Rookie Mistake! & Another Look at the New One

Rookie mistake!

So, some magazines require anonymous submissions. All of them, though, require Shunn standard, with or without your name on it. I write all my stories to Shunn standard (if you are an aspiring writer, Shunn is your bible. In fact, if you are any writer, Shunn is your bible) so my name appears on the first page in the address block, on the header of every page except the first, and under the title. Before I submitted anonymously to this magazine, I deleted my address block and reminded myself to make sure to remove my last name from the header. I forgot to remove my name from the header another time because I thought my name only appeared on the first page and forgot about my last name on all the subsequent ones. This time, though, I forgot to remove my name from under the title. Immediate rejection.

Gah! I sweet talked them and got to resubmit. The craziest thing though, was that I went looking for my name and didn't notice that I had left it directly under my title. I was so snow-blinded by the format of my story, I almost resent the unchanged manuscript because I thought they were the ones who had made a mistake. Silly Clint. Anyways, crisis averted. Maybe my shenanigans will stick out in their heads and they will print "Taming Beasts" anyway.

I took another look at "Next Breath" and it reads very nicely. I had to give 'er a deep cut of polish today, but I like it. I think it's my first story in a while that has legitimate science in the story. I'm usually a more soft scifi writer, pushing slightly into fantasy. So maybe this will entice some of the more hoity-toity SF mags. I will give "Next Breath" another look next weekend and send her off to Writers of the Future at the buzzer.