September 2023 Submissions:

Short Stories:

  • Submissions: 3
  • Rejections: 0
  • Acceptances: 0
  • Further Consideration/Shortlist: 0
  • Stories Finished: 1

Inspired by Aeryn Rudel at http://www.rejectomancy.com, I’m going to try publicly listing my submissions each month. With any luck, this will help motivate me to keep submitting. The submissions do represent three different stories, but two of them were finished earlier this year. I always wondered how many stories Aeryn’s submissions represented, so I’m trying to track that as well. I should also note that one of the submissions was to the Writers of the Future Contest, so there won’t be any word on that for a while.

Took yesterday off because I finished a story on Thursday. Haven’t written anything yet for today, I suppose I should start now. I prefer to write into the dark, as Dean Wesley Smith calls it, so starting something new is always a bit intimidating. Signing off now to see what I come up with!

Update

Seems I’m not doing so great on keeping up with the blog, but I wanted to check in anyways. Even if nobody’s reading.


Anyway, big update missing: the novel I wrote about in the last blog post is done. Well, the first draft at least. I decided to cap it closer to 50k words rather than the 70k goal I had back in January because I want to keep things manageable while I build up my writing habit. I am at work on revising that novel, but it’s going to be a while before it’s done. I am putting it through Holly Lisle’s extensive and exhaustive How to Revise Your Novel course. Please don’t hold your breath.

The big thing I’ve been thinking about lately is rejection. I got a rejection letter yesterday, which absolutely murdered my confidence. I’m happy to say though that I did end up sending the piece out again before I went to bed. I also spent hours yesterday and today reading other writers’ musings on rejections to help myself feel better.

I’ve been keeping track of my submissions on The Submissions Grinder for a couple of years now. My current stats are:
2018 – 4 submissions
2019 – 10 submissions
2020 – 11 submissions
2021 – 4 submissions
2022 – 8 submissions (so far)


I’m hoping to at least tie my 2021 record this year, and I may give the novel revisions less priority to see if I can get up to 12 submissions. What’s clear is that even on my best year, the submissions count is too small. I’ve seen other writers who get up to 100 submissions in a year. That’s probably why yesterday’s rejection felt so bad – I haven’t become desensitized yet.

Anyhow, that’s the state of things at the moment. Now I have to spend at least a little time cleaning before the day job starts.

1,273 words, and a plan…

So, as you can see, some progress was made over the past week, though not that much (remember I posted on Sunday last time, so don’t consider today’s word count as part of my week’s progress). It was pretty challenging getting into the book while also returning to the work routine after the holiday break. Seems like if I can just be sure to write first thing in the morning, I’ll be okay. I’m trying to push a little past the daily word count goal. While it’s more than reasonable to finish the first draft at the end of February, I wouldn’t be upset to see it done before then.

My characters are held captive, though loosely, but they’ve got a plan to get free. The challenge? – How can I make things go wrong for them? Tomorrow, though, I’ll be in a different POV. I wonder where that will take me.

For those who are interested, I found a very interesting resource yesterday in George Saunders’s Story Club. Saunders is a literary writer who doesn’t really do fantasy or science fiction, but I enjoy his absurdist stories and I really love his efforts to share with the public how he teaches classic literature at Syracuse. So if your reading tastes ever stray into the highbrow, be sure to give that link a look.

New Year, New Goals

Well, the past two years seem to have been filled with silence on this blog. The good news is that they haven’t been completely devoid of work. I figured it was time to start sharing a bit about what’s going on.

Perhaps the biggest thing that happened in those years is that I wrote and revised a short novel. It was not a great novel, but it taught me some valuable things to use for the next novel. And the next novel is in the works! Here’s the status for the current work:

As you can see, I’ve given myself a fairly modest goal of 70k by the end of February. I’m planning on self-publishing at the moment, but I’m open to pushing for traditional publication should the first draft want to expand to 80k (I’m willing to add 10k in revision, but not 20k).

Also, the day counter only reflects weekdays, which is why it says 42 Days Left when there are clearly plenty more before the end of February. I don’t plan to take weekends completely off, but I do intent to write very little on them just to keep the streak going. The main goal, besides writing the novel, is to get 5 days a week, 1250 words a day, or about 25k per month (yes, that will have me hit 70k a bit early). The recommendation comes from Holly Lisle’s forums, where she discussed it as a good goal to teach someone whether or not they want to write professionally.

So that’s the main project! Doesn’t mean I will take the year off completely from short stories – I do want to have something for you to read. 2022 will be a literary adventure, and I’m looking forward to seeing what it brings!