First experience with an editor

[missdanaidae]

I entered a contest at Fantasy Magazine that asked authors to write a story in ten sentences or less based on an image of their choice. The editor running the contest chose my story as one of the top ten finalists so I thought I'd share what it was like working with an editor on revising my piece.

( Editing )

The contest can be found here. All ten stories are of a high quality and I find most of the art beautiful as well. You may vote for up to three stories. My piece is "Beyond the Sun Before the Moon." I hope you enjoy it!

Does anyone have any stories, good or bad, about their experiences with editors and revision? Any tips on what to say or not say to an editor? How to revise that story you love so much and can't stand to change?

Question about following up

[magycmyste]

I have a question about following up. I realize that response time in most places is usually about 2-3 months, or longer, but I'm wondering if I'm in a slightly different position here. A little while ago, I made my first writing sale to Thaumatrope, a twitter SFFH 'zine. The day I got my first response back, I sent another one in (5/6), and 4 days later (5/10), I submitted a Twitter serial.

Now, for the first story, I got my response back within two days. This might have given me unrealistic expectations about response time, but I thought it was appropriate, since a Twitter story has to be told in 140 characters or less, and shouldn't take long to read. The second one, I got an acceptance 20 days after submission. And I haven't heard back at all about the serial yet.

I looked around, but Thaumatrope does not give any indication at all that I can find of response times, and I suspect the editor may have been on vacation or something for a while since during that 20-day period, there were no tweets from him at all. For the single stories, I used Thaumatrope's online submission form, so it was easy to see that those went through and whether the status had changed. The serial, however, was supposed to be submitted in an Excel sheet attached to an e-mail, and I never received any response after sending it, not even saying that it wwas received. Also, the status doesn't get tracked online like the single stories.

I'm wondering whether it would be appropriate to go ahead and send an e-mail to follow up on this, at least to make sure that the serial was received properly. Thaumatrope is now closed for submissions for stories, and I would hate for it to close for serials as well, only to find out that something went wrong, and my submission never got through in the first place.

Any thoughts?