I'm so submissive

Today seems to be a solid writing day.  Mental health is stable, coffee is plentiful (if cold) and the muse is flitting about the place with regularity.

9:30 and I've managed to enter the latest Writer's Digest Your Story competition, pencil up a new idea for a kid's book, and rehammer a line for a Christmas poem.  This doesn't seem like much (the entry was only 25 words!), but having hit the great Writing Well a lot recently and found it bone dry, blocked off by police tape and guarded by some scruffy dude named Block, it's refreshing to get anything out at all.  If only all those impotence pills worked for writers as well.  Of course, then the slush piles would be even bigger, and more difficult to work my way to the top of,  cream-of-the-crop style.

Checking the mail box once and my email umpteen times a day isn't quite enough torture, so let's go to the countdown app and see how much time has passed for my various submissions.


Submission A (publisher): 2 days till up. This one had a 6-8 week suggested time, but they WILL RESPOND.  Most of the publishing houses don't send rejection notices anymore, so I value the ones that do above all others.  I may not be able to paper a wall with rejection notices, but at least I'll get some sort of response, instead of dead air, which means "Your heart on paper isn't even worth a stamp to us: Not interested".

Submission C (publisher): This one's still grating on me.  Their own guidelines said one month (which we're past that by two weeks now), but Writer's Market gives them two months (so we're still shy a couple weeks).  Another that WILL RESPOND though, since they asked for a SASE.  Yep, if I get a rejection from them, it'll come to me using my own stamp and envelope.  Adding insult to injury, but I'd gladly pay for a stamp for all my submissions if they'd just send me word back.  Just seems cruel not to, though I suppose they do get a lot of just crap.  Here's hoping they don't consider my baby that way.

Submission D (agent): This is the only agent submission I have out right now, but I intend to send another out in two weeks, when this one's exclusivity runs out.

5 other submissions range from 6-19 weeks before I can consider myself kissed goodbye.  In the meantime, I keep visiting the blank page, keeping myself from going crazy (most days) by writing more pieces.  Mostly kids books at the moment, but NaNoWriMo starts in 10 days, and that will be an adult, urban fantasy book.  That should definitely keep my mind off the mailbox, eh?  50,000 words in 30 days, always a kick.  I intend to get another win under my belt this year, and I have a strong writing buddy this year as well.  Hopefully we'll drag one another kicking and screaming (or more likely silently protesting) over the finish line.

That's all for now.  Back to the grindstone.
-Meagan