Well, that didn’t take long.

I’ve heard back today from ABYSS & APEX, and they’re passing on “I Think That I Shall Never See.” That’s a four day rejection–the shortest I’ve had yet, by two days. But that’s the speed of the internet, I guess.

The editor who responded said the story was “well recieved” by the staff, and they hope that I will consider submitting more work to them in future.

Like I said before, I’ve been getting a lot of these “almost, not quite” rejections lately, along with invitations to submit other things in future. That’s a good thing as I see it–better than the “thanks, but no thanks” rejections I had been getting–but it’s still not good enough. I want to sell more stories! 🙂

Part of it is, of course, this or that particular story not being right for a given magazine for any one of a host of reasons. But I’m wondering more and more if there’s some element I’m not including consistantly–dramatic tension, character development, effective pacing, etc.–which is hurting my chances.

Having sold a couple of stories now, I can clearly hit those heights sometimes. But having random peaks to my ability isn’t what I’m after. Fundamentally, I want to get to a place where I’m writing at a consistently high level (hopefully on an upward trajectory). Part of that, I think, is figuring out what I’m doing wrong…

Hopefully, if there’s some flaw in what I’m doing the judges at the Writer’s of the Future will be able to help me figure out what it is, and what to do about it.

– S.