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. 13-19.
Stats
Stories Finished: 2
Submissions Currently Out: 6
Submissions Total: 15
Rejections: 13
Acceptances: 0
Goals and Results
Last week’s goals:
Write ~2k words of Arbor Grove.
Revise F-TIB.
This was a fairly quiet week. I made good progress on Arbor Grove, but didn’t quite hit 2k. I revised F-TIB, but it still has a ways to go. I got a single form rejection for Taco Cat.
I also did some extra critiques this week. I’ve found that I tend to slack off on critiques when I don’t have a story in the queue (which luckily is not that often this year), so I’ve been trying to not only stay caught up, but get a little ahead. That way I’ll have some wiggle room when things come up and I have to miss a week.
Next Week
Even though I made progress this week, my goals for next week are essentially unchanged. However, I’m moving F-TIB into the top spot because it would be nice to get it ready for submission before Beneath the House in Caen goes out for critique at the end of April.
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.
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 twelve: Mar. 23-29.
Stats
Stories Finished: 2
Submissions Currently Out: 7
Submissions Total: 15
Rejections: 12
Acceptances: 0
Goals and Results
Another quick post this week, since I don’t have much to report.
My goals for last week were:
Get ahead on critiques.
Prep a story to queue up for Critters.
I did manage to get caught up on critiques, which was not quite as much work as I had anticipated. I always forget that the 75% ratio allows for roughly one week skipped per month.
I did not get a story ready for submission, but I’ve been knocking out one goal per week, so I guess I’ll make it my one goal and get it done next week.
Next Week
Goal:
Prep a story to submit to Critters.
I also have non-writing plans next week, so I’ll be taking a week off from my surprisingly consistent 2026 posting schedule. See you all in approximately two weeks!
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 eleven: Mar. 16-22.
Stats
Stories Finished: 2
Submissions Currently Out: 8
Submissions Total: 15
Rejections: 11
Acceptances: 0
Goals and Results
My goals for last week were:
Prep a story to queue up for Critters.
Start the post-Critters revisions for F-TIB.
Get ahead on critiques.
This was a quiet week on the writing front. IN the end, I received over twenty critiques and responses to my story, F-TIB. I suspect this is partly because it’s right in the sweet spot for Critters—long enough to count for full credit, but not much longer.
The feedback was mostly very good, but there is so much that it took a good chunk of my weekend to begin to catalog it and think about what I want to do in revisions.
I did not get ahead on critiques, and while I know which story I will submit next, it needs more work before I throw it to the wolves.
Submissions and Responses
I received two rejections this week: one for The Incident at Pleasant Hills and one for Taco Cat. I spent some time searching new publications to send them to, and found two for each story. So out they go again.
Next Week
Since I didn’t get through my goals last week, they will carry over to next week. I am going to let F-TIB sit for at least a week to give the feedback a chance to
I recently purchased a solarpunk anthology, and it led me into a minor fixation on this lesser-known sub-genre of science fiction. Last week I wrote an introduction to solarpunk, but I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’ve been exploring the web to find more, and compiling a little syllabus for my own self-directed course.
Since I’m taking the time to write it all down, I figured I might as well put it out as a resource for anyone else who is interested in digging a little deeper. (As usual, I’m providing Bookshop.org affiliate links where possible – these support me and local bookstores.)
It’s interesting to note that most of the solarpunk fiction I’ve found so far is anthologized short stories—fitting considering my renewed focus on short fiction this year.
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 ten: Mar. 9-15.
Stats
Stories Finished: 2
Submissions Currently Out: 6
Submissions Total: 11
Rejections: 9
Acceptances: 0
Goals and Results
My goals for last week were:
Get my Critters ratio in the green by Wednesday.
Catch up on my word count goal, and possibly finish the first draft of Out of Towner.
Submit Taco Cat.
I had a story in the Critters queue, and I needed to get my ratio up to ensure it went out. I got that done early in the week, the story went out, and the feedback has been steadily coming in.
I haven’t finished Out of Towner, but I’ve made some good progress. I think the story probably needs another 500 words or so to wrap it up. I’ll see if I can get to that this week. I also wrote a few hundred words of a solarpunk idea that may or may not go anywhere. Either way, I’m happy to now be well ahead of my word count and editing goals for March.
