These statistics are all for short stories, poems, or contest entries. Book reviews (and interviews) are not included.
I can’t even believe how quickly August has flown by. My husband bought me some little cans of 7 up with monster faces on them. October is right around the corner. Oh no!
These statistics are all for short stories, poems, or contest entries. Book reviews (and interviews) are not included.
Last year I didn’t have a good run in sending out submissions. I think my May writing events got my behind in gear. I’m starting to submit flash fiction pieces written this year.
These statistics are all for short stories, poems, or contest entries. Book reviews (and interviews) are not included.
The Thurber House has a contest each year to kick off the summer season. This was the first year I entered and since I wasn’t invited to come to the picnic for a reading I can assume I wasn’t picked as one of the top entries.
At the end of June I signed up for a Flash Fiction workshop with Jim Harrington, one of the editors at Apollo’s Lyre. Flash Fiction is what I submit and I thought it wouldn’t hurt to have an insider’s opinion on a new piece before I did anything with it.
These statistics are all for short stories, poems, or contest entries. Book reviews (and interviews) are not included.
Nothing was submitted this month but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t still working and writing. In fact, even though I wasn’t writing every day it was one of my most productive non-November writing months yet. My writing related goal for Writo de Mayo and MayNoWriMo was to write another 10K words towards a previous NaNo project about a Barbarian Shamaness who must travel to a city to obtain more wort to save her village. Without this vital ingredient for the medicine her village could be decimated.
Thanks to not actually writing for 12 days straight, I didn’t make my goal. I was able to add 5930 words though. Rereading the beginning chapter I realized it’s not the beginning. It should be part of a flashback. As much as I wanted to edit it and change things I didn’t do it.
I’m sure some of you will recognize what I call “shiny syndrome”. You know… when you get a great NEW idea, or you see a market that another piece would be perfect for after some edits and you’re tempted to temporarily abandon your current project? It tried to strike me several times during the month but I successfully resisted each time.
Participating in Writo de Mayo and MayNoWriMo helped me be more focused, I think. I wrote down my goals where other people could see them and had to update my progress regularly. To be honest, I don’t know if anyone else read them or not.
Attending Coyote Con provided me with the opportunity to chat with and get to know people I probably would not have met any other way. Overall I’m pleased with the way May ended.
These statistics are all for short stories, poems, or contest entries. Book reviews are not included.
So the poetry contest winner reading came and went around tax day. Guess who wasn’t there?
I did send an entry this week for a Writer’s Digest 10th Anniversary contest. The contest was to write an opening sentence based on a picture incorporating the number 10. One of the difficulties was the 35 word limit. Entries were due by May 14 (I submitted early!) and the winners will be published in the September issue.
One thing I learned this month was to finish what I start. I have several essays and stories begun for contests or themed submissions. Once the deadline passes, the piece usually gets dropped. Sounds a little bit like my exercise regime. One essay and one short story would have been perfect to polish off and submit this past month. The essay wasn’t finished and the short story didn’t have the rewrites completed to make it better.
These statistics are all for short stories, poems, or contest entries. Book reviews are not included.
Normally I would say no news is good news… but the contest I sent my poems to has a reading of the winners in the middle of April. I would think they would give at least two weeks notice for the winners to make arrangements to attend. These won’t be officially considered rejections until the date passes.
April Fool’s Day is not one of my favorite holidays. I think I’m just too serious in my nature to truly enjoy it. When I tried to recall pranks my brothers did, I couldn’t remember any. Maybe my entire family is serious!
So here’s an April Fool’s Day prank for you… I won the lottery, am moving to England, and one of my unpublished books has been optioned for a movie starring Johnny Depp and Franka Potente. It starts filming next week. 
These statistics are all for short stories, poems, or contest entries. Book reviews are not included.
I’m restarting with new numbers. Let’s be honest… the market that I sent something to in May 2009 still hasn’t gotten around to reading anything submitted since April 2009. They’re a dead market no matter what good intentions the editor may have.
So prepare to be shocked. I submitted a short story and two poems this month. The short story resulted in a form letter rejection. I was slightly hopeful since according to Duotrope it was taking slightly longer than the average response time to hear back from the market.
The two poems went to the poetry contest for Ohioans. If I’m not invited to read either poem in April I will have my rejection.
Happy writing and submitting in March.
These statistics are all for short stories, poems, or contest entries. Book reviews are not included.
I’ve been working on a new poem to submit to the annual poetry contest held at an Ohio art museum.
No new updates from the Unsent Letter Market. I’m thinking despite the best of intentions, the editor is still stuck on reviewing items from April 2009, the month before I sent in my submission.
These statistics are all for short stories, poems, or contest entries. Book reviews are not included.
Nothing new or old went out in December. I did get two surprises. The first was an email from an Ohio museum.
Last year I entered their poetry contest and they invited me to submit again for this year’s contest. It’s appears to be an annual thing and though the invite was a form letter it was nice to get the email about it. They only accept submissions through snail mail so someone had to go through the submissions and enter all of the contact information into a database. The people running the contest were certainly thinking ahead about future contests.
The second surprising thing was I stumbled upon an editor’s post from a market I had sent a submission to in May 2009. It’s a market specializing in letters and as far as I know of, it’s the only one of its kind. The editor currently has 219 submissions pending reading and is caught up to April 2009. The editor apologized for how long it is taking to read the submissions and explained when the call went out for submissions the response was overwhelming. Top off the overwhelmed feeling with events happening in work or family and it’s easy to see why someone would not want to read submissions or run out of steam in a short while. I suppose it was the honesty of the post that was most surprising. It seems a lot of editors who are doing it all themselves just put their heads down and ignore anything writing/submission related to their magazine or site. While I have very little hope of ever hearing from this editor it’s good to know my email is probably lost in the inbox somewhere. Markets that don’t acknowledge receipt of submissions cause writers much hand wringing and worrying.
These statistics are all for short stories, poems, or contest entries. Book reviews are not included.
It should be no surprise that November was spent doing not much other than working on my 2009 NaNoWriMo Project. I am surprised I read some books though. Normally I don’t read anything at all. I’m afraid I will pick up a writing style, a phrase or an entire plot without meaning to do so.
I am finally back to researching new markets against what I have available. Probably in the next week I’ll start writing new stuff. After the big push at the end of November it can take a week or two to recover. Fortunately, I’m able to type again without any pain and this was the first year that ever happened to me.
Copyright © by Amber Stults 2008-2010 unless otherwise noted. image: detail of installation by Bronwyn Lace