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.
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.
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.
In 2026, I’m once again focusing on short stories, so this seems like a perfect time to revive a series of six posts I did in 2024, all focused on short stories.
In this series, I cover why short stories are important to read and write, how they’re generally categorized by publishers, and how to revise and submit for publication. Finally, I wrapped it all up with a comparison of the two most popular websites for tracking your submissions: Duotrope and Submission Grinder.
My “State of the Blog” posts are something I’ve been doing since the start of Words Deferred. Back when I was posting more frequently, I’d write these every six months. In 2024, I decided to switch to a yearly cadence—and now I dropped the ball and I’m two months late.
Noteworthy numbers in the past year include the all-time view count hitting 20,000, and highest daily views hitting 213.
The 2024 Slump
Words Deferred has never been “big,” but the stats showed steady growth from 2020-2023. During that first couple years I posted quite a lot, aided by projects like Razor Mountain and journaling through NaNoWriMo, where my fiction writing time and blogging were tightly intertwined. I was also trying a lot of different ideas, still figuring out what exactly I wanted this website to be.
In 2024, I embarked on my Year of Short Stories, where I focused on writing, editing, and submitting short stories. That was a great experience, radically increasing my comfort level with all aspects of writing and submitting work, and I also got some of my work published, which is nice.
That project set me up for one weekly post documenting my progress and submissions. My other posts were less frequent, and ultimately the blog was quieter than previous years. The Year of Short Stories was a project that took most of my writing time and energy, and since I was planning to submit the stories I was writing, I couldn’t use those as content. I also suspect that my weekly updates were less likely to draw in readers from week to week in the same way that something like Razor Mountain’s ongoing story might.
Whatever factors contributed, 2024 was the first year since the start of the blog where I saw the metrics go down—a roughly 30% drop from 2023. I generally try not to pay too much attention to the numbers (outside of these retrospective posts), but I’ll admit that a drop like that is a little disheartening. It begs the question, “have I already peaked?” It’s a lot easier to ignore the relatively low view counts when they’re at least going up every year.
2025: The Year of…Nothing in Particular?
As 2025 rolled around, I found myself once again at the crossroads where I’d finished another writing/blogging project, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next. Over the years, I’ve learned that I work most effectively when I have some big project like this to focus on. I think it also makes for good bloggery when there’s a big project to talk about week after week. Documenting those writing projects helps me get through them, and hopefully provides something interesting to post. When I don’t have a long-term focus, I tend to flail around and procrastinate.
Going into this year, I was burned out on short stories. For lack of a better idea, I decided to try tackling a different project each month. What were those projects going to be? I didn’t really know.
For January, I picked an easy one: write a page per day. No problem. I’ve probably done ten NaNoWriMos, at least half of them successful, and this was a much easier version of that. I finished first drafts of two short stories, and even wrote some goofy fan-fiction for a game I was playing at the time, something I’ve never done before.
Then February hit, and I stalled out hard. I had several completed drafts sitting around, and I’d been struggling to find the motivation to revise them. I figured that would be a good goal, but I never really picked out a particular metric to hold myself to.
Then I was sick for a few days. The kids were sick for a few days. School activities started and I ended up being a mentor/coach. We had some family medical issues. Before I knew it, my plans were long-abandoned. I ended up having more than one month in 2025 where I didn’t post anything, and I wasn’t writing much outside the blog either.
It’s never been hard for me to find reasons not to write—hence the name of the site—but the first half of 2025 was chock full of them. Without a big, clear, overarching project to keep me going, I dropped off the map for a while.
Second Wind
Looking back, I didn’t really get my feet under me, writing-wise, until summer. The kids finished school for the year, activities were over, and the medical issues were mostly resolved.
I spiffed up the blog layout ever so slightly, added Recommendations and Support Me pages, and took stock of my recurring post formats. Now that I’m into year five of Words Deferred, I’ve found a few formats that I enjoy writing and can keep coming back to:
The articles I most enjoy writing are still those that dig into the art and craft of writing, from brainstorming to revision to publishing trends. And while I enjoy having a big project to work on throughout the year, I found that I can lean on these recurring series to have something interesting to write about at least once a week, and keep my pen to the paper.
