Okay, phew, I made it. I survived my September Story Challenge without my brains gooing out of my ears and jamming up my keyboard. And, it went better than I anticipated it would, so there’s a win.
But let’s break things down into specifics, shall we?
My goal was to make 30 short story submissions over 30 days. I managed to make 29 submissions (three cheers for close enough). Now, to clarify, that’s no 30 individual short stories, but 30 submissions with some stories being submitted multiple times. To that end, I sent 12 stories a combined 29 times, totaling 29,380 words.
That math implies that I received some rejections, and yes, I did. Over September, I received 17 rejections. Now, to some of you, that may seem harsh, and yeah, sometimes rejections sting, especially if you really believe in the stories you’re submitting. On the contrary, as the month progressed, I’d wake up hoping to have a rejection in my inbox so I wouldn’t have to pull another story out of thin air.
Let’s dig a little deeper into those rejections. There are two basic types of rejections: the form rejection and the personalized, wherein the editor relates what they liked about your story and what didn’t work for them. Of my seventeen rejections, four were personalized, and one of those stated that my piece had been shortlisted for publication, which was exciting. It means I’m on the right track with that story and that hopefully, I’ll be able to sell it to another market.
Now, about those twelve stories. Five were stories I’d already written to some extent and required finishing, revision, and polishing. The other seven were conceived and executed during September. I find that number more than a little crazy, because, before this month, my short story writing record was about three in one year.
Genres ranged from high fantasy to urban fantasy, science fiction to disaster, and even one horror story. And I found, as the month progressed, that I stopped self rejecting my ideas. If an idea popped into my head, I wrote it down regardless of how silly it seemed or how scared I was of it. I needed to write a story, so I went for it, and that was cool and empowering. And as the month went on, I felt as though my handle on how to structure short and flash stories became more firm.
On the downside, this submission schedule didn’t allow much time to fully develop more complex ideas. At the start of the month, I had a few ideas I felt confident I could refine and submit. As the month progressed, I realized the schedule didn’t allow for the in-depth research I needed to do or for significant rewrites. So, I set aside those stories until the end of the challenge. Some of the stories I submitted could have a little bit more thought put into them before I send them again. And now that the challenge is over, that’s okay.
Overall, I’m pleased, I’m proud, I wrote things I never anticipated writing, and I feel like I could nap for a week. I feel like this process expanded my ability and flexibility as a writer. This was definitely a worthy experiment, and I may even try something like it again if time allows.
Thank you for reading.