Submissions and Responses
I had a form rejection for my drabble Tom, Dick, and Larry, which I sent out to a drabble-specific themed issue. I have a couple of these 100 word stories knocking around, but I mostly only send them out these days when I see a flash fiction theme that fits them.
I also received a personalized rejection for The Incident at Pleasant Hills. I’ve been submitting this story for a while now, and while it has gotten positive feedback a couple of times, it just hasn’t gotten across the finish line. I think it’s a good story that will eventually find a home, so I sent it out again.
I also sent out a pair of submissions for Taco Cat Employee Manual. That keeps it active and covers goal #3 for the week.
Next Week
The Critters’ critiques of my story, F-TIB, will finish rolling in by Wednesday. At that point, I’ll have a bunch of notes to work through. I will also want to get another story in the queue as quickly as possible. I think the next one on the docket is called Hunter’s Apprentice. I’ll need to read through it a few times and try to get it as polished as possible (for a draft that only a couple people have read).
I’d also like to get one or two critiques ahead. I didn’t enjoy having a tight deadline to get those done so my story would go out. Getting ahead makes that less of a concern.
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 nine: Mar. 2 – 8.
Stats
Stories Finished: 2
Submissions Currently Out: 5
Submissions Total: 8
Rejections: 7
Acceptances: 0
Goals and Results
My goals for last week were:
Submit critiques.
Start a new story.
It was a busy week outside of writing, but I’ll count both of these for partial credit. I did work on my Critters critiques, but I still need to get one more done before Wednesday. F-TIB is scheduled to go out for review this week, and I’d rather not have it delayed for a week while I get caught up.
Despite my noises last week about giving up on Out of Towner, I actually wrote six or seven more pages. I was able to employ that classing writing technique of just skipping over the part I wasn’t sure about. That means I’ll have to come back to that part later, but at least I can hope that I’ll have a better perspective on it when the rest of the story is done. That goal is a partial miss only because I’m still a few hundred words behind my self-imposed average daily word count.
Rejections
I marked down three rejections this week. One was from Clarkesworld, a magazine I love not only for the fiction they publish, but for their absolutely no-nonsense attitude toward submissions and crazy fast turnaround times for reading submissions. I send a lot of new stories their way, because I know I’ll get a response in a couple days; basically unmatched speed among high-tier pro markets.
Another of these was a non-response from a magazine whose Duotrope stats show it averages non-responses on 5-10% of its submissions. These are a thing that everyone who submits a lot will run into eventually, but it’s still annoying. I do my best to act professionally as a writer, and I expect the same from publishers I’m submitting to. On the other hand, it’s a real AI-slopfest-shitshow in publishing right now, and you never know what an overstrained, underpaid editorial staff might be going through.
Next Week
My goals for next week:
Get my Critters ratio in the green by Wednesday.
Catch up on my word count goal, and possibly finish the first draft of Out of Towner.
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 eight: Feb. 23 – Mar. 1.
Stats
Stories Finished: 2
Submissions Currently Out: 8
Submissions Total: 8
Rejections: 4
Acceptances: 0
Goals and Results
My goals for last week were:
Submit stories
Submit critiques
Continue writing Out of Towner, or start a new story.
This week was a submissions week. I made two submissions for stories that have already been making the rounds, and another four for my new stories, Taco Cat and Red Eye. Those submissions get me back on track for meeting my goal of 50 submissions this year.
My inspiration for the story Out of Towner has fizzled, so I’ve decided to set it aside. I haven’t started a new story yet, but I’ve been thinking about punk stories, on two different fronts. The first is an idea for a punk magical community in late 1970s New York, and the second is a budding interest in the genre of Solarpunk. I’ll have more to say about that in a future post.
I continued to neglect my Critters critiques, something I’ll need to rectify in the upcoming week.
Next Week
Unfortunately, my wife injured her arm this past week, so I’ll be picking up the chores that require arm mobility and strength, and giving her some extra support for the next few weeks. That will cut into writing time, and I’ll have to make some adjustments to my plans and goals.
For now, my goals next week are carried over from this week:
Rod String Nail Cloth was a random library pick containing six stories and a poem. It’s slim enough that I read it in the span of a Saturday afternoon. When I grabbed it I didn’t know anything apart from the title, but I’ve been meaning to investigate Afrofuturism for a while, and a short anthology seemed like a good place to start.
