30 Submissions. 27 Days. 25 Markets. 17 Stories. 14 Rejections.
These are the numbers for my September Submission challenge this year. As in previous years, the goal was to submit 30 times in 30 days.
Last year I submitted 31 times over 29 days, but I’m not competing with my past self, so I’m not going to go into whether I did better or worse than last year. Both years I set a goal, and I exceeded it. This year I had a little added pressure to finish my submission challenge early because I started a new job on September 27th, so I wanted to complete my submissions before then.
This year felt different in a few different ways from last year. Last year, I was more focused on writing new things. This year, I focused on revising and refining stories I’ve written over the previous few years. That revision work requires a different type of mindset, a slower pace. Some stories I spent more than a week refining before sending them out, whereas in previous years, I’d spend a day to write and a day to revise.
The slower turnaround definitely made me feel like I wasn’t burning myself out, but also like I wasn’t making quite as much progress, though I maintained the pace I set for myself or even exceeded it.
Breaking Things Down
Let’s dig further into the numbers above.
Of the 17 stories I had on the submission rotation this year:
- 3 were brand new never been submitted;
- 2 were previously published stories being submitted for reprint;
- 3 were stories I wrote last year, submitted once or twice then put on the back burner for revision;
- 4 were stories I’d submitted previously, gotten feedback on and needed to revise; and
- 5 were stories I did absolustely nothing to.
These 17 stories comprised roughly 52,790 words, averaging about 3100 words a story, with the shortest being 740 words and the longest being 8500 words.
Of the 14 rejections I got this month, 3 were personalized. One of those personalized rejections gave excellent actionable feedback that I could immediately apply to the story, and I feel that the story is better for it.
Overall, I feel accomplished. I achieved my goal. I’m proud of the stories I have on submission, and I’m proud of myself for completing this challenge for the third year in a row.
I’m going to take the next few days easy. Maybe do some free writing if I do any writing at all. I’m not going to put any pressure on myself except to enjoy whatever it is that I end up doing. I deserve that time before I dive into my October writing goals.
Thanks for reading.
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