Posted by Happy New Year, everyone! The year begins on a positive note. My humorous essay Its Not Personal is up at Page & Spine on The Writer’s Table. 2014 had been a stellar year for me in terms of my writing. I managed a grand total of 80k words which amounts to little more than 200 words a day. The breakup is as follows:
19 short stories
16 essays
10 pieces of flash fiction/nonfiction
12 blog posts
I made a total of 165 submissions:
Accepted – 15
Rejected – 108
Withdrawn – 8
Submitted – 23
The rest were no responses, even from markets that don’t have a ‘No response means no’ policy. Those befuddle me a little, but I understand there might be reasons for this, so for me it’s just better to chalk it up as a lost cause and move on. On the final day of the year I received 3 rejections. Ouch! Luckily I’ve grown too thick-skinned to allow this to affect me! I have renewed my commitment to the Short Story Challenge, and will continue writing one a month for 2015. Among other writerly tasks, revising the stories I’ve written and submitting them is of paramount importance. If I don’t work on that soon then I’ll land up having acquired a platoon of stories and no action taken on them.
It hasn’t been a great year for me in terms of reading as I finished only around 20 books this year, a record all-time low for me. However I’ve made up for it by reading tons of short stories and entire issues of literary journals, both to understand markets I intend to submit to as well as to analyze the components of well-written fiction and non-fiction.
Resolutions are passé, or they should be, at least for people like me who never manage to keep them. However I do plan to commit to my writing and make time for it as much as possible.
What are your plans for the New Year?
Gargi's World 
That is a TON of writing! Congrats!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Nina!
LikeLike
Wow, that’s a really impressive writing record. A GIANT piece of chocolate cake for you! I am very inspired by your one-short-story-a-month resolution and have decided I want to do it too (just have to figure out a way to prod myself every month).
As for my new year writing plans: I have a couple of unfinished manuscripts that I want to wrap up, plus I intend to do one review a week for my blog. Fingers crossed. 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank You, Payal! I can prod you for the monthly short story and we can exchange critiques if you like. I’m very strict with deadlines, I promise!
All the best with the WIPs, and the weekly reviews too. I know you can do it!
LikeLike
Interesting statistics, Gargi. You’re doing pretty well with an almost 10% acceptance rate. It’s very annoying when publishers simply fail tell you to yes or no; however, I’m sure isn’t typical, but I once found out I’d won a short story competition about eighteen months after submission (and after submitting it elsewhere in the meantime).
Keep up the good work!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Anne! A short story win 18 months after submission? That simply doesn’t bear thinking about. Some of those submissions haven’t yet hit the one-year mark, so maybe the rejections are on their way!
LikeLike
Wow! 19 short stories is impressive, Gargi ! And as for developing a thick skin, that’s the way to go. We writers won’t be able to survive without a thick skin.I plan to read a lot this year. Have you tried submitting your short stories to various publishing houses who look for writers for their anthologies?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, Rachna! That’s a good point about submitting my stories for anthologies. I haven’t don’t that yet. Last year I focussed on getting the stories written. I’d have to revise more than half of them before sending them out. Thank you for the suggestion – I’ll surely do that now!
LikeLike