Week 35 — Year of Short Stories 2026

2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I track my short story writing, from idea and draft to submission.

This is the week of Aug 31 – Sept 6.

Stats

• Stories Finished: 3
• Submissions Currently Out: 11
• Submissions Total: 35
• Rejections: 26
• Acceptances: 0

Submissions and Responses

I received two form rejections this week, for Red Eye and Taco Cat. One of these was from Clarkesworld, which I submitted to because I knew I could be confident that I’d get a response within a week and be able to send to another publication with a relatively near-term deadline. I honestly don’t understand how Clarkesworld can pay pro rates and still respond to the onslaught of submissions so quickly, but I do appreciate it.

I ended up sending two new submissions for Red Eye and another for Taco Cat. If nothing else, I am keeping my stories circulating.

Goals

My goals from last week:

1. Keep up with critiques
2. Hit writing/editing quotas every day.

Critiques have been going well. My horror story, The Magpie, is set to go out to the Critters in two weeks, and I hope to have it ready for submission in early October.

Writing quotas have not been going particularly well. I mentioned that I would be working on editing T.I.M. and writing Arbor Grove. What I really ended up doing was stepping back and thinking about process.

Considering a Writing Reset

Life is busy, and I struggle to write during the week. Even when I have time, I rarely have the energy. Part of this is my own fault. Like many people in the modern world, I have terrible sleep habits. I’m usually progressively more sleep deprived as the week goes on. That leaves me in a half-zombie state where I don’t feel up to creative work like writing, so I end up doomscrolling or watching garbage on streaming services. That leads to staying up too late again…and so on. A vicious cycle. That’s certainly something I need to address for my quality of life.

I’ve also been facing some roadblocks with my current batch of stories. T.I.M. is a story that has been through an unusual amount of revision for me, and has a completed draft. Unfortunately, I decided this week that it needs to go back into the trunk for now. There is some spark missing from it, and I think that doing justice to the main character will require some research to really get into the POV. I plan to do that, but it means the story won’t be ready anytime soon. The other story I’ve been working on, Arbor Grove, is a loose collection of ideas and scenes that I haven’t quite found my way into yet.

The whole Year of Short Stories thing has been great for my submission rate and overall productivity, but it has also made me more myopic. I’ve been focusing on getting the current  work done and out the door, and probably not thinking as much as I should about what the current work should be, or how I should be doing it.

So, I’m going to take this next week to think about process. How can I get more writing done with less stress, and what should I be working on as we enter the final third of the year?

Next Week

Goals:

• Keep up with critiques
• Think about process