— Coffee Break —
To market, to market...
By Cynthia Sabelhaus
I just finished another Writers Online
Workshop—Marketing Your Short Fiction. It was a short class—only four
weeks—and I have to say that I didn’t learn a lot that I didn’t already
know. But it made me realize something about myself. I don’t market my
work. Throughout this course, and the short fiction course I’d taken
just before this one, I’d been pulling my old stories out of the attic
(no time to write anything new). I ended up reviving six short stories,
none of which have ever been published. None were bad. Two had won
contests, and one had been selected in the top hundred out of 5,000
entries. One was even proclaimed a darn good story by my
writing teacher. They had never been published because I had never sent
them anywhere.
So, now I have a decision to make. The class is over. I took
away all the good lessons on identifying markets, writing a cover
letter, prepping my manuscript, and adding the SASE. Will I actually
send out one of my darlings, or will I place them back in a dark corner
to molder for another decade or perhaps forever. Eventually the computer
software in which they’re formatted will evolve, leaving them
indecipherable. And the content will lose its applicability to life as
we know it. Already I found the heroine in one mystery racing to a
telephone—probably connected to someone’s kitchen wall. Today she’d have
a cell phone.
Why didn’t I market these things when they were young, sparkling
debutantes? My first excuse to myself is that I didn’t think they were
good enough. Of course, I know that’s not true. I remember in my early
writing days sending a story off to The New Yorker, waiting for
over a year only to receive a form rejection note on Christmas Eve. Bah
humbug!
I must have thought my stuff was pretty hot
to be sending it to the biggest markets in the U.S. Another story went
to Cosmopolitan back when that magazine had fewer naked women and
actually published fiction in each issue. In this case, Helen Gurley
Brown stole my stamps and never did reply or return my piece.
I don’t have an answer for why my ‘body of work’ has been
neglected lo these many years. I suppose it’s a combination of causes:
perfectionist tendencies, too busy, not very organized. It was always
something I could do later.
Some of those early works are now lost, but others remain, and
even though the market for fiction has declined, I am going to send my
babies out into the world. I’ve promised myself that I will spend each
off-Friday in my 9/80 work schedule prepping and sending out a story.
The steps are simple:
1. Identify 5 or more possible markets/contests.
2. Make sure the story is as good as I can get it.
3. Write a cover letter.
4. Mail the damned thing.
So that’s what’s happening here. We’ve had a national election,
a financial crisis that is still ongoing, and we’re still waging a
couple wars while bailing out some of our major industries. Adversity
can be a powerful muse, so use these troubled times to inspire your
writing. Enjoy fall. Try not to worry—it doesn’t do any good, anyway.
And if you still have a job, go buy someone a gift. Spend a
little money. Save the jobs of others who are standing in empty shops,
wondering whether they will be in the unemployment line tomorrow. Make
someone else’s life happier—a soldier or her family, an elderly person,
me.
--Cynthia