On having shat…
Not that you'd notice here, but over the last few months I've been writing more , and in the last couple of weeks I'd finally gotten a story into a state where I wasn't completely embarrassed by it. And so, after a few days of polishing, tweaking, and obsessing, I sent it out to a legitimate market last night.
Figuring out where to send it was a challenge. I write stuff that first and foremost has to amuse me, and there's no listing for Steve Quarterly on Duotrope. But after wading through that site and Wikipedia trying to make sense of genres and subgenres, I figured I could reasonably call the stuff I do "speculative," which made SciFi/Fantasy markets possible destinations.
Looking though submissions guidelines and past issues, I found a couple of markets where my story wouldn't be such a stretch from what they publish. Clarkesworld wasn't one of those markets, but it's the one I chose to submit to first.
There are a couple of reasons for that. First, it's a tough nut to crack. They get several thousand unsolicited submissions a year, and only publish one story a month from their slush pile. At that rate, a rejection just can't be taken personally. They're also known for their automated submission system and quick turnarounds on rejections. Within two days is typical, with reports out there of rejections coming within an hour of submission. I like the idea of that as a band-aide approach to dealing with rejection. Get the first one out of the way right away.
I can see I'm still number 83 in the submission queue, and I'm F5ing every couple of hours. I realized this morning that I picked the worst possible day to submit--the editor's at WorldCon in Reno, and the slush pile has to be the lowest possible priority right now. Figures.