Month: February 2025

January Writing Update

  • Stories In Progress: 3
  • Submissions Sent: 0
  • Submissions Currently Out: 4
  • Acceptances: 1
  • Rejections: 1

I intended to write this update a couple weeks ago, but I got derailed. More about that in my February update.

I started the year on a positive note, with an acceptance for The Blue Finch and the Chipmunk! It’s scheduled to be published in April, and I’ll have more info on that as it gets closer to release.

Dr. Clipboard’s Miracle Wonder Drug remained held for consideration at an anthology. Of course, I hope that this will eventually result in an acceptance, but I’m thinking I may try to send out some simultaneous submissions.

I received a single rejection in January. This was a drabble submission that I felt was a long-shot anyway.

January Goals

As I mentioned in my New Year’s writing resolutions, I will be setting myself monthly goals in 2025. In January, I set myself a goal of writing an average of one page (250 words) of short stories per day.

I’m happy to say that I met that goal, and my total for the month is just under 8000 words. I wasn’t writing every day, but the real benefit of a light goal like this is that it made it possible for me to catch up on the days when I did write. Over the years, I’ve learned that the hardest part of writing for me is getting started, so small goals like this work well, because I’ll often overshoot the word count once I’ve actually gotten going.

The ability to catch up also helps me stay motivated. In the past, I have succeeded with larger goals, like the 1667 words per day that’s standard for NaNoWriMo. Unfortunately, I don’t find that pace sustainable over the long term, and it’s very easy to become demotivated after missing one or two days.

Thanks to my January writing, I now have a nice backlog of completed stories that need editing. I still need to complete post-critique revisions on Red Eyes, and I have two first drafts: a short story I’m currently calling F-TIB, and another called The Scout. I wrote The Scout with less outlining than usual, and it is far too long and unfocused as a result. I will need to figure out which parts I like and then take a hatchet to the rest.

February Plans

My original plan for February was to switch to revision mode in order to get some of these stories edited. I can tell you right now, that plan didn’t end up happening. But I’ll save that for my February writing update.