Another one for the collection

I have a new rejection slip today, a coveted signed and personalized rejection slip on white paper from a market well known for it's half-page "blue rejection slips of death."  As an avid collector of rejections, it's always fun to get a new kind, especially a hard-to-procure sort.  BTW, those blue form rejections are a neat collector's item in and of themselves, since they're the only ones on colored paper I get.  I've heard a rumor about one for a poetry market that has a poem and is quite lovely to look at.  If I wrote poetry I would totally submit to that market to get one (assuming that I didn't make the cut and get a sale.  Hmm, would I then be so bold as to request that they send me a form rejection with my contract so that I can have a copy?  Hee--I'd love to have those kinds of problems.)  

Anyway, now I have to get these stories back out.  Rejection slips come in waves, I've noticed, so after having nothing to do but write for a long period, I suddenly have to start shoveling things out the door before they pile up.  My marketing muscles atrophy between waves, I suspect, because I don't have a deep enough portfolio of fiction.  That'll change as I write more short stories, but it won't change fast.  Although I think I've improved my craft in the short story department, I'm still a novelist at heart, therefore I spend most of my writing time on novels.  Eventually I may have enough short stories in final form that I'll be sending stuff out all the time.  Hmm.  That may not necessarily be a good thing.

It's hot hot hot today, a good day to stay home and write, especially if you have AC or a nice basement office.  (Mmmm, basement ....)  But first (I guess, *pout*) I will see about sending my stories back out into the world.  Stay cool today, INKers and Friends of INK.