Living in the Slush Pile - 2

OK, so a little more about the game with the points.

It's called The Race, which maybe isn't the best name, but that's the name it has. It's really a race with yourself, not against anyone else. The idea is to earn points for manuscripts that are under consideration either by an editor or an agent.

The Race was invented by Dean Wesley Smith, who taught it to me and a bunch of other folks. It's a great motivator for keeping stuff in the mail.

Basically, the point structure is:

1 point for a short story

3 points for a novel proposal (chapters/synopsis)

8 points for a full novel

You can only count points once for each work - i.e., if you have a novel proposal being looked at by both an agent and an editor at the same time, you only get to count the points once (cause you can only sell it once).

Dean talks some more about The Race in his forum.

A couple of weeks ago I got five rejections in one day - possibly a record for me. If I weren't playing The Race it would have been easy to get depressed about it. The Race keeps me organized and motivated, though. I just turned those stories around to new markets and kept looking ahead.

Today's Race points:

26 for stories
16 for novels

42 total

4 pages written