2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.
- Stories in Progress – 2
- Submissions This Week – 1
- Submissions Currently Out – 3
- Rejections This Year – 5 (1 personal)
Stories in Progress
This week, I had a single incredibly fast rejection—coming back in less than two days. This is not a small publication either, so that’s quite impressive. It’s interesting how much variation there is—some places ask you to give them 90 days to respond!
I edited “The Bluefinch and the Chipmunk,” which was a fairly quick process. Now it’s in the Critters queue for critique (and on my kitchen counter for my in-house readers). I’ll come back to it later in the month, when I have all that feedback in hand.
Unfortunately, the next old story I’m working on is considerably larger and rougher around the edges. It’s almost 7,000 words, which is getting into territory that will limit the places I can submit it. If possible, I’d like to chop it down to less than 5,000, but I’m not yet sure if that’s something I can manage. It may require some architectural changes.
I’ve got a busy few days coming up, so I fully expect that those edits will take up my writing time for the next two weeks.
Goals for Next Week
Major reconstructive surgery on the story tentatively titled “Red Eyes.”
Words Deferred 