2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about short story writing, from idea and draft to submission.
This is week fourteen: Apr. 6-12.
Stats
- Stories Finished: 2
- Submissions Currently Out: 7
- Submissions Total: 15
- Rejections: 12
- Acceptances: 0
Goals and Results
It’s a double week, since I took a week off. It’s been quiet—not a single response to my submissions.
I had a single goal from week 12, and that was to get a story into the Critters queue.
The story that I had in mind went by the bland working title of Hunter’s Apprentice, and although I liked the idea and the general structure, it needed more tension/conflict. I added that in the form of the main character being less sure of the big choice she has to make, and I changed the title to Beneath the House in Caen, which I think is a much more evocative title.
That story is now off to the Critters queue, and should go out right around the end of the month.
Next Week
Lately, I’m finding that it’s pretty easy to hit my self-set revision quotas. Thanks to a backlog of first drafts, I have no shortage of stories to clean up and get critiqued, then thoroughly revise when the critiques roll in.
However, I have been falling behind on my word count goal for new stories. That needs to be remedied. I have a solarpunk story called Arbor Grove that I’ve just started, and I think that will be the target for this week.
Assuming I get that done, I need to work on the post-critique revisions of F-TIB.
Goals for next week:
- Write ~2k words of Arbor Grove.
- Revise F-TIB.
Words Deferred 