Factor Four Magazine published my first paid fiction piece, The Usurious Mechanic, in their March 2022 Issue and I couldn’t be happier for achieving this milestone. Thanks, Factor Four!
Of the titles in my bibliography, I’ve been paid to write freelance non-fiction magazine articles and I’ve earned dinner money from some self-published fiction works, but cracking the paid fiction market was elusive. I use The Submission Grinder from Diabolical Plots to keep track of submissions and it tells me I started submitting stories in 2015 and had over 60 submissions and rejections across multiple stories before this acceptance.
The Usurious Mechanic, a flash fiction piece under 1,000 words, was rejected six times before I sold it. It was not the first story I expected to sell. I started it in December 2018 and sent my first query in January 2019. I re-wrote it in May of 2020 based on some beta reader feedback and that’s the version that sold.
Why did this piece sell before others, including two I’ve received very positive feedback on from beta readers and some encouraging personal rejections?
Who knows? If there’s anything I’ve absorbed from the writing community, it’s that the publishing industry can be capricious, great stories get passed by all the time for a host of reasons, and luck can be an outsized variable. I try to stay sanguine about rejections and view them as being one step closer to another sale.
In the meantime, I’m savoring this win and the feeling of leveling up.
Heather Kilbourn 