Deadline Deadbeat

It occurs to me that I  might possibly come across as someone always scrambling to make a deadline. Not so. Back in January I subbed a story a relaxing four months before the deadline, and yes, I wrote it specifically for the anthology in question (I still haven't heard anything, and I know that rejections ARE being sent out...) Last week I got another story in a leisurely 6 weeks before the cut-off, and a third submission, which is still under consideration for a themed issue, was sent off a whole month before the publication pulled the plug on their reading period.

The last minute submissions are usually brand new stories, which are always hard to let go under the best of circumstances and which can ALWAYS be better, or tales that insist on unfolding in their own good time and resist all attempts to get them to hurry up, and yes, sometimes my tardiness is the fault of a perfect idea that arrived too late for a leisurely write up or Real Life throwing a curve-ball. I suppose I blog more about these close deadlines because I'm caught up in the excitement of chasing down ideas and whipping them into shape within a short time frame, like those television shows where everything goes wrong but the contestants emerge triumphant, or I moan about the missed deadlines because I'm mourning the lost opportunity for some story that would have been PERFECT for the publication in question.

But mostly I don't raise a sweat getting submissions off ahead of time. Mostly I spend a lot of time waiting for responses...