Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, believe it or not. Occasional game dev. SFWA Associate. See website for bylines/portfolio. Yes, this is actually my name.


This place I intend to submit a story to says that they're open until December 31st, or until they receive 200 submissions.

This is SO MUCH MORE stressful for writers than they realize. It's a themed issue, so nobody has a backlog piece they've polished to completion. And now we have to game out how much polish we can afford to give our submissions, knowing that we'll be iced out if we wait too long. As a result, they have basically guaranteed that they'll receive only the 200 fastest submissions, not the 200 best. Nobody wins here.

Sigh. Back to frantically churning out my draft.


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @aeneas-nin's post:

Yeah, that's dire. I have a lot of sympathy for any editor dealing with open subs, because I've seen what they have to go through (literally and metaphorically), but this just ensures they won't get the quality they're after. You can always tell the editors that were/are also writers, like directors who have also been actors; they know the pitfalls for the other side and work to minimize it for the better of everyone involved.

Yeah, I'm definitely sympathetic to the urge to keep the queue manageable! I'm only complaining because this creates a whole new problem in place of the one it solves. I wonder what a good workaround would be?