A comment to a posting I made earlier this week (Maybe I'm insecure but . . .) has got me thinking.
While I agree with jeyers comments, I can't help measuring a story's worth by whether it finds a home in a mag or book. See, that sense of 'knowing a story is good by ones own standards' only goes so far. There's some stuff I wrote two or three years ago that I thought was brilliant. I look at it now and think 'ho-hum'. I'm sure all budding artists feel that. If not, it probably means they are stagnating.
It's only when an editor has waded through hundreds of submissions and plucked mine out as the one they were after -- and offers a payment, no matter how small -- that I can stop tinkering with that story and consider it finished.
But then, maybe it's just me: maybe I need the latent praise that comes with a story's acceptance for publication to keep me writing. I truly admire writers that do it purely for the joy of it -- and by that, I mean those who (despite being good) never submit their works, anywhere -- but I can't do that.
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