Development Journal – Words Deferred

Week 3 — Year of Short Stories 2026

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 three: Jan. 17 – Jan. 23.

Stats

Stories Finished: 0
Submissions Currently Out: 2
Submissions Total: 1
Rejections: 2
Acceptances: 0

Keeping up the Pace

These first few weeks of the year have been about setting up a scaffold for the work yet to come. I’m now feeling like I’m in a comfortable place.

Each week I have some “standard” work: completing a Critters critique, meeting my first draft writing quota and my revision quota, and writing something for the blog. I like having some checklist items that I can work on without too much thought at the end of a long day. Beyond that, I can choose my own adventure.

I’m also getting back into the habit of scouring Duotrope’s upcoming themed submissions calendar. This is something I like to do pretty regularly when I’m writing short stories. Occasionally, a theme will inspire an idea for a new story, and if I already happen to have a story that fits a theme, those are great places to submit.

I didn’t find anything in the near future, but there were a couple themes opening in the next month or two that fit the stories I’m already shopping around.

Goals and Results

My goals from last week were to submit a story to Critters, revise another story, and keep up with my self-imposed quotas.

First, I spent some time cleaning up my newest and shortest story in progress, Taco Cat Employee Manual v7.1. As is typical, these are pretty light revisions based on feedback from my in-house beta readers (my wife and daughter) and anything that stands out to me after letting the story sit for a week or two. With that done, I sent it off to the Critters queue, and it should go out for feedback in early February. I’ll be curious to see how many responses it gets as a flash fiction piece that will only count for half credit.

In addition to those revisions, I dug into Red Eyes, a much longer story with a laundry list of improvements that need to be made. I made some progress, but there’s a long way to go.

The work I put into those two stories just about got me caught up on my revisions quota. Most of my writing quota was knocked out by working on a little horror story I’m calling Estate Sale, which I did partly while waiting at the DMV on a Friday afternoon. Once again, having a story in progress on my phone has paid off, even if I have to type with my thumbs. (Yeah, I probably could have brought the laptop. But I didn’t want to.)

Next Week

My first goal for next week is to work on Red Eyes revisions. I’m going to try to get the story done in the next two weeks. My second goal is to do some light cleanup on one of my stories that’s still in need of critique. That way, I will have Red Eyes ready to submit to publications by the time the Critters feedback for Taco Cat comes rolling in. I can immediately submit the next piece to Critters and work on the Taco Cat revisions while it works its way through the queue. Like a short story assembly line.

That’s all for week three. See you next Monday.

Week 2 — Year of Short Stories 2026

2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

This is week two: Jan. 10 – Jan. 16.

Stats

Stories Finished: 0
Submissions Currently Out: 2
Submissions Total: 0
Rejections: 2
Acceptances: 0

Finding a Groove

I’m still getting back into the rhythm of short story writing, but it’s less daunting than it was in 2024. I’ve done this before, and now it’s just a matter of doing it better.

I’m going to have a standard block of stats at the top of these posts. I haven’t decided exactly what those will be yet. I’ll finalize it when I feel more settled into a process.

Last week, I thought about splitting out the weekly stats from the yearly stats, but now I’m second-guessing that. The numbers just don’t change very much from week to week, and I don’t think it would be very interesting. Last week I also included a “stories in progress” count, but it’s hard to decide what that means. I have quite a few half-finished stories and first drafts in need of revision. Whether a story is “in progress” mostly comes down to whether I’m spending time thinking about it or actively rearranging the words.

What really matters is stories that are done done, and stories submitted to publishers. So I’m sticking to that for now.

This is also an appropriate time to note that for some people (like myself), there’s an allure to this kind of unnecessary bookkeeping. It can make you feel productive. It can also be an excuse to procrastinate by poking around the outskirts of writing-related activities without getting the core work done.

Goals and Results

Last week, I said that I had three goals.

#1 – The Rewrite

One of my stories had come back from the publisher with a rewrite request. The story centers on two characters who are friends, and it lightly hints at a bit more than that. The problem was that I submitted to a themed issue around relationships. The rewrite request, logically enough, suggested that I put the hinted relationship clearly on the page.

I have to admit, I had a hard time getting started on that rewrite. I’m not sure if it was because I had to dive back into a story that I’ve considered “done” for a while, or some other mental block. However, when I actually sat down to do it, the rewrite was fairly straightforward. It was easy to identify a handful of places that needed to change.

