As I prep for my presentation at the 4th Annual Short Story Virtual Conference I’m thinking about the whole short story of it all, naturally enough. I love writing short stories, and I love selling them even more; it’s like conjuring small amount of money from thin air. I’ve sold two short stories so far this year:
- Lone Star. Deep Black. Hum., which will appear in Fission #4, and
- History Porn, which will appear in Book XI : A Journal of Literary Philosophy
Not sure when those will pub, but some time this year, I think. Both of these stories were submitted this year, and both were written in 2020, which makes the time from completion to sale 3-4 years. That got me thinking about how long it sometimes takes to sell a story (or a novel). There’s a term out there: Trunk Story (or Trunk Novel), which refers to a story or novel you wrote long ago and never sold and now keep in your trunk instead of actively submitting it. I have a few Trunk Stories, but not too many, because in my experience it can take a long time to sell a book or short story. Like, a really long time.
My personal record? Sixteen years. I wrote “A Meek and Thankful Heart” in 1997 and sold it to Buzzy Magazine in 2013. Sixteen years1!
I’ve got several stories that took 10-12 years to sell, and my novel Chum famously took my agent (the late, great, and truly hilarious Janet Reid) 12 years to sell after she signed me on the strength of it2,3. On average, it takes about 4-5 years after I finish a story before I sell it, though this number is skewed by the stories I was invited to contribute (which are essentially 0-day sales) and doesn’t consider the many, many stories and novels I have failed to sell, many of which have fallen out of my submission process because I’ve decided they weren’t all that great to begin with (mostly older works, naturally). The oldest story I am still actively trying to sell is about eleven years old at this point, but it doesn’t show up in this particular statistic because it hasn’t sold (yet).
Note: In case it wasn’t obvious, I am not a math kind of guy4.
The point of all this is that after sixteen years (or 5, or 1) a story has garnered a lot of rejections, and it’s natural to wonder if maybe you’ve overestimated the story’s quality or interest level — if maybe you’ve got a trunk story on your hands. But it’s worth reminding yourself that it comes down to connecting with the right person, that editor who sees the same thing you do in the story. All it takes is one decision-maker to think your story is as good as you do to make a sale. And when you sell that story, the years of submissions no longer signify: It’s published.
Trying to sell your fiction can be a hard, soul-chilling business. It’s basically taking an acid bath in rejection 24 hours a day, sometimes (ah, but then there are the days when you sell a story and get a royalty check for 79 cents and you get your second wind). But it’s also a long game, and sometimes the game takes a lot longer than you might expect.
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- Of course, this means I am old enough to have published a story eleven years ago that took sixteen years to sell. <stares into the middle distance and feels old> ↩︎
- To be fair, over the course of those 12 years Janet sent me numerous notes, revision ideas, and reviews from colleagues as we tinkered with it. The novel that sold was like a diamond after all the thought and effort put into it. ↩︎
- And my second novel, The Electric Church, technically took 12 years to sell, too, if you measure from the first draft, though the re-write that sold in 2005 was essentially a totally new novel, so I usually count the time to sell as 1 year. ↩︎
- Although, hilariously, when I was like 10 years old I thought I was. I actually wrote a “math handbook” for my fellow students explaining how I did basic arithmetic so quickly. It was not appreciated. ↩︎