Submission Statement: March 2025

To put it bluntly, March was a brutal month, but I did make some positive yardage. All of my trials, tribulations, and so, so many rejections below. 🙂

March 2025 Short Story Stats

• Submissions Sent: 14
• Rejections: 11
• No Response: 0
• Acceptances: 0
• Further Consideration/Shortlist: 0
• Withdrawals: 0
• Pending: 19
• New Stories: 4

I sent fourteen submissions last month, which gives me a total of forty for the year. I sent out another two this morning, so I’m technically up to forty-two. The goal is 150 subs for 2025, and I’m on pace with an average of about thirteen per month. I’m also on pace for hitting a secondary goal of 1,000 total submissions since I started recording my subs on Duotrope back in 2012. If I keep up the level of writing and submitting I maintained in the first quarter of the year, I should hit both goals.

The eleven rejections I received is not an overwhelming amount, especially for how many submissions I’m sending, but the fact that so many of them were close-but-no-cigar, final-round rejections from pro markets made for a tough month. More on that in the rejections section of this post.

I managed to write another four stories, which isn’t too bad as I was on vacation for over a week. That gives me a seventeen for the first quarter or roughly five stories per month. My goal is fifty-two stories for the year, and I’m well on my way to that mark. I’ve already finished the first story for April, so the second quarter is off to a good start, too.

Rejections

Eleven rejections in March.

• Form Rejections: 8
• Personal Rejections: 3
• Close-But-No-Cigar Rejections: 5

So, the big story here are the CBNC rejections, and I got a bunch of them last month. These kinds of rejections are especially tough because you know the story is good enough to get published, just not good enough this time. It comes with territory, and you just have to roll with it, but CBNCs do sting a bit more than your usual no. I’ll share a couple of my heartbreakers below. Keep in mind, this is not me calling out editors for rejecting me. That’s stupid and immature. As usual, this is just me pulling back the curtain a bit on how tough the writing industry can be sometimes.

Heartbreaker Rejection 1

I’m sorry to say that [publisher] will not be purchasing [story] for an upcoming issue. We received an overwhelming number of excellent pieces during this submissions period, and were ultimately able to choose fewer than 1% of them for publication.

Our longlist was made up of our favourite pieces, and yours was certainly among them. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to read your work. We’re grateful for the chance, and we wish you all the best in placing this elsewhere.

This rejection came after 146 days and a further consideration letter from a great pro market. I REALLY wanted this one, but it wasn’t in the cards this time. Still, as with all CBNC rejections, you have to look at the bright side. One, the story is definitely good enough to get published, and two, I know what kinds of stories to send this market so that next time, I might make the cut.

Heartbreaker Rejection 2

Thank you for submitting [story] to [publisher]. Unfortunately we have decided not to accept it for publication. I appreciate your patience with waiting for a final response, and best wishes with finding a home for this piece elsewhere.

The email subject line for this rejection was “Final round rejection / [story title] / [publisher]”, and I appreciate that. If I’m gonna get rejected, I’d rather the proverbial Band-Aid was ripped off quickly. This is a very cool new market, and I almost made their first issue. The only downside is they have a pretty specific theme, and I had just the one story that fit. So, if I submit again, I’ll need to write something specifically for their theme, which is certainly doable, and maybe even advisable seeing how close I got here.

2025 Writing Goals Bingo

The bingo card below breaks up my primary goals into 25 bite-size mini goals, and this month I get to mark another one complete.

I would have liked to have filled in one of the acceptance or new story goals, but I’ll take the first rejections goal, too. Hopefully, April will be a better month, and I can claim some more positive yardage.

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And that was March. My goals for April are simply to write and submit more stories, and, hopefully, get a few of those stories accepted.

That was my month. How was yours?