The idea of “fourth Saturday” made sense, until you hit a month like September with five Saturdays and realize you’d be posting a week early. So, I’ll reform that to a monthly report out. Yeah me, making decisions like an adult!
September has been a great month overall. Besides the writing, I’ve lucked into a number of fun television shows to watch, from the revamped Iron Fist (much better than season 1), to the new The First (excellent near-future science fiction with strong acting and writing). Overall, I still try to keep my media consumption low and read more, but it’s nice to find programming my wife and I enjoy and we can binge.
Dr. Ford and Kavanaugh: there’s nothing I can say about this situation that others already haven’t more eloquently than me. But my thoughts are all over my twitter feed if you care to read a lot of expletives and diatribes about the situation.
My daughter came down from Maine late in the month and it was absolutely fantastic spending time with her in DC and visiting some of the sights. Hopefully she wasn’t too bored in Dad’s company, I know she’d probably rather have spent it with friends, but it was good bonding time and a chance to build a relationship I’d really neglected for a long time (much to my shame). She’s a pretty awesome woman, smart and funny, a developing writer as well, and I’m so glad to final be able to get to know her. All praise to others in her life for who she is of course, though I’m proud as hell to call her my daughter and glad she can call me dad.
I worked on more short stories this month (more on that shortly), but towards the end of the month I revisited an idea for a novel and decided it was worth exploring, so I’m neck deep in that now. Still, it was a good writing month with almost no days missed. I did adjust my wake up time from 3:00 to 3:30, which feels a little better to me. 30 minutes made all the difference in how tired I am during the day. Hopefully in a couple of years I can move that to 4:00 or even 4:30, but the key is leaving myself enough time before work every morning to write. I find having three hours is perfect, and I can usually dig out 1,000 words in that time period without too much effort, plus get in some internet time before I leave.
WRITING CONFERENCES/WORKSHOPS/CLASSES
I had a forty minute video chat with Cat Rambo, president of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, early in the month. It was a great conversation, she’s super easy to chat with, and it really put me on solid ground to know I’m doing the things I need to be doing to make a career out of this in the future. The only thing I probably need to do more of is volunteering… and selling a couple of stories so I can become an SFWA member. Naturally!
FINISHED
I finished three short stories this month and one fantasy poem. One of the short stories is part of the WWI cycle, The Falling of the Veil. The second one is called With Stars in its Eyes, and is an end-of-the-world horror, and the last is another horror story called You’re In a Horror Story, told in second person. The poem was originally going to be a short story, but I realized it was working better as an epic poem. It’s called She Challenged the Moon to a Duel.
WIP
Currently working on a novel idea and have reached 14,000 words. I’m thinking of it right now as “Sneakers meets the Lies of Locke Lamora.”
OUTSTANDING
13 short stories out on submission, 1 novella, and 1 poem. Longest wait time is 144 days. I contacted that magazine and found out they’d had problems with their submission system that deleted a lot of submissions, so I was able to resubmit and told it would be another 30 days until a response. That leaves about two more weeks until I should expect a final response from this one, but being patient is part of the game (and knowing when you should reach out to seek information).
SUBMISSIONS
17 submissions made this month. 6 of those were rejected and resubmitted in the same month.
REJECTIONS
14 total rejections in the month of September. 5 of them personal and positive rejections. Averaging about 1/3rd personal rejections this year, which has been vastly better than previous years. Still 1 story on shortlist for publication pending if they can find an issue it will fit into and where there’s room for it.
GOALS FOR OCTOBER
Continue work on the novel. Reach a minimum of 40,000 words on it. Stretch goal of 50,000 words, which I expect will be roughly half the length of the novel.