Researching publishers and a new novel from an old story

I didn’t do a whole lot of writing today, just a little bit in my story for English 318.  I did, however, research some markets and give out Decision LZ150207 to some beta readers.  I’m also starting to figure out some new plans for my story The Clearest Vision…

Here’s what I’m thinking: The Clearest Vision clearly falls into the Mormon niche.  It basically tells the story of a premortal spirit who finds herself doubting her decision to enter mortality as those she loves pass through the veil and fall into sin (oh, and it has swords and medieval weapons too).  I toyed with trying to send it out to the Christian market, but in the end I figured that with distinctly Mormon concepts like the pre-existence (concepts that don’t fly very well with conservative Christians), it’s really more of a Mormon story concept.

The problem is that, in its current form, it’s a short story, and I really don’t know of any Mormon publications that print short stories.  I sent it out to a few publishers (Deseret, Covenant, Cedar Fort, etc) about a year ago, but got rejected, with some of them saying “we do not accept stand alone short stories.” I guess I was a little naive back then, but it was worth a shot.

The thing is, I want to find a home for this story–I don’t want it to just sit on my hard drive like it did all last year.  Besides, that’s one (actually two) of the Heinlein rules of writing: submit your work and keep submitting it until it gets published.  I’ve already submitted it to all of the places I know of that publish Mormon short stories (pretty much just Irreantum–naturally, I got a rejection from them), and if I want to keep trying to get this story published, I’m going to have to change something in the story itself to make it broader.

As I was researching some newer Mormon publishers like Zarahemla Book (there is an interesting article on A Motley Vision from when this publisher was just getting started), I realized that the story would be a lot easier to sell if it were a novel, not a short story.  Besides that, the story itself lends itself more to a novel format.  I remember trying really hard to shorten it down to 8,500 words for the AML fiction contest, and reading over it again now, it really does seem like a lot is left out.

It shouldn’t be too hard to do this: I basically just have to get it from 8,500 words to 50,000 words–or rather, I have the opportunity to add in all the cool stuff that would have brought it over the top, then develop some of the important stuff until it turns itself into a novel.

I’m going to focus my attention on finishing the rough draft of The Lost Colony for now (suddenly 140,000 words seems ridiculously long), then work on The Clearest Vision and hopefully send out some query letters by the end of the year.  I really don’t know how busy I’ll be over the summer with the study abroad (or how much computer access I’m going to have), but if possible, I can work on it over there as well.  Besides that, I’m hoping that this study abroad will help to give me a new idea for a novel as well.

Holy cow!  Let’s list these projects:

• The Lost Colony: finish rough draft by April 25th, tentatively finish first rewrite and send out queries by January 2009.
• The Clearest Vision: finish novel version and send out queries by January 2009.
• The Wormhole Paradigm: finish novella by April and submit to Writers of the Future by the end of the summer (this is the one I’m working on for English 318).
• Decision LZ150207: just get it published somewhere.  Shouldn’t be too hard.
• Untitled: the novel that I hope to write when I get back from Jordan–I have some ideas but I want to see if I get any better ones during my study abroad experience.

Well, now that it’s listed out like this, it doesn’t actually look that bad.

As for DecisionLZ150207, I printed up a copy of it and gave it to the girls in the Arabic house to read.  I wanted some fresh beta readers before I submit it to Writers of the Future, which I plan to do in the next couple of weeks.

All of this, though, leads me to ask the question: if one of your stories gets rejected by a publisher, is it a bad idea to submit rewrites of the same story to that publisher?  Are they just going to get really annoyed and blacklist your name for all time?  Would it be a bad idea for me to resubmit The Clearest Vision as a novel to the places I submitted it as a short story?  What should be my strategy?

Oh, and one last think.  Inscape, the BYU literary magazine, said that they would be interested in publishing The Clearest Vision as a graphic novel.  Hmm.  They’re not a paying market, but it would look good on a resume / cover letter.  If I have a friend draw out a graphic novel of the story, does that somehow preclude me from selling it as a novel?  The request sounded a little odd, but at the same time kind of cool.

Whatever happens, I’m going to submit the short story version of The Clearest Vision to the Mayhew contest this year.  And if I’m allowed to submit multiple stories, I may just send out Memoirs of a Snowflake as well–or even come up with something else.  Prize money is pretty awesome!