I’ve just wrapped up Week 2 of my September Submission Challenge, where I challenge myself to submit 30 times in 30 days.
I left off Week 1 two submissions ahead of schedule so I could have taken a couple of days off to work on new stuff or revise some old pieces, but there were a few markets closing mid-month that I wanted to submit to before the last possible minute.
On September 8th, I submitted a story I started in June while I was at the Nebulas and finished when I got home. The lovely Anna Madden gave me some helpful feedback on it, so I’m hopeful this story will find a home soon.
On the 9th, I submitted a story I’ve been sending out for a few years now. I’ve gotten a few close-but-no-cigars on it, so I’m not ready to give up on it completely. Sometimes, it takes a while for a story to find its home. My favorite story I’ve ever written took two years to place, so I’m not going to worry yet. On the 9th, I also received a hold on one of the poems I submitted on September 1st, so that was an exciting day
September 10th and 11th, I focused on writing and submitting 100-word drabbles which was a super fun challenge. It was difficult to include character, setting, conflict, plot, and theme in such a tiny word count, but I enjoyed myself and I think that I might try to write more drabbles in the future just for fun. It’s a good exercise in making sure that every word is essential and that every sentence does multiple things.
September 12th, I submitted four times: three poems I’ve been working on for a few weeks now and a flash fiction piece that I’m not sure whether I love or hate. For my poetry, I’ve been having fun focusing on different poetic forms rather than free verse. I find the limitation that form poetry imposes to be a stimulating challenge that spurs creative word choice and syntax. For each poetry call I submit to that allows multiple submissions, I’ve been trying to write a different form for each poem. For this call, I submitted a tanka (a 31-syllable Japanese form of poetry that’s traditionally written in one unbroken line. In English, they’re usually broken into five lines with a syllable count of 5/7/5/7/7. I think of them as something of an extended haiku), a ghazal (an Arabic poetic form featuring two-line stanzas where the second line ends in a repeated refrain. These poems also typically feature fun internal rhymes), and a villanelle (a 19-line form broken down in five tercets and a quatrain. This form has a very specific rhyme structure and the first and last lines of the first tercet are repeated throughout. Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night” is one of the better examples of the form).
Given my four submissions on the 12th, I decided to take September 13th and 14th off to focus on developing two new stories and work on my novel edits.
Let’s Add That All Up
| Week 1 | Week 2 | Total for September | |
| Submissions | 9 | 8 | 17 |
| Holds | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Form Rejections | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Personal Rejections | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Acceptances | 0 | 0 | 0 |
As of now, I’ve submitted 17 times this month, meaning I will need to submit another 13 times to achieve my goal of 30 submissions in September. I have 16 days to make those submissions which is completely doable.
Thank you for reading
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