Oddly enough, my number of posts published in 2025 will probably work out similarly to 2024, maybe even a little less, thanks to how little I was writing through June. However, my views have been rising steadily ever since then, and I’m already getting way more eyeballs than 2024. Will I hit beat the 2023 peak? I don’t think so, but it’s looking more possible.
SEO for Dummies
Are there some sort of lessons to be learned about search engines and keywords and maximizing internet points in all this? Probably. The only reason I noticed my views were going up again was because WordPress sent me a little notice to say “Hey, we were surprised to see some people are reading what you wrote.” So I looked at the “Insights” tab on my dashboard, and that only confused me more.
The only app I automatically share posts on is Bluesky. In previous years, I used to share on TwiXter, back before the bots and assholes took over and they shut down the socialist blog-posting APIs in favor of their glorious, free-market, All-American blue checkmarks. So of course it makes sense that WordPress tells me I got about 6,000 shares each on Facebook, X, Reddit and Tumblr, where I never post anything.
I don’t know how this is possible. If you’re sharing my posts on Facebook and Tumblr, please reach out and clear this up for me.
And what exactly is a “share?” Clearly not the same as a “view.” Maybe a “glance?” But then, when people read my articles through the email subscription, that doesn’t count as a view either. Google also sends me monthly search statistics that appear to wildly overestimate just how much traffic they’re sending my way. They use the even more vague term “impressions.” I can only assume an “impression” according to Google means that my website was on page 10 of the search results when someone skimmed the AI overview.
I checked the WP and Google search insights. I seem to be coming up in roughly the same searches as I have been for years. I found out that I’m cited in the Wikipedia article for “Mystery Box.” That’s kind of fun, and apparently counted for 3 whole clicks. Who is clicking that? ChatGPT helpfully sent seven people my way. Why? Maybe they asked it why people hate LOST so much.
In conclusion, the internet is a unfathomable beast. It giveth and it taketh away. None can know its true heart, and those who claim to do so are false prophets.
What’s Next?
I’m itching for another big project. But when I say “big,” that might just mean The Year of Even More Short Stories. Whatever it is, it’ll be intermingled with the usual things, the Read Reports and Story Idea Vaults and random game and TTRPG musings, and maybe even another poem.
Let’s all just try to make it to the end of the year, and then we’ll see where 2026 takes us.
The champagne popped, the ball dropped, and New Year’s is behind us. Now that we’re firmly in the frigid grip of a new January, it’s time for some updates.
I normally don’t go in for New Year’s resolutions, but with my year of short stories now complete, it feels like a good time to reevaluate my writing, the blog, and my goals.
New Monthly Goals
With my serial novel Razor Mountain, I spent two years focused on a single project and eventually ended up burned out. My 2024 year of short stories allowed me to pursue a looser goal where I could work on a variety of different short stories.
In 2025, I’d like to work on something I’ve long struggled with: output. Between my day job and my family, I’m a fairly busy person. I’m also a natural procrastinator, and I know that I often need deadlines (even if they’re artificial ones) to get things done. Previous years’ projects have helped me focus and finish things, but I’m always dogged by the desire to get more done.
My initial idea for 2025 was a simple daily word count, fairly low so I could get used to it. At the beginning of January I decided I would write about a page per day—250 words. My January has already been a little crazy, and I’ve only written on about 50% of the days so far, but I have managed to “catch up” the days I missed, and I’ve stuck to my overall page-per-day requirement. I expect to have at least two short story drafts finished by the end of the month, which is very good for me.
However, I’m already seeing a problem with this word count quota. It’s getting me to write those first drafts, but I’m going to be kicking the can on revisions. I already had Red Eyes revisions carried over from last year, and now I’ll have at least two other drafts that need to be critiqued and polished.
So, instead of carrying my page-per-day goal through the whole year, I’ll only commit to it in January. When February rolls around, I’ll pick a new daily goal, like fifteen minutes of revisions per day. This flexibility will hopefully keep me productive, while allowing me to adjust my goals throughout the year.
