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    Managing Rejection: How to Measure Success as an Aspiring Science Fiction Author
    Managing Rejection: How to Measure Success as an Aspiring Science Fiction Author
    Managing Rejection: How to Measure Success as an Aspiring Science Fiction Author
    Ebook44 pages33 minutes

    Managing Rejection: How to Measure Success as an Aspiring Science Fiction Author

    By Van Alrik

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    About this ebook

    You're chasing your dream. You spend every free moment filling page after page with science fiction and fantasy tales only your unique imagination can create.

    Yet after months or even years of effort, you have only a handful of short story publications to show for it, along with hundreds of rejections.

    Will it always be like this?

    You dutifully log your submissions, your word counts and writing hours, but you can't help but feel like you're stuck in a rut.

    How do you know if you're even getting better?

    Van Alrik developed a simple metric to help you to measure how your submission history compares to the average writer's, and to track it over time.

    Knowing how well you're already meeting expectations can give you the confidence you need to keep going. Before you pay an agent or author to evaluate your writing, see if you can use the data you already have to quantify how much you've improved. With detailed, easy-to-follow instructions that fit neatly into the submission tracking you already do, you can see right now where you stand.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVan Alrik
    Release dateApr 30, 2016
    ISBN9781311859129
    Managing Rejection: How to Measure Success as an Aspiring Science Fiction Author
    Author

    Van Alrik

    Van Alrik lives in the Rocky Mountains with his family and a small army of robot novelists. His debut novel The Trivial Thing was published in June 2015.

    Read more from Van Alrik

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      Book preview

      Managing Rejection - Van Alrik

      Managing Rejection

      How to Measure Success as an Aspiring Science Fiction Author

      by

      Van Alrik

      Published by Van Alrik at Smashwords

      Copyright © 2016 Van Alrik

      Cover Design © 2016 Van Alrik

      All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews, without written permission from its publisher.

      Table of Contents

      Table of Contents

      Chapter 1: Introduction

      Chapter 2: My Experience

      Chapter 3: How Writers Measure Success

      Chapter 4: Probability and Statistics

      Chapter 5: Submission Variance

      Chapter 6: Conclusion

      About the Author

      Chapter 1: Introduction

      It seems that there is an unlimited supply of blog posts on how to measure your success as a writer. And it seems that every one includes a list of highly self-specific self-assessments (How much do you write? How long do you write? How many submissions do you make? How many publications?) that vary widely from person to person. You might learn quite a bit about your writing process, but you probably won't learn much more about your writing quality than your own biased opinions allow.

      Which can be fatal to your writing.

      Take a new writer. She gets excited about the challenge, writes furiously, and holds to a strict schedule of writing, editing, and submitting. She gets one or two semi-pro publications, but nothing but rejection from the professional markets. A year passes. She's gotten favorable responses to her stories from her writing group, but they're all new writers like her--what do they know? With no other measures of the quality of her work, she focuses on her process. She adds an additional hour to her writing time each week, then another. After a few more months, with every free moment devoted to writing and rewriting and with nothing more to show for it, she gives it up altogether.

      Sound familiar?

      I'm a part-time science fiction writer. And by part-time, I mean a very small part of the time. I have a full-time job, I'm a full-time student, and a full-time husband and father of four. So I write when I can, usually late at night or in 5-10 minute spurts between more pressing responsibilities.

      I don't think I'm the only one in this situation. In fact, I'm confident most aspiring writers find themselves in similar circumstances, utilizing every spare minute, but unable to generate enough content to make any headway in an increasingly competitive field.

      So why write a How to book, taking even more time away from my already limited fiction writing? The answer for me has to do with

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