Submission Statement: January 2021

The first month of the new year is in the books. Here are all my submissions, rejections, and other writerly doings for January 2021

January 2021 Report Card

• Submissions Sent: 11
• Rejections: 7
• Acceptances: 0
• Publications: 1
• Further Consideration: 0

January was a good month for submissions, and eleven gets me off to a great start toward my goal of one-hundred for the year. The bad news is I got skunked, acceptance-wise, for the first time in twelve months. Yep, my acceptance streak is over. I think a combination of some slower responses and a dearth of new material contributed to me taking the L last month. Of course, the usual reasons also apply. Things like editorial taste and bad timing are ever-present. Hopefully, February will be better, though I still need to write more new material if I really want to get back on track.

Rejections

Seven rejections this month.

• Standard Form Rejections: 4
• Upper-Tier Form Rejections: 1
• Personal Rejections: 2

I actually thought I received fewer rejections in January, but, uh, nope. Seven isn’t a ton, but it’s more than I’d like without an acceptance to dull the pain. 🙂 Anyway, most of these rejections were standard form NOs, though I did get a couple of personal rejections. One of them was quite informative, as the editor let me know the rejection was largely a matter of taste (the story was a little too pessimistic for them). That’s incredibly useful information, as it lets me dial in future submissions to the same market. In fact, I’ve already sent them another story that’s more positive and uplifting in tone. We’ll see if it fares better.

Publications

I did have one publication in January. My story “The Night, Forever, and Us” was published at Love Letters to Poe. They’re a publisher of gothic horror, and though it’s not a subgenre I write in much, I did manage one a few years ago that fit the bill. You can read that story by clicking the link below.

Read “The Night, Forever, and Us”

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And that was my January. How was your month?