Still reeling from yesterday’s news. Received suggestions from Gordon van Gelder and they’re practically all line edits–typos, a few repetitions of phrase, etc. He did mention a wistful hope for one last SF twist to the story to give it more of a punch but liked it enough as is. Something to think about for next time. It sounds like the story should see the light of day in 2005 or early 2006 at the very, very latest.

Because I only found at out Clarion that I was writing speculative fiction, my stories often don’t have the sf element consistently throughout. I mean, there’s got to be a perfectly valid reason for having that element there in the first place and if it’s important enough to include, it should be intrinsic to the story.

At least for F&SF. Strange Horizons, SCIFI.com, and Asimov’s stories often have a much slighter spec fic element to them, or at least that’s the way it seems to me. In contrast, F&SF stories always prominently feature the speculative element. These are the subtle differences people mean when they say “know your markets.” It’s not that F&SF and Asimov’s publish spec fic, but rather what kind of spec fic they gravitate towards. At a certain level it’s a crap shoot because you can never know with absolute certainty which editors might be attracted to certain stories, and certainly they’re all interested in an outstanding story regardless of personal preference, but it’s far better than proverbially chucking it against the wall and seeing what sticks.

Ironically, just last week on vacation lovely wife Amy beseeched me to get more stuff out floating around because I’m too hard on my own stories. I argued (defensively of course) that may be so but I didn’t want to send out crap and most of pending stories had dire problems that needed fixing, thank you very much. And really, what more could I do? I still send stories that I’m unsatisfied with to big markets like F&SF, placing them in a folder titled “Hell, Not a Shot In.”

Luckily I am mentally strong enough to live with someone who is right virtually all the time.

Shakespeare once wrote “Hindsight is 20/20″ and boy, was the bard was right. I toiled over both “Change of Seasons” and “From the Mouths of Babes” for weeks with much gnashing of teeth and hair pulling, only sending them out when I could no longer stand the sight of them. Like sending Jason after the Golden Fleece, or Thingol telling Beren to go get a Silmaril, I thought I sent them to their inevitable doom–yet they returned triumphant and made me look the fool.[/overwrought analogy]

So my next plan of action is to pump out a number of stories I think work pretty well already. I wrote five stories at Clarion and I think two of them need very little work. I always envision massive, agonizing rewrites and painstaking editing followed by the conclusion that, “This story sucks.” Maybe I can replace that process with a little more sane, little more rational style of just taking things for what they’re worth and getting them out the door. Not because I think they’re sure fire sales, but more specifically because I think they’re very close to being as good as I can get them right now. Eternally tinkering with words and sentences doesn’t improve the story.

This, of course, is all about my never-ending struggle against the dual forces of hope and expectation. “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,” Dante said. “Keep your expectations low,” Gavin Grant said.

Will do, fellas, will do.