The Sound of Silence

I haven't been at this fiction thing long, but I'm already noticing a changing trend: overwhelmed magazines. At least, I like to believe that's what's causing the utter silence, month after month, from publisher after publisher. No rejections, no response to status queries. Just nothing.

I was grateful the other day to get a form letter from an editor who admitted he was overwhelmed, offering me the option to remove my story from his endless queue. I left my story there, of course, thus adding to his burden.

The Bloom of Impatience

I wait. I hear nothing. Then a rejection. Then nothing. I send out another work. I check my submissions log. A legitimate zine that says it will respond in three weeks hasn't responded in six. For another, it's been three months. For yet another, four. An editor loves my story but has no room; she's filing it. I have a book contract and no release date. I wait.

There is no way to control that end of this process. The only control I have is over my own output. I can do a lot of writing and make it the best quality I can. Everything else is up to the fates, working in their own sweet time. Didn't Confucious say something like that, or was it some bodhisattva? He was right, whoever it was, even if he wasn't talking about writing fiction.