The Return of Razor Mountain
That flexibility also gives me the opportunity to do something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I “finished” Razor Mountain in the sense that it’s a complete story, but it could be better. I’ve had some time away from it, and I’m excited to bring it back in 2025. I haven’t decided how much time I’ll spend, but I do plan to start working on revisions again.
The whole point of Razor Mountain was to document the process of writing a novel, so I will also continue that tradition by posting all the details of my process, my struggles, and my successes.
More Short Stories
I really enjoyed writing and submitting short stories in 2024, so I plan to dedicate a large amount of my time this year to writing even more of them. I think writing short stories has helped me improve my writing significantly. I love being able to get feedback on something small and self-contained, and I’ve learned almost as much from critiquing other people’s stories.
More Bloggy Stuff?
I don’t yet know how much of my short story work will show up on the blog. I know I’m having a good time, but I suspect my weekly recaps aren’t the most riveting content. In 2025, I’ll probably be more judicious and only post about short stories when I have some bigger topic to talk about.
I will continue some of my long-running series like monthly Read Reports and the Story Idea Vault. I have a backlog of narrative video games to play for my “Games for People Who Prefer to Read” series. I might even perform some necromancy and revive a few of my older posts with new commentary and expanded ideas.
I do sometimes miss the days of years past when I would consistently post here 2-3 times per week. I’d love to say that I’ll be more active like that again, but I think I’d be lying. I just don’t have the bandwidth to do that while pursuing my other writing projects. Still, I love the blog, and I greatly appreciate the folks who continue to stop by. I still expect to post at least once per week.
What About You?
I’m curious if you have any New Year’s writing resolutions. What’s working, what’s not, and what do you plan to change? Let me know in the comments.
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.
The Final Tally
Stories – 7
Submissions this year – 35 (5 still out)
Acceptances – 1
Rejections – 29 (11 higher tier)
Thus ends my Year of Short Stories.
Looking at these numbers, I do wish I had gotten more stories out the door, and I would have loved to get more acceptances. However, I think this is an excellent starting point. If nothing else, I have had a ton of fun writing and submitting stories, and I feel very comfortable with the process now.
The only thing I can do to increase that acceptance count is to write more stories to the best of my ability and continue sending them out.
Refining the Process
Prior to this year, I wrote short stories haphazardly, when an idea struck me and kept my interest. I submitted pieces occasionally, but I never pursued it with any seriousness.
This year, I took it seriously. I polished up a couple of finished stories and wrote several more. I sent stories through Critters critique, while submitting more than 50 of my own critiques of others’ work. I revised those stories far more than anything I have written before.
I know that many authors will grind their teeth while thinking about submitting their work to publishers, but I will argue that this is important practice. Internalizing the standard formatting, writing your own biographical blurb, and learning to write a cover letter—however brief—is valuable. Adjusting all of it to a publisher’s expectations is also important experience.
Today’s technology makes it possible to write alone, revise alone, and publish instantly. I don’t think that’s the way to produce great work, and the long tail of Amazon e-books is evidence of it. The old stereotype of the reclusive author is the exception, not the rule. Creativity is a feedback loop, and that means authors who want to take their craft seriously need to develop professional skills (like selling themselves and their work), and seek honest and tough feedback to actively improve.
Getting a story published by a small website; or a big podcast; or a top-tier, pro-payment magazine tells you something about what you’ve written. “This isn’t quite what we’re looking for” rejections and “send us more of your stuff” rejections are little puzzle pieces that slowly assemble themselves into way markers for future stories.
The indie publishing pundits loves to rag on all the gatekeepers of traditional publishing, and I don’t think anyone should feel beholden to the gatekeepers. But I do think that your writing will become a lot stronger if you push yourself to write stories that can compete with hundreds of other submissions in a slush pile, and catch the eye of jaded, chain-smoking editors who have read more stories in the past year than most of us read in our lifetimes.
That editor doesn’t get to unilaterally decide what’s a good story and what isn’t. But if you can’t find anyone immersed in stories who really likes the thing you’ve written, then it might be time to revise it, or set it aside and write the next thing.
