Mini writing marathon

I sat down Sunday night and banged out over 1,500 words for my latest story and am pleased with the results. Not only am I pleased with the word count itself, but also I'm happy with the way the story's going. I just need a couple more sessions like that and this story'll be finished. 
For those who are full time writers, I guess 1,500 words doesn't sound like a lot, but at least for the season I'm in, it's significant. I've learned from Mur Lafferty over at I Should Be Writing that she's recently downgraded her expected wordcount to 250 words per day, which was inspired in turn by the example of Cory Doctorow, who does this and still manages to produce published work regularly. 
So it looks like for me at this point I'll be aiming for around 250 words daily interspersed with occasional longer marathons. 

A sendoff and a failure of nerve...

Okay, I sent off my most recent detective story to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. All well and good, right? Well, when I was editing it about two in the morning, I decided to make a radical change to the title and also add in some stuff that changed the setting, as well as some internal character motivation. 
Then I sent it off.
Bad move.
In the harsh light of having a few more hours of sleep, I took another look at the title and the additions I'd made and realized with horror how maudlin and cheesy and trite they sounded. 
So it's another letter to Andromeda Spaceways asking for them to remove the first manuscript and reinsert the original one, with the original title, instead. 
I may just have ruined any chance I had of being published this time around by this magazine. 
Oh well. If it's meant to be, it'll happen. If not, there are other slush piles in the publishing world.  

Revolving Door...with complications

I always try to get back up on the horse right away, if possible. So tonight, I sat down and re-edited "Woman is Cipher is Woman." It's still a good story, and it improves with each editing, I think. Anyhow, I'm happy with how it got re-edited, so I fired it off to Semaphore Magazine, a literary mag out of New Zealand that I mentioned earlier. The story still fits with their desire for detective stories/fantasy, so we'll see how it's received. In some ways, "Woman is Cipher" is a more mature story, seeing how it's gone through more revisions.

But here's the tricky part--I'm also asking the editor of Semaphore to release "In Plain Sight" back to me. Reason: I want to clean it up, edit it some more, and then submit it to Andromeda Spaceways, since I feel that it's really a better match for their style, anyway.

So things have gotten a bit complicated, and at this point, I'm depending on the good will of the editor over at Semaphore. If she gets mad and rejects both, then I'm sort of back at square one, but at least I'll have achieved half of my objective.

Rejected...but encouraged

Well, my short story "Woman is Cipher is Woman" was rejected by Andromeda Spaceways. I'm not completely surprised, as it had been passed over a couple of times by different editors. I honestly was thinking that the story needed a bit more work, anyway, and I'll probably re-edit it and send it back out as a result of the generally encouraging comments I got from the readers at the magazine. Below are a couple of their comments:

"This isn't bad...a bit less of the kitschy detective stuff would make this
better, with a bit of a polish this has promise."

"Quite good."

So it goes...

Sense of Direction

After a couple of false starts, I'm fairly certain I've got a good handle on how I want this new story I'm working on to go. I've got my main characters, and I know their issues, particularly my protagonist. I don't know all of the plot details, and from experience, I probably need to at least know where they want to get to before I get much further. Still, I think I've got a good solid start on this story, for which I'm grateful.

Jumping the gun

I realize now that I may have jumped the gun a bit sending out my latest story ("In Plain Sight"). I went ahead and submitted it to a magazine in New Zealand without waiting to get some vital feedback from one of my readers. The feedback most likely would have immensely improved my story, and now I regret my impatience. At this point, I'm going to make my edits, and then contact the magazine and see about withdrawing my previous draft and substituting it for this one. Normally, I wouldn't do that, but since this magazine's a startup and this is their first issue, they may be more inclined than many to accept that arrangement. In any case, I've learned a little lesson about patience and its virtues.