Sherri Cornelius

Or possibly just dipping a toe. I took one of my old, beloved stories and published it on Smashwords. For those who've never heard of it, Smashwords is a website that automates the self-epublishing process. You upload your story, and their machine converts your file into all the popular e-reading formats. Very easy.

I have lots of friends who’ve published with Smashwords, but I haven’t been interested in doing it. My writing career was up in the air, so far that I didn’t know where it would come down, or even if it would. I needed things to settle--in particular, my feelings about writing. I’ve been hiding from the world while I sort things out.

Then a lot of things happened all at once. I had a birthday (41). We ran out of money and had to eat beans and hamburger stew for a week, which put me in action mode real quick as I started looking for a job. Putting myself out there flipped the switch, and suddenly I’m ready to start blogging again, Facebooking with purpose, discussing writing and publishing.

Now as this switch was being flipped, my friend Allie had a pretty awesome experience. She’s been self-epublishing on Smashwords and Kindle, and I don’t know where else, and she’s much more prolific than I, so she has lots of titles available. One day, Amazon started offering one of her titles for free and downloads went through the roof--like, 10,000 in a couple of days. She didn’t get a penny for these downloads, but thousands of people were reading her work.

It was eye-opening for me, watching this unfold. I had thought of epublishing as another career direction, with all that entailed: marketing and money and business and blah, blah, blah. I knew I didn’t want to do all that stuff myself. Allie’s exhilarating experience reminded me that writing is also fun, with an element of chance. The wheel of fortune can’t turn if you’ve stuck a stick in the spokes. The past couple of weeks has unstuck the wheel.

So. The story’s not perfect, but I’ve been waiting for perfection to grace me and I can’t wait any longer. The story’s good; some have told me it’s funny and/or creepy. It’s also free, so you don’t have to have a Smashwords account to read it. If you do read it, I’d appreciate a short and honest review. I promise I’ll still love ya.

Cheers!

Several years ago I made a couple of half-hearted attempts to get my short stories published, but I never was able to successfully scale the veritable mountain of available markets. The process got to me, so I quit. This morning I decided to give it another go. Don’t know what made me think I’d be able to handle it any better today, but here I am.

I use Duotrope to narrow down the search for magazine markets, and while it’s an indispensable tool, it doesn’t make it an automatic process by any means. I’ve been researching for almost an hour and haven’t come up with one viable market. I’m starting at the high end of the payscale and working my way down, so I’m sure I’ll come across something eventually, but meanwhile, it’s drudgery.

The first challenge is defining the work, in terms of genre (fantasy), subgenre (light fantasy? magic realism? We’ll go with “Any subgenre.”), style (I’d call it quirky, but that returns no results so again: “Any subgenre.”). I choose my story specs, length and such, and hit Enter. I get 70 results. Wowzers. That’s a lot of stuff to go through, and of course I’m not familiar with most of these markets so not only do I have to research their submission requirements, but also their style to see if my story will match. I’m afraid my story won’t match any style.

I’d like to get paid, of course, but I’m mostly hungry for a cred, so I choose any payscale and sort from high to low. I don’t want to wait for six months before I can submit again, so I discard those who won’t take simultaneous submissions. I’m working my way through the list, but I’ll have to take a break before I make any real progress, it seems.

What method do you use for sorting through all these markets? Have you been successful? I’d love to hear how you climbed to the summit of Market Mountain. Don’t be shy.

So all that talk about the plotter and the pantser in the previous post was not an endorsement of either style over the other. It was more about evaluating these boxes I put myself in to see if I actually belong there. I didn't used to do that to myself. Lately I've come to realize that boxing myself in was an attempt to gain some control over my life. My rigidity had limited success for a limited time, but when it stopped working I just kept it because I didn't know what else to do.

The rigidity carried over into writing. I had it in my head that linear writing was the goal. Since it's easier to give advice on how to plot a novel than how to write the way you want, the writing sites are full of that linear advice. Notecards, outlines, software, exercises. Real writers write every day, I'm sure you've all heard that at one time or another.

Well I've spent a couple of years giving up on rules. Now my only rule is: Do what feels right, not what the world has told me I must do. It takes practice to learn how to tell the difference between the inner voice and the outer, but I think I'm getting pretty good at it. And as a result, I'm not afraid to write anymore, which is a big deal. See, ever since I got an agent I've felt out of sorts. You'd think it would be a freeing situation, not having to worry about every little thing, but I found I was worrying approximately six and a half times as much. I think I've licked it, though, and now I write without fear. I put absolutely no pressure on myself in the way of word counts or time frames. It's nice to have a goal as a guide, but if I don't reach the goal I merely set up a new one rather than dwelling on how I missed the old one.

Today I found myself thinking, "This book could be somebody's favorite someday." I really believe it has that potential, if I continue the way I'm going. It's a cozy feeling. I have that reader in mind while I'm writing, that future woman/man/teenager who will cherish this book for at least a little while. I write for the one reader who will fall in love with my characters, and hold that love in her heart for years to come. Connecting with that one reader is my personal definition of success.

And, of course, a million more like her wouldn't hurt.