One panel I attended at Worldcon was called something like “The Analog Story”, or “What Makes an Analog Story”, or “How To Get Your Hopes Up Only To Have Them Dashed Much The Same Way That Girl in The Tenth Grade Ripped Your Heart Out Of Your Chest With Her Bare Hands, Then Spit On It, Then Threw It Into A Woodchipper.”

What the heck am I talking about.

I’m talking about a panel moderated by the well known, well regarded Stanley Schmidt, editor of Analog. Mr. Schmidt, along with three or four other panelists (among them London, Ontario based writer Paddy Forde), discussed what they consider to be the kind of stories Analog magazine is looking for.

I must admit it’s been a while since I thumbed through the pages of an Analog, and I kind of had the impression that they were looking for nuts and bolts kind of stories these days, heavy on the hard science fiction. According to Mr. Schmidt, this isn’t quite the case. He prefers character based stories, with plenty of emotion (the kind of story Paddy Forde delivers in spades… he’s had two stories published in Analog, both reader favourites.)

I asked Mr. Schmidt what he thinks of humourous stories. He said he would like to see a lot more of them. This got me thinking. I try to insert a fair bit of humour into my stories. Actually, I don’t try, it just comes naturally (of course, whether anybody actually thinks it’s funny is another story). It just so happens that in the middle of my novel-in-progress (so close to being finished! so close!) there is a standalone story. Kind of a rumination on time travel, laced with (attempts at) gentle humour. I decided to package it up and throw it Mr. Schmidt’s way. It seemed to me that it might be his kind of story.

So there, you see, I got my hopes up. The story (called She That Dwells) is now in the mail, wending its way to Mr. Schmidt. A few weeks from now I’ll get a self-addressed envelope in the mail containing a form letter informing me that BZZZZZZT!!!! I should think about trying again. (Yes I know I should think more positively… it’s just that I’m bracing myself, you see.)

Because if this story is rejected, it means… maybe… the novel will be rejected.

Which actually means nothing, of course. Because one of the other things I learned at Worldcon (or was reminded of, because I already knew it) is how many times some truly fantastic novels have been rejected in the past. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman was rejected eight, nine times before St. Martin’s Press picked it up. This is astonishing to me… such a readable, important, fantastic novel, rejected so many times. Publishers should have been BATTLING one another over it.

So if my story (and subsequently my novel) is rejected, it won’t matter much. Like Haldeman, I’ll just keep plugging away until somebody somewhere buys it.

Shook Haldeman’s hand at the con, by the way. Told him how much I loved his book. What else is there to say? Thanks, he said, and signed it To Joe from Joe (what else was there for him to say? He’d said everything he needed to say in the book).

So wish me luck, because even though it won’t matter if Mr. Schmidt rejects She That Dwells…

… it sure would be nice if he published it.