March 2015 recap
By the numbers:
Stories out at the beginning of the month: 9
Acceptances received: 0
Rejections received: 11 (+1)
Stories withdrawn: 0
Resubmissions: 9
New Submissions: 0
Stories out at the end of the month: 6
My numbers for the month are a little bit down, which is in part because I’ve pulled two stories out of circulation. In one case, it’s a reprint (girls) that I’ve been having trouble finding a new home for, so I’m giving it a little break to see if any new markets for middle reader reprints open up.
In the other case, I realized that I’ve gotten very similar comments from several markets on one story (blind), so I should probably consider making some tweaks to it. Interestingly, when I wrote an earlier draft of the story, it included some of what these markets are looking for in this story, but because I tried to cut it down to flash length, it lost some of those elements (and never did get below 2,000 words). So it’s time to put that stuff back in!
There’s also one other story that isn’t out at a market right now, but that’s because I was holding it for one that reopens today. So now I’m off to submit that!
The +1 rejection is from a market that closed. Otherwise, it’s the usual grind of submissions, waiting for a response, and then resubmitting as appropriate. I’ve got one query out now for a story that’s been out a bit longer than expected, but pretty much all of the rest are still within their usual response time windows.
As for what I got done this month, I finished my outline for the novel early in the month. I then started writing the novel in the middle of March. But I ran into some trouble–while I had some good inciting incidents to kick things off, I then had the problem of getting three vastly different protagonists to the same place so that they could work together. And try though I might, I had a hard time making that interesting. I also kept running into situations where the writing time I expected to have was abbreviated, so I wasn’t making good progress on it. In the end, I decided that this was something that should be back-burnered for the time being, because I can always come back to it later.
On the short story/novelette front, I made some revisions to two stories (coil and island). The former, which is edging to novelette length, went off to a handful of beta readers, and they’ve gotten me some comments back on their suggestions. The latter went to my alpha reader (read: my husband), who liked the story, but thinks it could be a lot longer. I’m inclined to agree with him, so that one has gone onto the shelf, with hopes of outlining a novel and writing that in November. There’s a lot of research that needs to be done between now and then, so it’s good that I won’t have time to write on it for a while. I also started a new short story (runners), which I thought might be a flash fiction story. But I finished my initial writing last night, with a couple of places I need to go back and backfill, and I’d be surprised if it comes in under 3,500 words now. Still short, but probably not flash.
I also started working on revisions to a long abandoned middle reader novella (cats; related to the reprint story mentioned above). It’s interesting going back to something that I wrote a couple of years ago, because I can really see the improvement in my writing now, compared with my writing then. So there’s a LOT of revision work to be done, but the shape overall is good.
And finally, I had a flash of inspiration for a story (shoes) on Monday, outlined it yesterday, and hope to start writing it next week. Luckily, since I was able to knock out the bulk of the new short story (runners) in two days (!), I’ll have time in the next couple of weeks to write this other new story.
April looks to be a busy month, with continued revisions to the novella, revisions to the pulled short story (blind), writing/finishing a total of three short stories (runners, shoes, and deathsight), and starting a fourth short story (monkey!). Whew! That’s sort of exhausting to look at! If all goes well, the revised story (blind) will go back out into circulation by the end of the month, but the other short stories will be simmering, waiting for revisions, at that point.
As a side note, if you’re ever interested in beta reading stories for me, please drop me a line! I’m always happy to have new eyes on my stories!
Comments