I’m late again. Yesterday was filled with getting taxes finished and dealing with a long-overdue ophthalmology appointment. (Odd fact—I have better close-up vision in my left eye than even bifocals could give me. The right…not so much). But apparently I’m not going blind anytime soon, which is a good thing.

I need my eyes to do things, like look over old blog posts to remind myself of subjects I’ve already covered…and covered…and probably covered again. That’s the problem with interests and pet peeves and such. You tend to repeat yourself. Boring, for you and everyone else. Plus it’s easy to see how badly certain subjects will age. I just spent a few minutes on a report of my hunt for a new agent several years ago. Back then I was convinced I needed one, even though I’d been through three very reputable agents who hadn’t been able to do a thing for me. I only started selling novels when I forgot about the agents and just did it myself. So that was a lesson hard learned, but all water under the bridge.

One subject that apparently has not aged is the subject of a writer’s “odds.” It came up again just a few days ago when a well-respected editor blogged about it and I read that and thought “Wow. Déjà vu.” Does it still need to be said? Apparently, so once more from the writer’s side which, oddly enough, is pretty much the same as the editor’s side. This applies to novels as well as short fiction, but my more immediate examples are from the short story side. It goes something like this: new writers trying to break into one of the major short story markets (and the specific ones vary, depending on the time and the writer’s interests) look at the submission/acceptance ratios and get all discouraged. A publication might get anywhere from 500-1000 submissions a month, from which they accept maybe three. So your odds of being one of the three are either 1 in 167 or 1 in 333, depending on how many subs the market got that month, right?

Wrong.

Those odds would only be accurate if everyone submitting a story had an equal shot at one of those three slots, and the fact is they don’t. Most stories are rejected out of hand for a multitude of reasons: wrong length, wrong genre, general incompetence, misspellings—or worse, being autocorrected to the wrong word. Sloppy work. Their odds are never higher than zero.  Maybe about fifty stories a month get serious consideration, and those are the real odds you have to beat, about 1 in 17.Even those odds don’t matter if your story is just what the editor is looking for, in which case the odds are 1 in 1.  Provided, of course, you can get your story past the first hurdle. Right length, right market, at least competent writing professionally prepared according to manuscript guidelines. Do your homework, polish and hone your craft, and the odds get a lot better.

There now. I trust there will be no reason to repeat this ever again? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Speaking of things that shouldn’t need to be said, I just glanced at my bookshelves and realized I’ve never read either Planet of Exile or City of Illusion, both by Ursula Le Guin, one of my all-time favorite writers. I have to correct this soonest.

I’m rambling and there’s a rough draft to rewrite and painting to do. Time to stop.