Writing is a brutal business.  Even the best authors get strings of rejections, and often the rejections have nothing to do with the quality of the work.  They also happen because of the quality of the work, so it is blessedly hard to tell if you are banging your head against a wall for nothing or you just need to wait for the right story, at the right publication, at the right time.

I have a friend who used to track every ejection and how many rejections she got before each accept.  At one point she had over 200 rejections without an acceptance letter.  Even when things were going great she was averaging 19 rejections to an accept (and many of those accepts were at pro-paying and prestigious magazines).

So it gave me a thrill to get the email for Page and Spine accepting my story “The Cats of Santa Agatha.”  I’m told publication date is set in stone for  October 19th.

In related news, I now have filing and other “office” type work to get done.

For those in the “know,” the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop is the launching point for many great writers.  Lots of programs have hype but this one I got to see kick a friend from writing and infrequently submitting to publishing nearly a short story a month.  Marie Vibbert says Clarion helped her change from saying she was writing to actually writing.  All I know is my favorite Marie pieces were all written at or after Clarion.

Every year several of my friends and workshop partners who are graduates participate in fundraisings for the Clarion workshop because, here is the kicker, Clarion offers scholarships so that money isn’t an obstacle for talented writers to step-up their careers.  Those scholarships are likely my only hope to ever be able to afford to go.  So this year I will be joining in to earn scholarship money for other lucky writers.

Marie does a drawing for a hand knitted sweater for donations of $20 or more.  I don’t knit, or at least not that well or as productively as Marie does.  I will follow in the footsteps of Geoffrey Landis and simply set a goal and hope a few people care enough to pledge or sponsor me.

Here it is, my fundraiser page: http://clarionwriteathon.org/members/profile.php?writerid=761322