The story is better now. It makes sense: the characters have stronger feelings toward each other, and that only increases the tension when they find themselves at odds. Even if the publisher ends up rejecting the rewritten story, this is a good result. Their suggestion helped me improve it in a way that I wouldn’t have gotten to on my own.

#2 – Critiques

I knew going into the new year that I was going to be doing another year of short stories. While I continued doing some writing in 2025, I had not done any critiques on Critters. So I reset my count around the start of the year, but I had to complete three critiques to get caught up to the point where I could submit my own work to the queue.

I completed my three critiques across two weekly batches—Critters runs on a Wednesday to Wednesday schedule—and then discovered that I only got 2.5 credits. Now half-credits are normal for critiques of stories under 2000 words, as a way to encourage people to look at the longer stories. But the story was well over 2000. So I completed one more just to ensure I was fully caught up, and sent a message to Andrew Burt, who runs the site.

Burt responded very quickly and fixed the issue. So now I’ve got credit to spare. (That guy should be canonized a Saint of the Writing Internet for the time, energy, and money he has dedicated to that site over the years!)

Critters is a standard part of my process when I’m writing short stories. Now that I’m caught up, I’ll be doing roughly a critique per week for the rest of the year, and I always run my stories through Critters in the rewrite process.

#3 – More Revision

My final goal was to find more time for revisions. At the end of 2025 I found myself in the unusual (for me) position of having three short story first drafts written and waiting for edits. I want to start the year by polishing up those stories. If I’m going to hit my goal of 50 submissions this year, I need more stories to submit.

So far, I’m finding the writing spreadsheet helpful for this. My writing goal is an average of 100 words of new writing per day, and 10 minutes of revision time. The spreadsheet tracks that and tells me how ahead or behind I am for the year so far. As of Week 2, I’m about an hour and a half behind on my revisions, but seeing that number does actually work as a motivator, and I’m catching up.

Thanks to that rewrite request and Critters critiques, I found myself naturally in a revising state of mind. However, I didn’t revise one of those 2025 stories. I revised a completely new story. Which brings me to…

Taco Cat

I wrote yet another story. I exacerbated my too-many-first-drafts problem. But it’s okay. I’m pretty happy about it.

I mentioned in Week 1 that I was going to keep a story in progress stashed on my phone, so I could write in little bits of down time throughout the day. The result was that I wrote an 1100-word flash fiction piece over the course of the week. It’s currently titled Taco Cat Employee Manual 7.1, and it’s a strange little story in the form of a hacked fast food employee manual from a cyberpunk dystopian future.

So even though it still feels a little weird to write fiction on my phone, it feels like a resounding success two weeks in. It’s a great alternative to social media or mindless mobile games. I’ve already started a new phone story and put a few hundred words into that one.

Revising on the tiny screen, however, does not feel so good. My revision process involves copying and pasting, making notes and referring back to those notes repeatedly. I end up changing things that can thread throughout a story. None of this works very well on the small screen. I’m going to keep trying to figure out ways to make it work, even if that ends up being something like jotting ideas and notes during the day and doing the brunt of the editing work in front of the computer at night and on the weekends.

Goals for Next Week

Submit a story to Critters
Revise a story—Red Eyes
Do just enough new writing

Critters limits the number of stories that go out to the group each week, to ensure that they all get a decent number of critiques. Usually, it takes a couple of weeks for a story to percolate up through the queue. So this week I want to do some cursory cleanup on one of my stories—probably Taco Cat—and submit it to Critters for additional feedback. It’ll likely go out in early February.

Next, I’m going to work on revisions for a story that went through Critters over a year ago: Red Eyes. Unfortunately, I think these edits are going to be significant and complicated, and it’s a long story.

Finally, I plan to do just enough new writing to keep up with the very modest quota I set for myself in my spreadsheet. The bottleneck in my process is clearly revision at this point, but hey, writing new things is fun.

Week 1 — Year of Short Stories 2026

2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

Jan. 1 – Jan. 9

Due to the new year, I had to incorporate a partial week here at the start. This “week” was nine days.

Stories in Progress – 2
Submissions This Week – 0
Submissions Currently Out – 3

Yearly Totals

Submissions: 0
Rejections: 1
Acceptances: 0

Starting the Year

It’s always hard to get back into the swing of things after a vacation. Tacking on some New Year’s resolutions doesn’t help. Just when I would prefer to slow-roll into the new year, I’ve got to do all that stuff 2025-me promised? What a drag.

