I’ve heard that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.  For fiction writing there is truth to that, as you have to be a bit insane to pursue fiction writing with an expectation of getting paid to do it.

The saying has me thinking about changing my approach to see if I can a few more land sales.

My current process is:

1. Wait until inspiration strikes (if ever) and write a story
2. Find a market that the story might fit and submit
3. Get a rejection then GOTO step 2

A better approach might be to:

1. Target a market that suits me
2. Write something appropriate for the market and submit
3. Get a rejection and GOTO step 2

The new approach requires me to abandon that whimsical, spur-of-the-moment, writing that occurs when an idea for a story hits me.  There is fantasy in my head that all of the great fiction authors operated by writing whatever the hell they felt like. It feels wrong to force myself to deal with the hand-cuffing constraints of catering to a specific market. My creative side wants its freedom, dammit!

But there is also an analytical side of me that likes this surgical approach — dissecting the stories they have bought, feeling through the structure, the language, looking for the fingerprints in the tales that made those first readers and editors salivate like Pavlov’s dogs.

So who is my victim target market?

I have picked out Points in Case. They do funny well and I do like me some funny.  They publish funny lists and I feel like a funny list is a reasonable bar to hurdle; the word count is relatively low so my thinking is that I should be able to come up with list stories pretty quickly.

In practice, however, making a funny list is harder than it seems. As the individual “funny” items are added to the list, you start to question your ability to determine if something is funny or not.  Sometimes things I think are funny are just weird, or worse yet, offensive.

I have already submitted one list story to P.I.C., which was promptly rejected. I currently have another one sitting with them that I like a lot better. Whether or not it gets accepted is up to the fiction gods at this point (and we know how finicky they can be) but, then again, that’s all part of the craft.

Have you tried writing to specific markets before? If so, let me know in the comments how that worked out for you.

-James