2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I track my short story writing, from idea and draft to submission.
These are the weeks of Sept 7 – Sept 20.
Stats
- Stories Finished: 3
- Submissions Currently Out: 8
- Submissions Total: 35
- Rejections: 29
- Acceptances: 0
Submissions and Responses
I had three form rejections and no new submissions over the past two weeks.
Goals
My goals from last time:
- Keep up with critiques
- Think about process
My horror story, The Magpie, is currently out, and the critiques are trickling in. I’ve glanced at a few, but I’ll wait for Wednesday (the end of the Critters week) to start compiling all of it together for the next round of revisions.
After numerous false starts, I’ve been writing fairly consistently over the past week. After being behind on my self-imposed quotas for a couple months, I’m now clawing my way back. Last time, I said I was thinking about my process, and that’s beginning to bear fruit.
Idea Work
In an effort to get more stories ready to send out, I have spent roughly half the year focused on revising completed or nearly complete drafts. This is logical if you’re working in the story factory and want to increase output—finish the things that are closest to being done. Unfortunately, “closest to being done” isn’t always easy to assess.
Some stories refuse to be completed in an orderly manner. T.I.M. is a story that I’ve now finished, torn apart, finished again, and decided I still wasn’t happy enough to move forward with. Other stories seem to come together relatively painlessly. Beneath the House in Caen was a concept that I wrote in a single sitting, the same day I thought of the core concept, and the overall structure didn’t really change through revision.
Trying to force those difficult stories through to completion hasn’t proven effective. I have been logical, but I’ve been ignoring the emotional aspect of storytelling for too long. I need a certain level of excitement about a story to get through it, and that can’t be forced. I also need to refill my reserves of creativity periodically.
My writing time has taken two forms over the past two weeks. The first project I worked on was more brainstorming around Solarpunk. This is a genre that I’ve been interested in for a while (see Solarpunk 101 and Solarpunk Syllabus) but I haven’t been able to find my way into yet. This is pure idea work—writing down ideas and snippets, thinking about technology, coming up with potential characters and conflicts. No story has come out of this yet. It’s the compost heap, and I’ll keep throwing stuff onto it until I get enough rich black dirt that something sprouts.
My other tactic is a different kind of idea work—looking through the many documents where I keep story snippets and ideas, picking a fun-looking one, and trying to write it. I don’t worry about a complete outline. This is a rougher version of what I do for some of my Story Idea Vault posts. I start wherever I think to start and see where it carries me. If it runs out of steam, I pick a new one. This is where my improving daily word count has come from.
In both cases, I find this work refreshing. Coming up with ideas has always felt like the most raw fun in writing for me. Putting all those disparate bits together into a coherent story is satisfying, but it’s hard, too. This is writing without consequence, throwing the spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. And if nothing sticks, I make more spaghetti.
It’s not efficient from the purely logical perspective, but the pure logic wasn’t working for me. This is what I need right now. And if I can hold on to that energy and fun, I have confidence that it will ultimately lead to more stories.
Next Week
Goals:
- Start Magpie revisions
- Continue idea writing
Words Deferred 