March 2023 Recap!
They don’t show it often, but they do like each other.
By the numbers:
Stories out at the beginning of the month: 98
Acceptances received: 1
Rejections received: 58
Stories withdrawn: 2
Resubmissions: 37
New Submissions: 9
Stories out at the end of the month: 83
Slightly slower month for the submissions, but also not a ton of rejections compared to some other months. This is likely a factor of just not having as much on submission as I have in the past, as I’ve depleted a lot of the backlog of stories. I had one acceptance for a poem, at a dream market, but the contract isn’t signed yet, so no announcement.
My two withdrawn stories were both to markets that shifted their policy to accept pieces “written” by AI. One of the two markets had a rather inflammatory post about the quality of the submissions they saw from humans vs. AIs. The other approached it more quietly. But as the short fiction market is already a difficult enough field, I’m choosing to not submit to markets that welcome AI submissions because I don’t believe that AI submissions should have the possibility of taking away acceptances from human submissions.
I did get nine new pieces out in circulation this month, so that’s a good start toward replenishing my available pool of stories and poetry. The nine pieces were four poems, three flash pieces, and two short stories.
In March, I completed two of the Wayward Writer exercises, with story drafts for two more of them, and a novella outline for the fifth and final piece. I completed cyborg, party, and mothers, and the first draft of shroud; the five pieces for the poetry contest; three other poems for a submissions call; and a flash fiction piece for a contest. I’ve also prepped my next collection (Wreathed in Steam), did a bunch of publicity for Droplets and some DefCon One books, did the Stephen Fry poetry section, reviewed a short story collection, and worked on two of my three freelance projects (the third still hasn’t materialized).
In April, I need to:
- Complete four exercises in The Wayward Writer
- Revise shroud, dragon, and lament
- Revise five poems from the contest
- Write the bulk of a new novella (brother, to be completed in early May)
- Write a new microfiction piece (TBD)
- Write a new flash piece (TBD)
- Start writing a longer version of roots
- Launch Droplets from the Universe (book 2) and prep launch for Wreathed in Steam (book 3)
- Start preparing book 4 for the year (currently untitled)
- Freelance editing work (finish editing full-length book, start editing novella, possibly proofreading work)
Once again, it’s a bunch, but it’s doable!
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