I had a bit to catch up on yesterday, the first of which was yesterday’s blog post. I had all intentions on getting today’s done yesterday too, but here I am, Thursday morning, doing Thursday’s blog post. This is a regular occurrence. Perhaps I should listen to what the universe is trying to tell me.
Once I’d got that out of the way I had to make an Important phone call. And then I had to finish writing this month’s submission for 12 stories in 12 months. The 1,500-word story came out at around 2,500, which is great for lengthage, but very poor for a 1,500-word limit. So then I had to remove around a thousand words without detracting too much from the story.
It was hard, and I did it. But I ended up leaving quite an important loose end dangling. And to prove it, my very first comment on the story said the exact same thing. So when this story comes around for revisions, I’ll be tying up that loose end as well as putting back some of the depth. (I’ve been learning about depth in writing…)
By the time it’s finished, it should be over 3,000 words. This is my target length now for my own publishing schedule. For 40 years I’ve been trying to squeeze stories into 1,000 words, 1,500 words, and probably 1,800 or 1,900 words, just to fit to market. I did learn how to write with brevity and I think the stories are fast-paced.
But I don’t have to write to market now. For a start, there aren’t any left in this country, or certainly none that don’t rip off the writers by grabbing their intellectual property and paying a pittance for the honour. Oh, I remember those heady days of being paid at least £100 per 1,000 words and managing to hold on to all of my rights.
Those same markets are now paying £25 – £100 for up to 3,000 words and then selling them on without any recompense for the writer. Even the US markets are grabbing intellectual rights, although they, at least, are still paying more than what the UK markets are paying.
So I’m not writing for any of those now. I’m writing my short stories for me. And if they fit a call for submissions that pays a half-decent rate and doesn’t grab all rights, then I’ll send them off to those too.
And my sweet spot is 3,000 words.
Next up was my assignment for my latest WMG Publishing workshop. This is a 3-week workshop on, funnily enough, creating markets for your work, and I got it with the last Kickstarter I backed.
I didn’t expect an assignment in Week 1. I know there’s a story to write in Week 3, but I wasn’t expecting an assignment in Week 1. It isn’t due in until midnight on Sunday, but the wordage says ‘before 18 August’, not ‘on 17 August by midnight’, although he does remind us that this is the latest we should be aiming for. But I settled down and did it and when I was happy with it, I sent it off. He acknowledged safe receipt overnight.
My next job of the day was to publish next Monday’s release. It’s a collection of ten very short stories, and it’s the first 10 Wordsworth flash fiction stories, all under 1,200 words. I used to have 2 collections of flash fiction, but both only carried 5 stories, and even then 1 story in each was very, very short and neither had been published anywhere else before, although one had been placed in a competition.
This collection should run to at least 7,000 words, but I think it may be around the 10,000-word mark. Many people write that for one story, and here I am publishing a collection of ten.
Before I got into it, though, I pulled up the first collection of Wordsworth shorts, titled, imaginatively, Ten Short Stories: Wordsworth Shorts 1 – 10. I gave this its new, rebranded cover. I changed the publisher and the publisher logo from Baggins Bottom Books to Baggy Bottom Books, and I checked the price against my new sliding scale of prices.
This volume runs to more than 17,000 words, and that falls within the 15,001 – 30,000 words, which is £3.99/$3.99. And it was already on for that price. So I submitted all of the updates and within minutes, literally, I was receiving emails saying it had been updated. Fastest finger in the west was Smashwords. Second fastest finger was Draft2Digital Print. I was amazed when Amazon came in about 5th or 6th, out of about a dozen.
I think they’re all updated now, apart from the lending libraries, who are usually very slow.
I was in the middle of all of that when the door went, and grand-doggy #1 was here! I knew he was coming, and I knew what time. But I got so lost in the work I was very surprised when the door went, wondering who it was. He’s here until Friday teatime, and then we have him again for 10 days in September.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to starting the equally imaginatively titled Ten Very Short Stories: Wordsworth Flash Fiction 1 – 10, as I couldn’t help but notice that the 2nd volume of Wordsworth shorts also needed updating. And so does the 3rd. But this flash fiction collection is due out on Monday, so I have to try and step away from those 2 to to concentrate on this one.
I’ll do that today.
Some stories just aren’t meant to be flash or short. 3000 is a good length. It will land you in the middle of a lot of the paying markets. Most of the submission guidelines I’m seeing lately say 1500-5000 for short stories now. The anthologies to which I’ve been invited/contributed/accepted usually have a 2500-5000 range. So that sweet spot is a good one.
Freedom With Writing and Authors Publish often have a solid lists of paying markets for short stories. It’s still not as much as it used to be, but some of the publications are decent.
For years and years, 3,000 was way too long for any of the paying markets over here. Nowadays, the anthologies I look at are all 3,000 to 20,000 words, but a few of the others are 1,500 to 3,000 words. WMG assignments are generally 3,000 to 6,000 or 7,000 words, and I think they do that so the stories are at least marketable as well.
I have Freedom With Writing and Authors Publish in my Google search as I type! Many thanks! I also have Duotrope.