Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America

Archive for October, 2011

Guest Post: Submission Statistics — An Inside Look

Monday, October 10th, 2011

by Vylar Kaftan

I’ve published about three dozen short stories, and perhaps 1/3 are SFWA-qualifying. I thought I’d open my submission history in case it would help a new writer see what the submission process looks like. Because the data is less clear-cut and requires some history I don’t have, this won’t be quite as nifty as my diversity statistics, but I hope it’s helpful for someone.

The first thing to know–this is only my submission history post-Clarion West, so it starts in 2004. I did send a few stories to the big magazines in the very early 2000s, but they had staples and single-space and all sorts of horrors. I still have those stories in my files, but I don’t think I have their submission history.

Second, this is not in chronological order. I sorted it by times submitted, since that’s the primary question people wanted to know. I did look for any patterns, like whether stories were selling faster or not in more recent years. No pattern. I mean, this list includes everything from my Clarion West submission story to my Nebula-nominated story from Lightspeed. You really can’t tell which is which from the raw numbers, which I think is fascinating.

Third, this doesn’t include any of my stories currently in circulation or waiting to be circulated. (I treat stories like hot potatoes and try not to keep them in my pocket very long, but sometimes I have to wait for particular markets to open.)
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Tags: Vylar Kaftan
Posted in Advice for New Writers, Information Center, SFWA Blog | 1 Comment »

Guest Post: In Praise of the Thesaurus

Thursday, October 6th, 2011

by Matthew Cheney

Hearing the news that the latest issue of the Writer’s Chronicle contains a statement from poet Mark Doty that, “If you write a poem with the aid of a thesaurus, you will almost inevitably look like a person wearing clothing chosen by someone else. I am not sure that a poet should even own one of the damn things,” I was aghast.

Aghast, I say! Astounded! Appalled!

I have said before that my favorite reference book is a 1946 edition of Roget’s International Thesaurus, and that remains true. I covet the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary and continue to dream at night of figuring out a way to convince the good people at Oxford University Press to send me a copy (other than to pay them $500). (I do have The Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus, which is a delight. It includes a fun foreword by Rick Moody in which he notes that Donald Barthelme used a thesaurus, which should be enough to cause you to make sure you are never without one yourself.) (And, by the way, Mark Doty, what’s so wrong about wearing clothes somebody else picked out?)

Doty‘s statement is idiotic. Irrational, witless, obtuse, hebetudinous, dull-pated, chuckleheaded, purblind, and dim. Writers! Decline to dote on Doty! He wants you to be dumb, in all senses of the word!

Few reference books are as fun to roam around in as thesauri. They demonstrate the marvelous connections possible with language. Dotyish dolts are fools who simultaneously think they have a superior command of language over everybody else while being afraid of the marvelous vast richness of language — they want to tame us and they want to tame it. Don’t give in! (more…)

Tags: Matthew Cheney
Posted in SFWA Blog, The Craft of Writing, Writing Technique | 1 Comment »

Nebula Awards Interview: Eric James Stone

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

by Rick Novy

A Nebula Award winner, Hugo Award nominee, and winner in the Writers of the Future Contest, Eric James Stone has had stories published in Year’s Best SF 15, Analog, Nature, and Kevin J. Anderson’s Blood Lite anthologies of humorous horror, among other venues. One of Eric’s earliest memories is of seeing an Apollo moon-shot launch on television. That might explain his fascination with space travel. His father’s collection of old science fiction ensured that Eric grew up on a full diet of Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke.

While getting political science degree at Brigham Young University, Eric took some creative writing classes. He wrote several short stories, and even submitted one for publication, but it was rejected and he gave up on creative writing for over ten years.

During those years Eric graduated from Baylor Law School, worked on a congressional campaign, and took a job in Washington, DC, with one of those special interest groups politicians always complain that other politicians are influenced by. He quit the political scene in 1999 to work as a web developer in Utah.

In 2002 he started writing fiction again, and in 2003 he attended Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp. In 2007 Eric got laid off from his day job just in time to go to the Odyssey Writing Workshop. He has since found a new web development job.

In 2009 Eric became an assistant editor for Intergalactic Medicine Show. Eric lives in Eagle Mountain, Utah. His website can be found at www.ericjamesstone.com. (more…)

Tags: Eric James Stone, interviews, Nebula Awards, Rick Novy
Posted in Nebula Awards, SFWA Blog | 1 Comment »

The Agenda of "The Write Agenda"

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011

Posted by Ann Crispin and Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Some of you may be aware that for the past few months, a group calling itself The Write Agenda has been attempting to wage a disinformation campaign against Writer Beware and other anti-scam activists.

(Note: We're expecting that at least some of the data we're linking to in this post will disappear after the post goes live, so we've taken a bunch of screenshots and, rather than clutter up this post with images, set up a special Screenshots page to host them. Be sure to click the links to get the full picture--you don't want to miss it!).
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Tags: Writer Beware
Posted in News, SFWA Blog, Writer Beware | Comments Off

Quick Updates for 2011-10-04

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011

Member News

• SFWA member Eugie Foster‘s short story, “Requiem Duet, Concerto for Flute and Voodoo,” was published by Daily Science Fiction.
• ARMORED edited by John Joseph Adams, with stories by David D. Levine, Tobias Buckell, & Karin Low, can be pre-ordered at Amazon.
• SFWA member Ferrett Steinmetz‘s college-students + first-mass-produced-time-machine story “iTime” is up at Redstone Science Fiction.

Tags: David D. Levine, Eugie Foster, Ferrett Steinmetz, John Joseph Adams, Karin Low, Tobias Buckell, twitter
Posted in News, SFWA Blog | 1 Comment »

Guest Post: Writing SF for Young Readers

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

by Greg R. Fishbone

There are two parts to writing science fiction for young readers: the science fictiony part and the young readery part. I know this sounds obvious, but bear with me. Writing science fiction requires knowledge of the genre and its conventions while writing for young readers requires a set of style sensibilities that’s entirely different from writing for adults.

I’ve seen some great midgrade or YA authors stumble through their first attempt at genre fiction. Some of them apply science fiction trappings to a traditionally terrestrial plot, mostly by making up funny names that don’t have any world-building logic behind them. As a result, their work may look something like this:

Plzzmar gripped his flarf-o-mat in one hand and his blixoschmabbit in the other as he looked out across the Spzzmaxian Plains at the Raxmaxthth Mountains on Planet Blrtzlgraghmontyockt. “Drzttgalkjfald,” Plzzmar swore, in the Fggdfafrdaxit dialect of Crzztmathgaxian that he’d picked up during his latest mission aboard Starship Jadfadfabadfadglkj.

Yes, there tend to be strangely-named people, places, and things in stories that involve alien worlds and futuristic technologies, but that doesn’t give you license to mash your fingers on the keyboard and call it vocabulary. Names in your story should be internally consistent, make sense for the culture or cultures that you are depicting, and be at least somewhat pronounceable. You need to adequately define your terms for the reader, hopefully by context rather than by exposition. And if you are describing an object that could be several generations removed from a familiar object the readers already know, consider using some variation of the more common name.
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Tags: Deborah J. Ross, Greg R. Fishbone
Posted in Advice for New Writers, Information Center, SFWA Blog, Tips for Beginners | 7 Comments »

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