History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

2014 in review

It’s a little quiet here today, so I’ve got time to look at 2014’s numbers!

My numbers for 2014:
Stories out at the end of 2013: 5
New Stories Written: 2
Old Stories Making the Rounds: 6
Total Submissions: 56
Total Rejections: 52 (+4)
Total Acceptances: 2
Stories out at the end of the year: 4

Okay, I’m not 100 percent sure that the numbers make sense, but perhaps they’ll shake out as I detail them.

I started out with 5 stories out at the beginning of 2014. Of those 5, I had 2 rejections, 2 which never made it to the magazines as intended (!), and 1 that was accepted. During the course of the year, I wrote 2 new stories, and I brought 2 of my older stories back into circulation–one is making the rounds as a reprint, while the other is a story that was accepted for publication in 2012, but the book fell through.

Compared to 2013, I wrote less new stories. I’m not entirely sure why that happened, other than that I spent some time in 2014 working on longer pieces instead of short stories–my NaNoWriMo (incomplete), a first draft of one novella (written during Camp NaNoWriMo), and a started but not done yet novella. I also had SIGNIFICANTLY more submissions (and rejections) in 2014, which is probably a combined effect of really keeping my stories in the hopper and being less willing to submit stories to markets that take a really long time to respond. And, on that note, the other 2 not-quite-rejections listed above are from two stories that I withdrew from consideration after a long stretch with no responses to queries and no indication that the markets were still active. Ah well, things happen.

The two acceptances were both exciting: I sold “Veli tis Artemidos” to The Big Adios Western Digest, and “A Dark Place” to Fictionvale. I wrote the former in 2013, but the latter in 2011, which gives me hope for my other old stories–someday they will find their perfect home!

Going forward, I can say that I’ve got a first draft of a short story done (written in December), and the beginnings of four more short stories in the works, plus ideas for four other short stories. Once I get a bunch of those knocked out, I’m hoping to get back to some of the longer pieces for editing passes. I’m planning on a pretty aggressive schedule for writing in 2015–I give myself Wednesdays and Fridays off, but the other five days of the week I should be writing or editing for at least an hour a day. Assuming I can keep up with it, I should have at least nine new short stories done (in first drafts, at least) by the beginning of April and hopefully out to markets by the beginning of May. And if I get enough ideas to maintain that pace for the whole year? That’ll be a lot of stories!

Here’s to a great 2015!


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