Short Story Submission Info: 2022
Hi! If you are new here or stumbling onto this post, I'm Val or spacevalkyries. I'm a queer variety streamer and write sci-fi/fantasy under the pen name V.M. Ayala. I've wanted to submit and get short stories published in some of my favorite SFF magazines for ages, but in 2021 and 2022 I really went for it in earnest.
While I didn't save any of my submission info in 2021, I did for 2022. So let's dive into it 👀
Overall submission basics
I submitted 7 stories 19 times; this includes the short story I wrote in 2021 that got accepted in December 2022 by Beneath Ceaseless Skies—which I hope will be published this year!
I got 18 rejections! Some stung more than others, the form rejections after 40-100+ days are the toughest
Rejections
The longest rejection took 116 days from Fantasy Magazine
The shortest rejection was less than 1 day (5 hours, actually) from Interzone; I won’t lie, my rejection sensitivity really messed with me on this one, and I scrapped the story I submitted there entirely
Clarkesworld also rejected 2 stories within 1-2 days; they’re known for that, and their form rejection is polite about it, so this never hits my rejection sensitivity too strongly
khōréō gave the nicest personalized rejections for the 2 pieces I submitted to them, and they remain one of my favorite magazines (goals to make it into an issue there someday)
Acceptance
My acceptance, from initial submission to official acceptance, took 256 days
I wrote the story in 2021 for the LeVar Burton contest, where it made it to the top 25 but ultimately didn’t make it further
I got my acceptance the day before my birthday, and I cried
Meandering thoughts on this info (getting short stories accepted into magazines is hard)
The sci-fi/fantasy short story magazine landscape is difficult terrain to navigate, and you’re often dropped in without a compass or map. Rejection can take 1-100+ days. It’s a lot. Submitting to magazines is an exercise in patience, heartbreak, and hope.
This post is inspired by Amit Gupta’s post on his story “India World” and the journey to getting it accepted. And, honestly? I also wanted to write this because of how lonely it feels when you’re submitting. Sharing numbers or information about the submission process isn’t so impossible to find anymore, but it’s still an isolating process.
SFF magazines are run by editors that are overworked and often don’t take much (if any) pay so they can try and pay their authors. Many wonderful magazines can only offer token payment or contributor copies. So the process of submitting and typically getting a form rejection (or, very rarely, a personalized rejection) often feels shrouded in mystery and confusion.
For me at least there were older preconceptions about the short story markets that are no longer (or were never) true, such as “get short stories published first in order to get a novel deal,” etc. Again, it’s a difficult landscape! It’s often sharp and mountainous. Maybe sometimes it snaps into a chthonic void? Who knows! It shifts a lot. Sometimes you run into other writers and wave sheepishly at each other before getting punted into another dimension, depending on the directions you take. It’s fun!
Thankfully places like The Grinder help. If you aren’t using that—go check it out immediately. And go support Diabolical Plots, the magazine that runs it.
Through all this I discovered that, when it comes to short stories, I’m not a fast writer. Or rather I have to write at least 3-10 drafts of a thing and in several different ways for it to make sense to me and what I was trying for to fully shape up. And for a lot of 2022, I was still learning what I wanted out of short stories, so I’ll admit I didn’t send the most polished prose to some of these places.
I wrote 6 short stories this year, and 1 short story in 2021. The short story I wrote and refined in 2021 is the short story that got my first acceptance—though it’s not published yet (as of this post in early January 2023). It also felt like I wrote so much more than 6 stories. I learned so much about my writing process in 2022.
Sorry this section got away from me a little bit 😂
2023 short story goals
Write drafts faster and with more joy and abandon and less angry inner critic perfectionist shit
Experiment with flash fiction more
Edit more
Edit even more, seriously
Fiddle around with structure and voice more
Post more short stories to Patreon
Get another acceptance!
End thoughts
Some folks aim to submit 100 times in a year or get 100 rejections, which is an impressively high number and not a negative by any means. But if you’re like me and write a bit slower and take a bit longer, you can still get acceptances even if you only have the energy for a fraction of that submission process. Keep at it, even though I know the wait times are distressing (especially if you’re like me and have rejection sensitivity).
Also, especially early on (where I am in my career), I’ve been told and have noticed acceptances take a lot longer to get. My work tends to exist in this zone of personal rejections from managing editors. I made it out of the slush pile and into the “this has potential” pile a lot, and that’s not nothing! But it’s also not an acceptance, and that can be tough when rejections can take ages.
Given everything stacked against you (and times it by several factors if you are part of any marginalized groups), getting short stories published isn’t the easiest, and it’s definitely not going to pay the bills. But short stories are beautiful and wonderful creations. They’re microcosms of a myriad of genres and ideas and structural experimentation, they can do things novels and longer form fiction can’t explore in quite the same way. And I hope I can write many, many more 💕
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