Results for Month 1 of the Publishing Gauntlet:

• Words Finished: 8300/12000
• Stories Written: 4 (1 Short Story, 2 Flashes, 1 Micro)
• Submissions: 38/25
• Acceptances: 1
• Pages Read: 2265/2600
• Crits Done: 15

Writing

I (mostly) hit my hour goals for this month (4 hours a day of writing), but by two big issues of (a) jumping about from story to story and (b) over-editing parts of the story that won’t make it into the final draft anyway meant that progress was slower than expected, and I didn’t hit the 12,000 word goal for this month.

With that said, I did manage to finish most of a ~2k short story, and polish 3 opening scenes from other stories (for another ~2.5k words). So hopefully we’ll see those reflected in the numbers for next month.

In terms of the actual stories written, I tried something experimental this month for the longer short story (~6k words), and I’m not that happy with the result. For next month I think I’ll try to be less experimental and focus on just writing stories that work.

Other random little things, good and bad:

• My two best stories coming out of Clarion so far haven’t had any traction. I’ve got some form rejections and one higher-tier rejection, but we’re plodding along and trying to send them to more markets.
• Got a hold from a pro market for one flash, but ultimately rejected (too emotionally vague in plot and character—> something I know I have to work on)
• Wrote an experimental flash piece (more political than I’m used to, and in “collective we,” which was a first for me), but my crit group liked it, and I’m hoping it’ll get some traction as I start getting responses from magazines.

Submissions & Acceptances

Submitting was much easier than I thought it would be: there are actually a ton of markets you can submit to, especially if you write flash. Some markets take 2-3 flashes at a time, which means you can inflate your submission numbers that way…

I also sold one of my Clarion submission stories to a magazine. More on that eventually. It was kind of a “big” sale for me, in the sense that I’ve only sold flash stories up until now, but I wasn’t as excited as I imagined myself being. I think it’s because I knew that was coming and because it wasn’t one of the big pro markets, which is really the standard I’m holding myself to.

Random fact: Submitted nearly as much in one month as I did for all of last year. So that’s something to be proud of, I guess.

Reading & Crits

A couple of minor family emergencies—and general bad time management on my part—meant I didn’t read quite as much as I would have liked. Still feeling around for how to best manage my mornings and evenings to get more reading time in.

For crits, I think 3-4 a week is a pretty good number. I’m regularly attending 3 groups now, 2 in person and 1 online (via Codex), and I’m thinking of joining another (also related to Codex), but we’ll see.

Ideally next month we hit 2600 words and then I can start ramping up toward 3k, 4k, and then 5k words a month, which is where I ultimately want to be.