 words… the exact word limit of my final project for uni, entitled Siren Songs. So I immediately opened the file, checked I’d made all the edits I needed to make, cut the word limit down (which seemed to have grown by 120 words since I graduated) and sent it off.

I’m very nervous. There’s a voice in my head telling me that I should have checked the publication out more. But I also knew that if I didn’t send it away immediately, it was going to become just another thing I put off until later and then never got around to doing.

I should hear by the end of March.

I got a reply back from the magazine. No luck. Better find somewhere else to send the piece (or perhaps it needs a little work).

What’s important is to keep moving forward.