Publishing stories the traditional also way forces you to find your audience. You have to learn what kind of readers and editors like the stuff you’re writing, and that’s incredibly valuable information if you want to get your stories in front of readers who will love them.
The Joy of Short Stories
I love novels, and I’m sure they account for the vast majority of the words I’ve read in my lifetime. Unfortunately, writing a novel is like slaying a giant—it’s not the best thing to try when you’re still learning how to swing a sword.
This past year of experience has confirmed for me that writing short stories is a fantastic way to improve my writing quickly. Writing short stories allows me to jump between genres, to try out new characters and new settings. I can spend a few thousand words with an idea and then let it go. The price of failure is low, and the joy of experimentation is sky-high.
Writing short stories and actively submitting them means I’m exercising all of my authorial muscles. I’m jumping between first drafts, revisions, critiques, and submissions. I’m constantly iterating and incorporating feedback into individual works, but also into my process as a whole.
Rejection and Acceptance
The final takeaway that I have from the past year of writing short stories is more of a Zen attitude toward my own work.
Writing is often incredibly personal. We joke about our stories being like our children. But that kind of protective love makes it harder to improve. It’s hard to take negative feedback on a story if you think of it as your baby. It’s hard to take rejection.
Luckily, the easiest way to overcome those feelings is through brute force. Write lots of stories. Get as much criticism as you can, and then improve them. Send them out, and get rejected, repeatedly. By the time you’ve built up your own little one-person story factory, those pointed critiques start to be fun, because they provide opportunities to make the story better. The rejections roll off your back, and you submit again and move on.
I recently listened to David Sedaris on a podcast, and he said one of the keys to his success was never confusing the writing with the publishing. Ironically, I think the best way to internalize that sentiment is to be repeatedly rejected by publishers.
If you really want to, you can try to follow the market trends. You can improve your odds of publication by submitting to venues that fit your work, and submitting relentlessly. Trying to get paid is hard. Every submission is a job interview with hundreds or thousands of applicants.
And yet, if you already love the writing, getting paid is just a bonus.
Goals for 2025
My Year of Short Stories may be done, but my short story writing will continue. If anything, I’d like to finish more stories this year than I did in 2024. After all, the story factory is built, and I have no shortage of ideas.
Of course, I’d like to get a few more stories published in the upcoming year as well, but I have less control over that. So I’ll just keep submitting.
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 – 2
Submissions This Week – 2
Submissions Currently Out – 5
Acceptances This Year – 1
Rejections This Year – 29 (11 higher tier)
Submissions
I missed last week, so this is a double update. I’m also pretty sure that I started this series a few weeks into the year, and yet I’m approaching week fifty-two…which makes me suspect my count got messed up somewhere. In any case, we’re approaching the end of the year!
One of my drabbles came back two weeks ago, and I had another that had been sitting idle, so I spent some time digging through Duotrope for good places to submit them. I still struggle to find good potential homes for these, as they’re technically “reprints” that have been on the blog previously. I’m currently looking at non-paying markets to expand my options.
Payment in cents per word are generally paltry for 100-word stories anyway, so pursuing the paid options is really just for the ego boost of getting into a bigger, more difficult-to-crack publication.
The Bluefinch and the Chipmunk also came back to me in the past week with a form rejection, which is always disappointing after a longish wait. So it goes. I sent it back out alongside one of the drabbles.
Revisions
I haven’t been doing much on the Red Eyes revisions, and whenever I’m not getting things done, I have that feeling that I ought to work harder. However, I did have several new ideas for the story in the past week, and this is something that happens fairly often when I’m not actively working much on a story, but I have it on my mind. It makes me wonder if the extra time is necessary, or if I’d get to a similar place by spending more time at the keyboard (or at least staring at the screen).
This sort of thing also makes me wonder whether it’s better to let stories sit like this, and work on other things in the meantime, or whether it’s better to stick to one thing to completion. Switching between stories means thinking less about that story in waiting, which means those new ideas and changes in perspective may not come.