Firstly, I set up a writing spreadsheet. It’s not as detailed as some I’ve tried in the past, which will hopefully make it easier to keep up to date. For now, I’m tracking my daily words and rough minutes of revision time, aiming to write a minimum of about 100 words per day on average. I know that’s not a lot, but it’s a minimum, and at this point I’m just getting in my reps.

To aid in this, I made a plan to always have a short story in progress on my phone. This gives me the opportunity to jot down a few words when I might otherwise waste time. I’d guess writing on a phone sounds awful to most authors, but I’ve found that e-books and audio-books on my phone have greatly increased my capacity for reading. Why not try the same thing with my writing? There are usually a few times during the day when I have a spare few minutes, and the phone is always in my pocket. Besides, it’s not too onerous when I’m only jotting down a hundred words at a time.

Secondly, I reset my critique ratio on Critters. For those who aren’t familiar, Critters has a system that requires submitting about three critiques a month to be allowed to submit your own stories for critique. I haven’t done any critiques for the better part of a year, so I requested a reset. This wipes out my deeply negative ratio, putting my count at only -1. I plan to submit a couple critiques this upcoming week so I can put a story written in 2025 into the queue for feedback.

Submissions and Responses

I have a few submissions still out from late 2025. One of those came back this week as the first form rejection of 2026. Nothing too exciting there.

I also got something of a soft rejection. I had submitted a story with admittedly very light romance elements to a themed contest, and they responded with the suggestion that I resubmit with the relationship angle more front-and-center. The wording was ambiguous as to whether that was just politeness or significant interest, but I’ll likely give it a shot and resend.

Goals for Next Week

My to-do list is already longer than I’d like, and I’m working on being realistic about the time I have and what I can get done. It’s a balancing act between self-honesty and pushing myself to be a little more productive.

Top of the list is that story rewrite, since that’s the most time-sensitive. Next is catching up on critiques, as that will facilitate revisions. Getting “finished” stories polished is my fastest track to having more to submit, and that’s key if I want to meet my goals for the year. Lastly, I’d like to work on ways to fit more revision time into my week. This might mean putting some new story writing time on the back-burner, so I’m not simply wracking up more and more stories that aren’t ready for submission.

Year of Short Stories —Week #2

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 – 1
Submissions this week – 0 (1 currently out)

An Unproductive Week, A Cool New Tool

Short post this week, as I ended up being busy and didn’t get much done in the short story department.

I did discover an exciting new tool, Chill Subs. It already provides a publication database and submission tracking tool for writers, similar to the Submission Grinder and Duotrope. Even better, it’s looking to unseat Submittable as the de facto tool for editors to receive and track submissions.

In recent years, Submittable has become almost ubiquitous among literary fiction magazines, pushing the transition from snail mail to electronic submissions for short fiction. But its pricing scheme is predatory. It charges not only a monthly fee, but a fee per submission processed. Since so many literary magazines live on the budgetary knife’s edge, this has helped to drive the now-common submission fees for literary writers hoping to get their fiction published.

I feel lucky to work in genre fiction. The fantasy and science fiction space has more than its fair share of technical people. We’re lucky to have developed tools like Moksha and the Clarkesworld submission system.

Chill Subs aims to bring its own submission manager to market some time in Fall 2024. Their delightful website even allows you to choose how optimistic you are about their chances, updating the language and graphics accordingly. It’s a small team operating with a surprising amount of transparency, and their love of the craft (and the authors and editors) shines through. I don’t know if I’m “confident AF,” but I really hope they succeed.

Goals for Next Week

Same as last time!

Revise “Pleasant Hills”
Research more publications and submit at least one drabble
Begin writing “Portrait of the Artist in Wartime”

Year of Short Stories —Week #1

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 – 1
Submissions this week – 1 (1 currently out)

Reviewing the Backlog

This first week, I spent some time reviewing short stories that I already have finished and edited.

“Dr. Clipboard’s Miracle Wonder-Drug” is a 1400-word modern fantasy story about a man in a drug trial who experiences an unexpected transformation. It has already been through critique and polishing, and is ready to send out.

In general, there tend to be more venues for shorter stories than longer ones. This is a nice length because most publications will accept it. It’s right on the edge of flash fiction territory (depending on your exact definition).

I recently gave a Critters critique that got me thinking about story titles and the ways they can add to the story itself. I spent some time rethinking this title, and while I didn’t end up finding one I liked better, it was still time well-spent. One of the most valuable things I get out of critiquing others’ work is new insights that I can apply to my own work.

