Words in Progress – 2013

So, 2013 is coming to a close. Another year gone like lightning. At least, that’s how they feel to me, for good or ill.

It’s been a busy writing year. I seem to have really caught the bug for writing and submitting, being rejected and submitting again. And writing again and again. Kinda like it.

As much for my own curiosity as anything, here’s a list of what I wrote and/or had published in 2013.

• “To The Edges” – published in May in Crossed Genres’ Winter Well: Speculative Novellas About Older Women. Starred review in Publisher’s Weekly happened in September.
• “Buccinum Anningiae” – written this summer. Submitted and rejected. Submitted again. No word yet.
• “Mind Over Murder” – also written in the summer. Submitted and ACCEPTED! More news soon.
• “Piper Deez and the Case of the Clanless Woman” – written in 2011. Submitted and ACCEPTED back then. But things got weird with that editor. Long story. Anyway. Submitted three times this year, rejected all three. 😦 Back in development. Planning to resubmit in early 2014.
• “Ketset Kismet” – written this fall. Submitted and rejected (awesome rejection email, though–very encouraging). Looks like I’ll be submitting somewhere else in 2014, maybe in February.
• “Meanwhile, Inc.” – I have a title, an idea, and am about 1000 words in. Another possibility for a February submission.
• The Travelers – the long-suffering novel. Still in process. The whole thing’s outlined now and the final scenes are coming together. Still working on the plan of having this draft finished in the next couple weeks and then spending 2014 rewriting.

Goals for 2014.

• “Breaks Like Glass” – another Piper Deez story, written in 2012. Submitted and rejected three times back then (I’m sensing a trend here.). I want to fix it and submit somewhere next year.
• Write more and submit more!

All those rejections up there seem a little sad, don’t they? But really? Of all the stories I’ve written since 2011, I have an acceptance rate of 43% (7 stories written; 3 accepted). Even if I do the math using number of submissions (12) instead of number of stories (which is probably the more accurate way to do this), I come up with a 25% acceptance rate. That’s ridiculously good.

So, yeah, as far as writing goes, it was a pretty good year in my world. Thanks, everyone, for reading my sporadic posts this year, and maybe even buying the books over there on the right. I wish you all the best in the new. I hope 2014 is as good or better for all of us.

“Writing on the wood is prohibited.” (Photo credit: Nicolas Karim) Random pic WordPress suggested. Kind of neat, huh?