I got some big news this week. A story I wrote at Clarion entitled “A Change of Seasons” was accepted at Cicada, a literary magazine for teens. This is a big magazine with national distribution and, best of all, they pay $0.25/word, about five times as much as most genre magazines.

This is also a SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) qualifying market. In order to become a SFWA member you need to have a novel published by a qualified venue or have three short stories published by a qualified venue. For short fiction, the list of qualified venues is rather short–the link above only lists a total of 13 sci-fi/fantasy markets by name, and then lists another 9 or so that aren’t genre specific but they do qualify. Cicada is one of them and is listed along with the likes of The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and Boy’s Life. Pretty good company to keep.

I was told repeatedly by my Clarion instructors to shoot high, to start with the top markets and work my way down. My “dream” markets are The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Ficiton, Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy, and Scifi.com, the website for the SciFi channel. These publications carry a lot of clout and for good reason; they regularly publish great fiction.

There is no causal bridge linking my first pro sale to these four. The publication of my story is not an “in” to anything else. But it does show that breaking in for a new writer can be done and, more importantly, it can be done by me. Even though it’s happened to a few of my Clarion buds, I think it’s hard to imagine it’s possible until it happens to you.

As a writer constantly (and necessarily) dealing with rejection it’s hard to find a gauge of how well you’re doing. Prior to Clarion, I was getting rejections and many of them had hand-written notes with things like “good writing” or “good story, but not quite right for us at this time.” At Clarion, most of the instructors said getting something beyond the standard form rejection was a good thing and a sign of progress which was small consolation. Post-Clarion, I’ve been constantly wondering if my stories had really improved–I can see the flaws much clearer now, but am I really any better at fixing them? The jury is still out on that one, but clearly getting a story placed in a big magazine is another sign that there’s some sort of progress. I’m also buoyed by the fact I don’t think “A Change of Seasons” is my best work.

Still, I’ve been chanting like a mantra something Gavin Grant, editor of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and main squeeze of Kelly Link, said at Clarion: “Keep your expectations low.” Surfing around the ‘net I stumbled across this message board where Dave Felts the moderator says:

I won third place [in the L. Ron Hubbard "Writers of the Future Contest"] in 1997; my story ‘Troder’ is in volume XIII…I was sort of spoiled after that. Troder was the 5th story I had written. At the time I had 18 rejection slips. Then I won in WotF and thought ‘I’m on my way!’.
Here I am 8 years later with one more pro sale (First place in the the Chizine Story contest in 1999) and a handful of semi-pro, small press and WHOLE BUNCH of rejections. Been three years since I’ve written anything new and even longer since I subitted…..

So like the stock market, past performance does not guarantee future success. All you can do is keep trying and hoping that your sale-to-rejection ratio stays as low as possible.

So those are the two phrases twisting like a helix in my head–”Keep Expectations Low” and “It Can Happen To You.”