I also have four finished drabbles that I’m fairly satisfied with. One is new, but the other three are already posted here on Words Deferred, so they could only be submitted to publications that accept reprints.

I don’t really know how easy it is to sell drabbles, since they’re so short. I’ve only seen them in a couple of publications that specialize in them, so my guess is that they are harder to place than flash fiction in the 500-1000 word range.

Submitting Stories

Duotrope is a great tool for narrowing down possible places to submit stories. I start by narrowing my search to the appropriate genre(s) and length. I also limit my search to professional pay rates. Well-paying publications are going to be more competitive, but you might as well try. If the story gets rejected, you can always submit to the semi-pros markets next.

However, that filtered list of publications is just the start of the process. The bulk of the effort is in reviewing those publications to find a good fit. After all, it’s a waste of time to submit a story to a place that doesn’t publish what you’re writing.

Duotrope has interviews with the editors of some publications, and these (usually) provide some insight into what they’re looking for. Ultimately, though, the best way to get to know a publication is to read it.

So, I read a few of their stories, if possible, and try to get a feel for what the editors like. Conveniently, a lot of publications these days are online, and it’s common for at least some stories to be available for free.

This all has the added benefits of immersing my brain in good short fiction and giving me a better understanding of what the current market is like in my chosen genres. It feels like a lot of effort now, especially if I decide that a publication isn’t a good fit for the story I’m sending out, but I hope that over time I’ll develop a good feeling for many of these markets, and I won’t have to do quite so much research.

This week, I only submitted one story, “Dr. Clipboard,” and that’s at least partly because I spent a few days deciding where to submit.

Work In Progress

I have one story in progress, a 2000-word sci-fi story called “The Incident at Pleasant Hills,” about the detonation of an architecture bomb with the power to reshape a city. It has been through critique and needs some revisions before it’ll be ready to go out the door.

The final story I’ll talk about this week is one that I’m just starting, tentatively titled “Portrait of the Artist in Wartime.” It’s a science fiction story about a performance artist who uses time travel to create his magnum opus. I’m going to try to write this in the form of an interview with the artist’s former assistant.

It’s interesting to note that the core ideas of both of these stories came from my brainstorming sessions with Story Engine cards.

Goals for Next Week

Revise “Pleasant Hills”
Research more publications and submit at least one drabble
Begin writing “Portrait of the Artist in Wartime”

NaNoWriMo 2023 — Day 29

Writing Time: 00:45
Session Word Count: 972
Total Word Count: 50110 (48333 par)

I had a light session today to hit my 50,000 words. Success!

Purely in terms of hitting my word count every day, NaNoWriMo 2023 felt pretty good. Some days were certainly easier than others, but I only missed my quota on a single day, and my strategy of writing a little extra each day meant that I never fell behind and I was able to finish a day early. Now I can spend the final hours of November doing some wrap-up and jotting down notes for the next time I work on this project—because it’s definitely not done, and I’m going to set it aside for now.

The story itself feels like a mixed bag, but that’s generally how I feel about any work in progress. This one will definitely be a rougher first draft than Razor Mountain, because I went into it with less of an outline and followed a few tangents that may or may not make it into the final product. I do feel like I was able to discover a few important elements of the story that will become important, so I feel good about that.

Blogging through every single day of NaNoWriMo was surprisingly fun. I didn’t exactly plan to do it, but once I started, it felt right to keep going. It never really felt like an extra burden, and it was nice to talk about what I was working on. Somehow, even though I’ve been reflecting on the writing process in this blog for several years, I’m still caught by surprise when it ends up being useful.

It helped that these were easy entries to write. They were much shorter than my usual posts and completely off the cuff. I was honestly surprised by how many people came back most days to read them. If you’re one of those people, leave a comment and let me know what you thought.

This was the most posts I’ve written in a month by a huge margin, but don’t expect me to keep it up. Next month I’m going back to my usual style of fewer, slightly longer posts.

NaNoWriMo 2023 — Day 28

Writing Time: 01:30
Session Word Count: 1728
Total Word Count: 49138 (46667 par)

I got an earlier start tonight, but I’m feeling burned out. I’m glad the end is approaching, because I would have a hard time keeping this pace indefinitely. However, I used to find it almost impossible to write every day, or even on a regular basis; so I’ve apparently improved.

