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 – 2
- Submissions Currently Out – 5
- Acceptances This Year – 1
- Rejections This Year – 29 (11 higher tier)
Submissions
I missed last week, so this is a double update. I’m also pretty sure that I started this series a few weeks into the year, and yet I’m approaching week fifty-two…which makes me suspect my count got messed up somewhere. In any case, we’re approaching the end of the year!
One of my drabbles came back two weeks ago, and I had another that had been sitting idle, so I spent some time digging through Duotrope for good places to submit them. I still struggle to find good potential homes for these, as they’re technically “reprints” that have been on the blog previously. I’m currently looking at non-paying markets to expand my options.
Payment in cents per word are generally paltry for 100-word stories anyway, so pursuing the paid options is really just for the ego boost of getting into a bigger, more difficult-to-crack publication.
The Bluefinch and the Chipmunk also came back to me in the past week with a form rejection, which is always disappointing after a longish wait. So it goes. I sent it back out alongside one of the drabbles.
Revisions
I haven’t been doing much on the Red Eyes revisions, and whenever I’m not getting things done, I have that feeling that I ought to work harder. However, I did have several new ideas for the story in the past week, and this is something that happens fairly often when I’m not actively working much on a story, but I have it on my mind. It makes me wonder if the extra time is necessary, or if I’d get to a similar place by spending more time at the keyboard (or at least staring at the screen).
This sort of thing also makes me wonder whether it’s better to let stories sit like this, and work on other things in the meantime, or whether it’s better to stick to one thing to completion. Switching between stories means thinking less about that story in waiting, which means those new ideas and changes in perspective may not come.
I tend to vacillate back and forth on this, sometimes focusing more on a single thing, and sometimes switching between several. Maybe that’s the way to do it.
Goals for Next Week
None. I’m going to enjoy the holidays with my family. If I write, I write. If I don’t, that’s fine too.
Words Deferred 