NaNoWriMo Aftermath

All of my fellow NaNoWriMo'ers and I happily wrote our novels during that short month of November.  Now comes the part which many don't have any real notion of what happens next.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know there is (are?) a plethora of tips out there.  However.

I have finished a flash fiction piece.  I submitted it.

Yes, I've got the jitters.  Yes, I'm in the throes of revision thinking.  I am a perfectionist, after all.

When I first started writing, I dutifully bought the pages upon pages long Writer's Market Deluxe Edition.  Signed up, looked it over, checked out some of the submissions guidelines.  Howsomever, like most of us in this age of computers, I was a bit leery of all the requirements, not understanding what they really meant.  I quit buying that book after the second, or was it the third book?

What I did was continue to write during the month of November, faithfully.  Drove my family nuts because they've been waiting so long for me to get published.  Those pages of small print kept making my eyes water.  I lost my sticky notes.  I will be forever grateful to my son for encouraging me.  He just read the background info and part of the first chapter and told me he didn't want to read it til I was finished.  This of course was back in 2003 when I seriously decided to write a book, one of my childhood dreams.

Since I first saw the SFWA's website and checked out the eligibility requirements, those requirements have been in the back of my mind.  Guiding me on my uncertain path in the publishing world.  I checked out some of the venues over at their website.

I came upon the venue Strange Horizons.  I dutifully checked out the page and came upon this article entitled "Stories We've Seen Too Often." Yeah.  I get tired of some of the same types of stories.  I am posting a link here because I'd have liked a list back in the day.  Teehee.

Now why?  Why would I have liked such a list?  Because there in one summary was what I've been trying to articulate for myself all these years.  I've pretty much stayed away from looking over the established publishers during my writing journey.  Still have my visions of the lonely writer sitting in a drafty attic typing out his manuscript while sipping hot water, huddling under a blanket to keep warm.  Not sure where I picked up that idea.  Might have been because I was a child in the 'Sixties, we didn't have inside plumbing and no electricity and this is when my idea of writers formed.  In those long ago days.

Ahh memories.  Well, that is all I want to say at this time.  I am going back to finding something else to do whilst I wait to hear back from the editor.  Toodleloo.  (Hmm.)