2020 Submission Challenge: Finished Two Days Early

That’s right, not only did I achieve my goal of submitting 30 times in 30 days, I completed it in 28 days! I improved upon last year’s challenge, where I submitted 29 times over 30 days.

Now, let’s break things down a bit.

The Stories

As I stated in my post at the start of the month, I began with a buffer of 16 stories in various stages of completion. Despite that, I still wrote eight stories from whole cloth, as this year, I decided to write more stories for specific anthology calls rather than try to generate my prompts/ideas. This was a new challenge for me as I tend to like to write the story first, then find a market suitable for it rather than have a market in mind for the story. Also, I have the kind of stubborn-ass psychology where my immediate first reaction to anyone else’s ideas is that I can do better (It’s a problem, I’m working on it).

In addition to the eight new stories, I also revised and resubmitted nine other stories, bringing my story total this year to 17 compared to last year’s 12 stories. My total word count for these stories is 45,830 (almost an entire novel’s worth of words). Granted, I didn’t write all these words this month, but I did go through and revise each story I submitted.

As for genres, this year, I wrote a lot more sci-fi than I usually do but also had some secondary world fantasy, weird fantasy, fairy tale retellings, cyberpunk, and urban fantasy.

The Submissions and Rejections

Like I said in the title of this post, I completed my goal of 30 submissions by the 28th of September. I planned not to submit anymore and focus instead on cleaning my much-neglected house. However, this morning I woke up to a rejection in my inbox, so I resubmitted that story bringing my submission total for September 2020 to 31 (don’t worry, I will still clean my house). I feel like I’ve gone insane, but I also feel like I did a better job pacing myself this year than I did last year.

As indicated by the increased number of stories submitted this year compared to last year, one would be safe in assuming that I received fewer rejections throughout September 2020 as compared to September 2019. One would be correct (why I went so formal in this sentence, I don’t know. I’m tired, give me a break). In 2019, I received 17 rejections. This year, I got 14, which may still seem like a lot, but as I said in my halfway update, I had planned to receive more rejections. By the end of the month, I was digging through my old college poetry for story inspiration within those self-serious lines (though to be fair, my second published story “Time and Again and Destiny Too” was expanded from a poem I wrote for a college course).

Of these 14 rejections, five were personalized, and 9 were form (compared to last year’s four personalized and 13 form rejections). As a refresher, personalized rejections generally include specific feedback about what the editors liked about the story and sometimes why the story wasn’t accepted. In contrast, form rejections simply thank the writer for submitting and wish them luck in placing the story elsewhere.

Takeaway

Last year, my biggest complaint about this challenge was that I didn’t feel as though I could fully develop my ideas to my usual standards. While that is still true to some extent, I also think that this year, I’ve improved my ability to execute a fully developed and satisfying story in a short word count with fewer drafts.

I think I can put this improvement down to practice (I’ve written a lot more short stories since last year). Also, I’ve spent time this year studying story structure and improving my ability to write sentences and paragraphs that fulfill multiple purposes (for example, having dialogue not only speak to character but also to setting and relationships, if that makes any sense).

Another benefit I found in this year’s challenge was learning to write through my resistance. As I mentioned above, I submitted to far more themed anthologies this year than last year, which meant writing stories to fit a theme. There were a couple of stories where I started writing to the theme and wasn’t feeling what I was writing it, but I had to finish the story to get another submission under my belt. So, through a combination of peer pressure (thanks to the lovely Anna Madden), stubbornness, and timers, I pushed through my resistance and finished stories I wouldn’t have otherwise started. Upon revision, I even like some of them.

This year, as with last year, I found this to be an incredibly valuable experience, even more so within the context of Covid-19. If I hadn’t challenged myself to do this again, I’d probably still be in the creative rut I’ve been in since March/April. Now, I feel energized to face my writing goals for the rest of the year, though I feel a bit burnt out on the short story front. Luckily, I find that novels utilize a different set of skills and, therefore, another part of my writing brain. Since my goals for the rest of the year involve novel writing and revision, I think I’ll be okay, but I’ll dive deeper into my October goals in my next post.

Thank you all for reading and sticking with me during this process. I hope you’re safe and well.