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 – 0
- Submissions Currently Out – 3
- Rejections This Year – 4 (1 personal)
A Little Bit of Burnout
The past two weeks were a one-two punch of stress in my day job and things going on in my personal life, leaving me with less time and energy for writing. While I initially coped with this in the usual way (mild self-recrimination), I decided that I’d try to be a bit healthier and just cut back on writing time until everything leveled out.
Helpfully, all of my stories that were out on submission have remained out, so I was able to spend all of my limited writing time on editing Red Eyes. As expected, it’s going to be a good amount of work to fix it up.
My other work in progress, “The Bluefinch and the Chipmunk,” is working its way through the Critters queue and should go out for critiques in the middle of next week. When I get that feedback, I’ll probably switch over to that story again. It’ll give me a nice break, and once I’ve incorporated reader feedback I’ll have another story ready to submit. Then I can go back to finish up “Red Eyes.”
Goals for Next Week
- Continue editing “Red Eyes”
- Final polish on “Bluefinch”
Words Deferred 