Weeks of Writing: 11/29/21 to 12/12/21

Another couple of weeks in the books. Here’s how it went down.

Words to Write By

This week it’s another quote from Ray Bradbury. 

“You fail only if you stop writing.”

— Ray Bradbury

When you’ve had a tough week, month, or year in the ol’ writing trenches, I think it’s natural to stop, look around, and say to yourself, “Should I keep doing this?” I certainly have. When I feel like that, I try to remember this quote (and a few like it). You see, I’ve found that the answer to most of my writing woes is, well, more writing. The urge to give up after a disappointing rejection or a bad review or some tough but honest feedback is sometimes unavoidable, but if I drown that feeling in a sea of new words, more often than not, it fades away, and I can get back on track. I think the hundreds of thousands of words I’ve written in 2021 is a testament to this particular method. 🙂

Short Story Submissions

Another slow couple of weeks in submission land.

• Submissions Sent: 2
• Rejections: 2
• Acceptances: 0
• Publications: 0
• Shortlist: 0
• Withdrawn: 0
• Pending: 16
• 2021 Total Subs: 103

Just two submissions in the last two weeks. As I said in the last update, I’m definitely winding down for the year. Now that I’m over 100, I don’t feel any huge urgency to send out tons of subs in December. I might get a few more out, but I’m more concerned with getting responses from the 16 subs still pending. Hopefully, a few of those will resolve in my favor before the year’s end. The two rejections were run-of-the-mill form rejections, so nothing too exciting there.

Freelance Work

Wrote and turned in the final two stories (out of seven) I was contracted to write for Privateer Press’s Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika setting. Might be some light revision to do, but this job is pretty much complete. I’ve written a lot of fiction in this setting in 2021, and I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s epic science-fiction with a touch of magic, and just choked full of interesting concepts and characters. I sincerely hope I get to write more of it in the near future.

Goals

With freelance work done for the year, I’m likely gonna take a breather until 2022. I might get a few submissions out, but no real goals for the remainder of 2021.

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Those were my weeks. How were yours?