This session was heavy on the main character sneaking around. He has now encountered some of the villain’s henchmen, and I decided to dress them in classic black uniforms with red armbands. Sure, it’s a hacky shorthand for bad guys, but that’s okay. One of the inspirations is James Bond, and that series has no shortage of ostentatious, over-the-top villains and henchmen. In fact, maybe I should lean into that even more than I have been.

I was really excited at this late point in the month to accidentally come across a story element that I really like—an aesthetic for the magic. I’m starting to think this magic is less like classic high-fantasy wizards or D&D and more eldritch. It’s an invading force that isn’t compatible with the “normal” world. Doing serious magic twists the laws of physics, and physics gets really pissed off about that.

This introduces a fun element of side-effects to big spells, which is that the world produces an opposing force in response to them. You might be able to throw a fireball, but it drops the temperature in the room by a hundred degrees. You could bend space and walk through a solid wall, but the house might split in half.

So, happy with my progress and tired out, I decided it wasn’t worth it to push through the final 1000 words tonight. I should have an easy time hitting my 50000 tomorrow.

NaNoWriMo 2023 — Day 27

Writing Time: 01:15
Session Word Count: 1716
Total Word Count: 47410 (45000 par)

Today I went back to work after a week and a half of vacation. I put off writing until after the kids were in bed, and then slogged through it. It was rough. Obvious NaNoWriMo life-hack: if you have an “ordinary” 9:00-5:00 job, take some vacation in November. It makes the writing a lot less stressful when you have more time and energy to do it.

My characters have now split apart to go do separate investigations, each on a separate island. One will fall out of the narrative for the remainder of my November writing as I follow the other. He’s exploring the island where he’ll spend a good chunk of the rest of the book.

This was one of those “connective tissue” sections of the book, where characters need to get places and certain things need to happen, but I have to admit, it wasn’t as interesting as I would have liked. Another place where revision will be required. For now though, as tired as I am, I’m just happy to get my quota.

NaNoWriMo 2023 — Day 26

Writing Time: 01:15
Session Word Count: 1724
Total Word Count: 45694 (43333 par)

In today’s session, my characters survived their watery journey and had a heart-to-heart chat. This is another case where I like the general shape of the emotional beats, but I’m going to have to go back and add more lead-up to this conversation so that it makes sense and feels meaningful.

Since I’m more than a day ahead on word count, 50,000 words feels very close at hand. I can try to go hard and finish in two days, or take it easy and finish in three. Unlike some previous years, this has been a fun and relatively low-stress NaNoWriMo, and I’ve managed to stay ahead the entire time. If that takes some of the drama out of my own personal NaNoWriMo plot arc…well, I’m okay with that.

This November has also reminded me of the aspects of NaNoWriMo that I enjoy, and I think I’m going to start participating more regularly again. I might even check out some of the other NaNoWriMo events throughout the year.

Maybe most interestingly, I’ve been reminded of the fun of being a little less rigorous about my writing prep, and I’ll be taking that into my future projects.

NaNoWriMo 2023 — Day 25

Writing Time: 01:20
Session Word Count: 1835
Total Word Count: 43970 (41667 par)

The great gift of NaNoWriMo is a simple goal with no value judgements.

I once read that in order to be a writer, you need to develop a sort of schizophrenic mindset, where you simultaneously have complete faith in your work, but also see every single flaw. This is so you don’t give up on writing altogether, but you’re still driven to edit and polish until it’s as good as possible. It can be incredibly hard to keep that balance. If you’re anything like me, on a given day you probably fall more into one camp than the other. I don’t find a happy medium so much as vacillate wildly between extremes.

NaNoWriMo says, “turn that editor off.” Neil Gaiman’s glib description of writing is, in this case, perfectly correct: “You sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done.” At the end of the month, you may not have a good story or a complete story, but you’ve at least got a brand new collection of 50,000 words in an order that nobody has ever arranged them before. It’s an ephemeral and somewhat arbitrary achievement, but hey, so is finishing a marathon or eating seventy hot dogs in a sitting, and we celebrate those.

Today’s session followed yesterday’s thoughts about causing more trouble for my characters. Sure, they’re already swimming between islands in a thick fog that prevents them from seeing the shore, but in the spirit of really ruining their day, I had them nearly run over by a ferry boat. They lost a pack and the compass that was helping them stay on course, and got split up. Now we’re having a good time.

I didn’t plan for these problems, so I’m off the edge of the map at the moment. I’ll have to figure out how to resolve them before I can continue with the plot as planned. Should be fun.