Keep writing stories, and keep sending them out

I learned today that Tor.com has two different form rejections, one a little less form than the other, and that's the one I got today.

Along with the regrets that the short story they read wasn't quite what they were looking for, and luck sending it elsewhere, it includes the line "Please send us more of your work in the future."

I read an interesting article not long ago about the gender split of story submission behavior. It claimed that men, when they receive an encouragement like that, try to follow up as soon as possible (some markets want a gap between your submissions, as a for instance, a week, a month, etc.) and women will sometimes wait up to 6 months, if they submit to that market again at all.

I'm not sure how true it is. I'm not saying it isn't true either. I honestly don't know.

There are a lot of women writers getting published out there. The women who are successful, or becoming successful, could not possibly have been such shrinking violets when it came to submitting their stories. They had to have kept trying, kept sending them out (or been so goddamn brilliant they got published the first time out. I'm sure that happens to some people as well).

And then there's this blog post on The Missouri Review about perseverance (Okay, "stubborn" might get bandied about a bit). I feel like writers who are successful even a little, they persevere. They get the rejection and go "Okay, where can I send this next". Or, "What changes do I need to make so that this becomes a better story?"  I try to do both of these. I've been submitting stories for ten years or so by now and have had one acceptance. It isn't like I'm going to stop writing, so I need to keep being stubborn.

Onwards and upwards, my friends.

October Submissions: the final report

You remember my October Submissions. Submitting a story every day in October, blah blah. I finally got my last response, so can finally give the full picture on how things turned out for me. I know you're excited.

30 Days of D&D Day 30: Best DM You've Had

Well, it's the last day of the 30 day D&D challenge. I'm glad you came on this journey with me....it ended up being far more nostalgic at times than I'd anticipated!

So today I'm talking about the best DM I've had. It occurs to me that throughout the month, I never actually mentioned what "DM" stood for; I assumed you'd known the lingua franca. But, "DM" means Dungeon Master. It's a role which also might, depending on the system, be referred to as the Game Master or the Storyteller. Same dude. He's the one telling the story, the one who comes up with the setting (if not using one of the published ones), the one who runs the NPC's (non player characters), the one who runs the enemies and monsters when combat occurs.

Characters are important, but the DM is obviously the lynchpin of the whole deal. We players can make our own fun, certainly, but the DM's descriptions and stories are what keep us coming back and rolling those dice. And the best DM I've had? It's my fiancé, Jim.

30 Days of D&D Day 29: What is the number you always seem to roll on a d20?

 What number do I always seem to roll?

I seem to roll 14's an awful lot.

Some nights, though, it's 7. Or 6. Or 4.

Other nights? I'll get a natural 20 not once, not two times, but three times. Four if I'm super lucky.

That's the funny thing about the dice. They're random, and that randomness seems fickle. A low rolling night will follow a high rolling night. Or some characters are never lucky, until, say, you get dominated and start killing your fellow party members. Other characters are extremely lucky, even missing out on that early levels clumsiness we're so typically faced with.

So 14 isn't such a bad number to roll. Depending on what you're adding, it's more than sufficient.

30 Days of D&D Day 28: A Character You Will Never Play Again

A character I'll never play again? Well, pretty much everybody I've named here is a character I'll never play again. Maybe we'll go back to the game with Dolly in it, I dunno. Probably not. And that's kind of the way it is in my D&D circles (and my gaming circles in general).

30 Days of D&D Day 27: A character you want to play in the future

Oh boy, there's any number of characters I want to play in the future. Infinity characters.

More tieflngs, of course. I mean, they're right there in the core book! Why not, right? And also more fighters, of course. As I said, I haven't made one in 5th yet (though I did draw the fighter in the quickstart, but we only did 1 session of that? 2?)

30 Days of D&D Day 26: Favorite nonmagic item

My favorite nonmagic item is Baatorian green steel (Baator being the Plane of Nine Hells, according to wikipedia) It's something I first heard about when I was playing Planescape: Torment, because one of the companion NPCs you can get has a green steel sword that you can change in a couple of ways. Green steel is not magic, but is special in the way adamantine or mithril might be, where it's a special material which has its own properties without enchantment. Dolly, my 5th edition Tiefling Rogue, had a green steel dagger which did short sword damage (I think it's had different properties in each edition). She would dual wield it with a regular dagger, and once scored a fantastic critical hit on an undead minotaur with it.

Second favorite is the clockwork gun reloader that Kate Walker made in our original try at the Age of Worms adventure path. It was what it sounds like, a specific holster which had the reload and the black powder, and when she slapped a gun into it, it would take a round or so to reload the gun (which is one reason she had a lot of pistols, once gold flow allowed), and then bing when it was done, so then she could draw and shoot. Granted, the reloader then had to be reloaded in order to work, but she made it herself and that was awesome.