April recap
By the numbers:
Stories out at the beginning of the month: 2
Acceptances received: 0
Rejections received: 1
Resubmissions: 2
New Submissions: 0
Stories out at the end of the month: 3
This month has been a bit light on the submissions, mainly because I’ve got a number of stories I’m sitting on for a bit, and because I’ve been focusing on a novel instead.
The story revisions I mentioned at the end of March are in something of a holding pattern. More specifically, I finished the rewrite of the older story that I wasn’t too sure about what I was going to do with it. That one is currently sitting until I have a chance to read it and see how much of a mess I’ve made, as I think I doubled the original word count. The POV rewrite floundered, and the plot rewrite didn’t have enough direction to be workable. So the latter two are going back into the box of “maybe I’ll figure out how to make this work someday.”
Really, though, the novel has pretty much consumed all of my attention. I bashed out a good, solid outline during the writer’s retreat, and then let it sit for a few days. I made some minor tweaks to parts of it, and it’s undergoing more tweaks now that I’m writing the first draft, but overall, it’s holding up well, and, best of all, it’s getting me to write in a focused fashion! This is incredibly exciting to me. Sure, I can still occasionally wind up on a tangent, but having the road map is really helping me get back to the main road from my tangents. Since last Monday, when I started working on writing it, I’ve written more than 12,000 words, and finished the first four chapters.
I’m going to keep plowing through the novel in April, with a goal of finishing up the first draft early in June. Then it’ll go on the shelf for a bit, so I can work on some short stories (also outlined, because I’m liking this outlining thing!), and then I’ll pick it back up for a second draft pass in August. After that, I’m hoping to get some folks to read through it and offer suggestions on it (so if you’re interested in being an early reader, let me know!), and then polish it up into something presentable hopefully by the end of the year or early next year!
In the meantime, the short story stats may languish, but I’m pleased enough with my novel progress to set those aside for a bit. I’ve got a couple of those stories out at markets that might take a while to respond, and since there won’t be new stories to submit, I suspect the recap at the beginning of these posts may be boring next month. But hopefully I’ll have lots of novel progress to report on!
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