A Week of Writing: 6/7/21 to 6/13/21
Another week walks into the sunset. Here’s how I did.
Words to Write By
This week’s quote comes from Louise Brown.
I could write an entertaining novel about rejection slips, but I fear it would be overly long.
–Louise Brown
Ain’t that the truth? I am currently sitting on 463 rejections. Some ballpark math tells me the word count of my average rejection is about 100 words. So I might not have the novel that Louise Brown has (yet), but I’ve got a longish novella of rejections. All joking aside, I think most writers who make some kind of career out of this probably have a novel’s worth of we’re gonna pass’s and not for us’s. It comes with the territory, and if you keep all your rejections like I do, you can look back at the novel of no’s and see where you’ve been, how you’ve grown, and maybe even take a little pride in how you’ve endured.
Short Story Submissions
A solid week of submissions.
- Submissions Sent: 2
- Rejections: 2
- Acceptances: 0
- Publications: 0
- Shortlist: 1
- Pending: 6
- 2021 Total Subs: 49
Two more submissions last week keeps me on a good pace for the month and my yearly goal of 100 subs. I’d like to end the month with 54 total submissions (for an average of 9 per month), and I’m in good shape to do that. The two rejections were both of the form variety, one being higher-tier and a bit of a heartbreaker, but that’s the way it goes. I have a lot of faith in that story, so out it went again. I had a newish flash fiction piece shortlisted, but it’ll be a while before I find out if it’s accepted or not.
Media Tie-In
Pretty much finished my commission work for Privateer Press in their Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika setting. Last week, I accomplished my goal of writing the five 1,000-word vignettes I owed. Four have been approved, and I expect to hear about the last one soon. It was nice to dip my toe back in that pool and work with some old friends from my Privateer Press days. I really like the setting, and hopefully I’ll get to write in it a bit more in the future. Completing this job let me hit a nice milestone. It put me over the 300 mark for total fiction credits. Not too bad.
The Novella
My focus last week was on completing my commission work, so I didn’t get much done on Effectively Wild. It still sits at around 6,000 words. I did, however, do some research on where I might submit it, and found some interesting possibilities. I might talk more about that in an upcoming blog post. This week, I’d like to hit an even 10,000 words on the novella.
Night Walk
My flash fiction anthology Night Walk & Other Dark Paths features 40 of my best stories. You can pick up a copy of your very own in print or eBook by clicking the cover below.
For an inside peek into the anthology and its stories, check out the Night Walk Wednesday feature right here on the blog. I’ll give you all the juicy rejectomancy stats on individual stories from the collection.
- NWW: The Big Picture
- NWW: Things That Grow
- NWW: Do Me a Favor
- NWW: When the Lights Go On
- NWW: Where They Belong
- NWW: The Night, Forever, and Us
- NWW: Time Waits for One Man
- NWW: Small Evil
- NWW: Far Shores and Ancient Graves
- NWW: The Rarest Cut
Goals
Work on the novella, and, as always, send out more submissions.
That was my week. How was yours?
Effectively Wild – A Baseball Horror Story
Night Walk & Other Dark Paths
Acts of War: Flashpoint
Acts of War: Aftershock
Acts of War: Stormbreak
Aeryn Rudel's Rejectomancy 