Sing and thoughts on rejection

I subbed Sing the other night to a professional sci-fi magazine (measured by how much they pay per word which is more than .03). I was fairly confident of it until I went back the next morning and reread the last sentence--which was added late at night just before I deemed it ready to go out. Shame on me.

I've fixed it and am resisting the urge to commmit a big, big no-no: a simultaneous sub. I read the level of work this magazine accepted and was surprised at how simplistic it was, considering how much they pay. Sing was on par with their work--all of it except the ending. I expect them to reject it. In light of that I'm looking at some other markets and am feeling impatient. I won't move on this too soon, but I'd like this story in circulation where it's likely to be picked up. And, yes, (to the horror of many) money is a consideration.

I know it's not popular to say this. Artists aren't supposed to write for the money, but the fact of the matter is, I'm going to write anyway. I'm going to sub anyway--so why not to paying markets? And why not write because it's lucrative as well as satisfying. It doesn't sully the product unless it becomes the only reason the story was written.

A piece of flash fiction was rejected by Flashquake earlier this month. They said some nice things about--described it as well-written and beautiful-but then said that they'd read it before and that there was nothing new about it so "No". This amused me a great deal as the story was about the birth of Christ as told in third person, from Mary's POV--a bit tongue in cheek with a bittersweet ending. What did they want? Aliens bearing gifts? Talking dung beatles? Of course they'd read it before. Of course there was nothing new in it. And when did well written and beautiful stop being enough to sell a story? Ah well. It was just one audience and I waited too long to sub it. I should have started in July so now I'll have to wait until next summer to try again. Eventually it will get picked up somewhere. This time I wasn't really even thinking about the money--just that I liked this little ezine and they've published my work before.

Speaking of which--Expresso Fic is running Flying without Wings next week.

Okay, back to "Troubled_Waters". I am not going to make the 50,000 word goal set by Nano-Wrimo. Too many real life issues got in the way--work, family life, holidays and the flu. However, I'm not far from 40,000 at this point and I'd like to at least reach that goal. This book should finish out at around 80,000.