As it turns out, T. Aaron Cisco was born and raised in Chicago, but now lives in Minneapolis, so there’s a hometown connection for me. It also turns out that this is self-pub, and has a whiff of punk-rock “zine” to it. Unfortunately, it also has something like 20-30 typos and formatting errors across its 150-odd pages.
These stories revolve around themes of time travel, racial injustice, environmental catastrophe, and transhumanism. There are some interesting ideas in here, and some sentences and paragraphs that really pop. However, I found some of the writing straying too far into the literary style that I most struggle with: pages spent on a character’s languid internal thoughts without giving me enough plot or setting to latch onto.
The first story, “Now, Justice,” is the biggest offender in this regard. It follows a Black inventor who creates a machine that manipulates people’s perceptions. He uses it to take vengeance on a policeman who shot an unarmed Black kid and dodged the consequences. However, we don’t get to the first mention of the machine until page 17.
The subsequent stories were tighter, in my opinion. “Thursday Addison” is a Shonen anime of a story where a cybernetically enhanced enforcer is sent into a violent, futuristic battle that she barely survives.
“The Hesitant Envoy” is a tongue-in-cheek tale where an advanced civilization pulls aside one human to ask him to justify the continued existence of the species. He has a hard time coming up with a good argument, and isn’t particularly inclined to try.
“Lydian Mode” is about a down-on-his-luck Black musician who travels back in time to 1960s Chicago. Despite the dangers of life at the height of the civil rights movement, he discovers that there are also opportunities.
“Captain Michaela” is a poem about the titular character (maybe?) saving the universe. I’m just the wrong audience for this. While I have my favorite poets and poems, I’ve never felt drawn to sci-fi poetry.
“Rod String Nail Cloth” is the stand-out story of the book for me, an epistolary story about a person sent far back in time to fix a broken world.
In “They Burn So Easily,” an apocalyptic virus turns people into still-thinking vampire/zombie creatures called Chalkies, more strongly affecting those with paler, less pigmented skin. It’s a story about choosing forgiveness and humanity even when it may be undeserved. The conflict in this one felt a bit rushed, and I would have been interested in a longer exploration of the setting, the premise, and the relationships between the characters.
Rod String Nail Cloth is, in parts: intriguing, goofy, and a little rough around the edges. It’s not going on my favorites list, but I’m happy to have read it, and I’ll keep an eye out for Cisco’s work in the future.
It also whet my appetite for more Afrofuturism, especially in short fiction. If you have any good recommendations, leave them in the comments.
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 seven: Feb. 15 – Feb. 22.
Stats
Stories Finished: 2
Submissions Currently Out: 2
Submissions Total: 2
Rejections:4
Acceptances: 0
Goals and Results
The goals I set for last week were:
Finish Red Eyes.
Finish Taco Cat.
Continue writing Out of Towner.
Get a new story in the Critters queue.
This week felt good. I am finished with Red Eyes, and I think I can safely say that this is the most work I’ve had to put into a story to make it work. It’s a relief to be done with it.
Taco Cat Employee Manual v7.1 (a much shorter story) made it through the Critters queue this week, and I received 11 responses—a pretty decent turn-out. It was mostly well-received, and only needed some minor tweaks. Quite a contrast between these two stories. I trimmed it down to an even 1,000 words so I can submit it to most flash fiction listings.
I already had another story, F-TIB, ready for the critters queue, so I sent that off and should get feedback in mid-March.
Finally, I sat and stared at Out of Towner, a story comprised (so far) of a single introductory scene, and felt completely indifferent to it. So that was the one goal I didn’t meet. This week, I’ll have to decide if I can find a spark of excitement in it, or if I should set it aside and pick something else to work on.
Submissions and Rejections
I received a response to the light rewrite that was requested for Incident at Pleasant Hills. Unfortunately, it was a rejection. This was a bummer, but they had very kind words for the story so I can’t really complain.
I submitted one story, Tom, Dick, and Larry, to a themed drabble contest. It has been challenging to find publications interested in drabbles, and they frequently don’t offer payment. (It’s pretty funny, since pro rates on 100 words come out to only $8.) This contest pays and the theme fits the story, so it’s a nice find.
I haven’t yet looked through the listings with Red Eyes or Taco Cat in mind, but I plan to send them out in the upcoming week.
Next Week
My goals for next week are:
Submit stories – at least three
Submit some critiques
Continue writing Out of Towner, or start a new story.
Words Deferred 