Just sent out the poker story to the anthology editor – while crossing my fingers, of course.

There comes a time in every story where the author must let it go and send it out. It’s a hard step, turning loose of something we’ve been pouring our sweat and blood into for the last few weeks, months, or even years. The story has been loved and nurtured while at home – now you must expose it to criticism and judgement. Now you must face the opinions of others.

Some writers never reach this stage in their work. They fiddle and tweak, editing and rewriting and never quite finishing the story. They fear rejection too much to face it. While this is understandable, it’s no way to write. If you’re going to spend the time and effort on a piece, you’ve got to finish it off, otherwise you’re just wasting all that hard work. It’s like creating a painting and shoving it into a closet, or sewing an outfit and never wearing it.

So how do you know when a piece is ready to send out? How can you be certain it’s the best you’re going to do? How can you be confident that your “baby” is ready to go out into the big world of editors and publishers?

Here are a few tips:

• Keep the “track changes” function on when you edit – when you get to the point where you’re changing less than 10% during an edit, it’s finished
• If all you’re doing is swapping synonyms or changing punctuation, it’s finished
• Pass it to your beta readers – they’ll tell you if you need more work
• Read the entire work as a whole (not for editing) – you’re the best judge of whether it tells the story you want to tell

And, of course, if you have a deadline, it’s finished by the deadline!

What are some tips you’ve learned about finishing a story?

Got word of a new anthology coming out in the Wolf Creek series – they’ve thrown open the submissions to anyone within the Western Fictioneers, so I’m going to see if I can get my foot in the door with a short story. I like the books, and it would be nice to create a character and do some collaborative writing with these folks.

Here are some tips for submitting a story for an anthology:

• Do your homework – see what’s already on the market from that publisher, see what other stories have made their anthologies, see what sort of thing they’re looking for before you start your own story.
• Know the world – if you’re submitting for a shared-world anthology, do your homework there as well, and find out about their world. Read some of the other stories set there and some of the books already published. Show them that you understand the world they’ve created.
• Do your best – a short story is harder for some people than writing a novel, so be sure you craft your best. Have a tight, logical plot with believable, sympathetic characters. Keep the action moving and don’t skimp on the emotion. Make sure the story flows, and that the ending is satisfying.
• Do your editing – fine-tune your story until it purrs, then edit one more time for spelling and grammar. If your work has easily-spotted errors, it’s going straight into the circular file.
• Follow submission guidelines – this should go without saying, but so often new writers will submit something totally unacceptable, or something the editors or publishers are just not interested in. Read the guidelines and follow them to the letter.

Have you had stories published in anthologies? What tips would you add to the list?