Submission Statement: January 2025

The first month of 2025 is in the books, and here’s my first submission statement for the new year. These updates will be a little different this year because my goals for 2025 are fairly ambitious. I’m also tracking them in a fun new way (more on that at the end of the post). For this first post, let me go ahead and quickly list my goals for 2025.

1. Write one new story per week.
2. Send 150 submissions.
3. Receive 24 acceptances.
4. Make 12 pro sales.
5. Receive 100 rejections.

With the goals out of the way, here’s my monthly report card.

January 2025 Short Story Submissions

• Submissions Sent: 15
• Rejections: 3
• No Response: 0
• Acceptances: 2 (1 pro sale)
• Further Consideration/Shortlist: 2
• Withdrawals: 0
• Pending: 14
• New Stories: 6

January was a very good month, and I’m on pace for all my yearly goals, except maybe rejections, but that’s more of a booby prize than an actual goal, so I can live with it. I need to average about 14 to 15 submissions every month to hit that goal of 150. If I keep writing new stories, that shouldn’t be too difficult, though. I wrote six new pieces last month, three short stories and three flash fiction stories, and those accounted for the bulk of my January submissions. I’m sim-subbing more this year, too, which should also help me hit my submission goals. The two acceptances were good ones, and one of them is up there with the biggest sales of my short story career. More on those when I sign the contracts.

Rejections

Three rejections in January.

• Form Rejections: 3
• Personal Rejections: 0
• Close-But-No-Cigar Rejections: 0

Not much to talk about here. The three rejections I received were all boilerplate form rejections. Two of them might have been higher-tier rejections, but I’ve honestly stopped keeping track of those, so I’m just gonna call the form rejections and move on.

Writing Goals Bingo!

This is the new way I’m going to be tracking my writing goals for the year. Check it out. 🙂 Yep, writing goals bingo. I don’t get to mark any of the boxes as complete for January, but I really didn’t expect to. I think I’ve got a pretty good shot at checking off a couple boxes in February, but we’ll see. If you’d like more info on writer goals bingo and how I made my bingo card, check out this post.

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And that was January. My goals for the coming month are pretty straightforward. I want to write 4 new stories, send 15 submissions, and get 2 acceptances (1 pro sale). I won’t set a goal for rejections, but I’d need like a dozen to be on pace for a hundred for the year. lol

That was my month. How was yours?