It’s the middle of December, and I don’t know if I’m going to get anything new out the door or get anything that’s out back in time to send it out again, so I guess this is as good a time as any for a year-in-review post.
2017 in submissions:
I was hoping to meet my average of one submission a week again this year, but missing that mark by 5 isn’t bad by any stretch, and this is still my second best year for raw submission numbers (and absolute best year for paid sales) since I started this hustle back in 2006, and that ain’t bad.
Considering how rough 2017 was in general, I’m counting everything as a victory, and there are still a few weeks left in the year.
As far as writing goes, I didn’t end up producing that much new stuff this year that actually went out into the world. One new story, and one more that hadn’t been on sub since its first outing in 2016, where it came back with a very nice, helpful personal rejection that I didn’t know at the time how to act on. In addition to those stories, there were a couple more pieces that are finishing out the year at various states of drafting, so hopefully I’ll get some of those out the door early in 2018. Maybe.
As far as surprises for the year go, I’m a little shocked that November didn’t come in as my lowest-submission month, given that I was traveling for half the month. In fact, November came in second, with 6 submissions, while August led the way with 8 subs. However, the biggest surprise for me was my sale, which came in in March. Obviously, we always hope that the things we write and send out will sell, but the wording of my acceptance letter started out so similarly to all the rejections I’ve gotten (225 lifetime rejections as of this writing), that I had to go back and re-read the thing a couple times for it to get through.
My goal, again, for 2018 is to hit 52 submissions for the year, which means I’ll have to put some more things in circulation, so my other 2018 goal is to get up to 10 stories into the rotation. Wish me luck.