I swear, I am writing some book reviews and a blog post about my trip to the States and the Nebula Conference, they’re taking a while to get done because I’ve actually been writing and having fun with it for the first time since maybe November last year. If you’re curious about why I might have been struggling read March Counts as the Start of the Year, Right? It explains a lot, but if you just want to get on with this post the TLDR is I was laid off in September last year, then started getting abdominal pains that built over October/November until I wound up in the ER in December, had surgery in January which did not find the problem, my grandfather died, and I still haven’t found a new job. So, I’ve been a bit stressed which limited my creative capacity and probably sent me into a depressive period. God I love my brain chemistry.
And now, I seem to have come out of the depressive period and I feel flooded with creative energy. At first, it was a bit difficult to guide this creative energy towards where I need it to go (namely, my novel revisions). My brain wanted to focus on shiny new ideas, sewing projects, baking, and writing fan fiction, but now I’ve got my brain wrangled and the novel revisions are going really well (thanks so much to everyone who read my last draft and sent me feedback. You’re all rockstars). I’m back in a place where I like my book and am able to engage with it from a place of fun. But novel revisions take a long time and I need the dopamine hit that comes with achieving small goals, so I’m bringing back the September Submission Challenge!
What is the September Submission Challenge?
If you’re new here or haven’t been paying attention over the last four years (no judgment, I can barely keep track of my own life let alone anyone else’s), the September Submission Challenge is when I challenge myself to submit 30 times in 30 days.
That does not mean I have to write 30 new individual pieces for submission, nor does it mean that each submission constitutes an individual piece. Rather, I take it as an opportunity to revise and resubmit stories I haven’t looked at in a while, submit previously published stories for reprint, and keep stories in circulation that I feel strongly about but just haven’t found a home yet. If a story receives a rejection during September I will immediately find a new place to submit it, meaning one story can constitute multiple submissions. The last time I did this challenge I had two stories that I submitted to three different markets each.
I’m also planning to submit more poetry this year than I have in previous years. I’ve talked about this a bit on Threads (you can follow me for random writing thoughts, perspectives of an American living in Australia, and my dog being cute/annoying) but I’ve been writing and reading more poetry recently and there are a few interesting poetry calls out at the moment. The cool thing about poetry calls is that you can generally submit multiple poems at a time, meaning that for the purposes of this challenge, I can get three to five submissions for the price of one (if that makes any sense). Knocking out five submissions in a single day will also buy me time to write/revise where I need to.
So What am I Working With?
Since I’ve been so focused on my novel revisions, I haven’t really done much in the way of submitting short stories since September/October 2022 when I last completed this challenge. This means I have a lot of stuff already written that’s just been lounging around my hard drive not doing much of anything. To put a number on things, I currently have 57 stories and poems that have a complete draft. Of these:
- 7 are previously published and available for republication;
- 22 require rewriting and revision; and
- the remaining 28 I’m more or less happy with but will likely look to revise before submitting because it never hurts.
Some of the older stories I may read through and decide to trunk or completely rewrite because I’ve grown a lot as a writer since I wrote them. Some of the stories requiring rewrite might need more work than I’ll be willing or able to give them given the time constraints of the challenge. I also know that I will be writing a few new stories and poems this month based on the calls I want to submit to.
So, yeah, that’s a lot. I’m not going to let it overwhelm me though because I have my handy-dandy spreadsheets with what stories need what done to it, what markets are open when, and the start of a schedule of what day I want to submit to certain markets. And I’ve done this three times before (2020, 2021, and 2022). I know I can do it. I’ve even done it while traveling internationally and working a full-time job, so I can definitely do it while job hunting and revising a novel.
In reality, this challenge is less about achieving the goal and more about getting stories back out on submission because they’re not doing me any good while they’re moldering on my laptop with no one to read them. Not that I’m not going to try, because I am going to, but I’ve worked so hard to get to a place in my life where I don’t let my perfectionism interfere with my well-being. So, if I find myself getting too stressed by this challenge I’m going to put it on pause and write some fanfiction, and watch a comfort show and chill, and I’m not going to stress about meeting an arbitrary, self-imposed goal.
Thanks for Reading!
