As I stated in my September Goals post, I’ve decided to dedicate the month of September to writing short stories. Specifically, I plan to submit one short story each day during the month of September. It’s been ten days, so how’s it going.
It’s going well, better than I anticipated. It hasn’t been easy by any stretch of the imagination. Sometimes a pesky little thing called life gets in the way of my ability to write. But the good days have so far outnumbered the bad and, most importantly, I’m having fun.
My goal in pursuing this challenge is not solely a numbers game. I was hoping that this experience would help me loosen up some of my perfectionistic tendencies and it has, but more than that, I’ve also found that it’s helping to train me out of my tendency to self-reject.
My self-rejection manifests in different forms: I’m not good enough to write this story, this story isn’t good enough for this market, this story is too silly to submit anywhere, this idea is too silly to write. But none of that matters this month, because submission is the goal. So what if the idea’s silly, that’s the idea we’re going with today. So what if it’s a fancy market that publishes your favorite writers, that’s the market you’re submitting to today because the spreadsheet says so.
It’s amazing what you can accomplish when giving in to your fear isn’t an option.
Well, no that I’ve philosophized about the September Story Challenge, let’s get into the numbers. In the first ten days of September I have:
- Submitted 7 stories to 13 different markets
- Received 7 rejections
- Written or partially written 6 stories from scratched
- Revised or partially revised 5 stories I already had in various stages of completion
- Had a ton of fun.
Thank you for reading!
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