I tend to vacillate back and forth on this, sometimes focusing more on a single thing, and sometimes switching between several. Maybe that’s the way to do it.
Goals for Next Week
None. I’m going to enjoy the holidays with my family. If I write, I write. If I don’t, that’s fine too.
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 – 2
Submissions This Week – 0
Submissions Currently Out – 4
Acceptances This Year – 1
Rejections This Year – 29 (11 higher tier)
A Quick Update
I don’t have a lot to report this week. A single rejection came back for No More Kings, which was something of a long-shot to begin with, being a drabble and a reprint. I’ve got a couple of these drabbles just hanging around taking up space, and I should probably spend some time finding places to submit them again in the next week or two.
I’m still working on Red Eyes revisions, although I admittedly didn’t get a lot done this week. Still, any progress is good progress, and a long winter vacation is on the horizon.
Approaching the End of the Year
I’m beginning to feel the end of 2024 closing in. For my first year really dedicated to short stories, I’m fairly pleased with the results. I’m sure I’ll do a final retrospective, but I’ve already managed to make 30 submissions. Not too shabby.
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
Submissions Currently Out – 5
Acceptances This Year – 1
Rejections This Year – 28 (11 higher tier)
Submissions
No rejections or new submissions this past week (or rather, this past 4-5 days, since I was late in posting last week’s update). My lone submission the previous week was Dr. Clipboard’s Miracle Wonder Drug, which had just come back to me with a contest honorable mention.
Since I do a lot of my writing work on the weekends, I often resend stories and write blog posts in the same day. Before I do that, I look at the Duotrope Theme and Deadline Calendar, and the Publishing News. The calendar gives me a convenient list of themed issues and anthologies with deadlines in the next month, and the news page gives me a list of new publishers and those that have recently opened to submissions. These two lists are incredibly valuable when you’re sending out short stories.
Most weeks, I don’t find anything particularly exciting in the theme calendar, but it’s still worth checking because I occasionally find an upcoming issue or anthology whose theme fits one of the stories that I’m resubmitting that week.
Last week was one of those weeks, and I found an anthology that sounds perfect for Dr. Clipboard. Sure enough, I got a response within a few hours, holding the story for further consideration.
Further Consideration
This is the first time I’ve gotten this style of response for a story submission. As is typical for anything related to short story submissions, Aeryn Rudel has an article. He puts holds, further consideration, and short listing all in the same bucket—a story that someone at the publisher read and liked enough to consider publishing it.
Since most markets are inundated with submissions and will only end up publishing a fraction of the stories they like, it makes sense for them to keep their options open until the end of their submission window.
Not every publisher notifies the writer that their story is being held. They’ll just hold it and either send an acceptance or rejection when they’ve made a final decision. As a writer, you can appreciate a publisher that communicates the hold, or you can be frustrated to have yet another reason to get your hopes up, and possibly disappointed if that hold results in a rejection.
Personally, I’d rather have the additional information. Even if the story ends up being rejected, a positive, personalized response still tells me that the story is probably solid, and I just need to find the right publication for it.
Stories in Progress
I still have some projects lingering from my truncated November “PerShoStoWriMo.” I haven’t gotten a lot of words down for those stories, but they’re still taking up brain space, and I may spend more time with them in the coming weeks.
I’m still in the process of condensing the critiques I received for Red Eyes into actionable changes. In some cases this is a straightforward rewording or cut, but in other cases it requires a fair amount of thought to figure out how I want to address a concern (or if I want to address it at all). I may write a post in the future about this process.
The most interesting piece of feedback I received was that the length of the story is good. It clocks in around 6,500 words, which is long for me, and I explicitly asked readers if they saw any good places to trim that word count. A few readers ignored the question, but most of them said there were no good places to make a significant cut. A couple even said that they’d like to see a longer version of the story. One suggested a novelette, the other suggested a full-blown novel.
While I don’t plan to follow that advice, the unified response does alleviate my fears that the story is too long. I suppose I’m just stuck with a longer story, and I’ll have to deal with that when I’m finished editing and have to look for markets to submit to.
Words Deferred 