Write1Sub1--Month 7: July

And I thought June was a mega-month...well, subs-wise it still reigns--July however, had me vomiting stories it seemed over the course of two weeks.

I suspect the double-shot Rockstar energy drinks I was knocking back had something to do with my productivity, but after coming up with a flash story (@1k) in week 1 for a contest, I ended up completing three new "full-sized" stories within four days in week 2, one clocking in at 2600 words, the next at 3100, the last at 4600--my longest in a while. I also started plotting another.

What also made me very happy about this month was that I ended up subbing to Glimmer Train, The New Yorker, and the Writers of the Future Contest--all markets I wanted to get something into sooner than later.

I also submitted to a fun anthology (along with 1200+ others!), re-submitted a few older stories, completely re-wrote an older story today and submitted it in time for the deadline today.

Total subs this month: 11 (although I still have 4 hours to do more damage, muahahaha).

I also came up with a lot of pieces with potential in the past 2 weeks (although I'm not banking on any of them just yet since pieces don't mean much until the mapping and/or end comes).

One surprised me by its content, inspired by an upcoming Lost Civilizations anthology and looks like it will end up pretty long based off of the plotting thus far.

Earlier this week I also figured out a direction for an upcoming contest entry (Road to Eerie theme) and got an idea where to go with a prompt from AW's Flash Fiction Fortnight.

And just yesterday, a lightbulb went off and a random zombie piece that popped into my head sometime in June (also a surprise) showed me its direction.

Plus, today, while I was re-writing my old dud, an entirely new piece elbowed its way into my time--another surprise piece, this one involving soothsayers.

My old spec habits are returning full force it seems...

I'd really like to continue somewhere along these lines, constantly inspired by prompts, contests, anthologies and themes, productivity pushing me to W1S1 weekly status.

So far, 12 new stories for the year (13 if counting the rewrite), and a good chunk of deadlines coming up August through September (at least 10), so hand me those double-shot Rockstars!

Write1Sub1--Month 6: June

June was a mega-month of sorts; I made a record-breaking number of short story submissions for one (24--5 more than April), and managed to write a new short story in the nick of time: a story began on the 26th finished on the 30th. It hasn't been subbed yet, requiring a lot of editing still (in fact, I still haven't put it all together--partially written on the computer, partially written in a notebook). Still, the 24 submissions of a dozen stories more than makes up for that I think.

Thanks to sim-sub allowance and fast responses!

I also subbed some old poetry (4), bringing the June submission total to 28.

So far, 8 new stories in 6 months; more than on track for my monthly W1S1 commitment.

Write1Sub1--Month 5: May

I suppose I was a bit disappointed in myself, hence the late update for May; I'd been doing so well.

Although I worked on a few short stories during the month, I did not actually complete any of them. Complete for me means a beginning, middle and end of some sort, and the one I'd been working on the most (Pig to the Slaughterhouse) reached 2k still lacking an ending. It felt like I'd gone in the wrong direction in fact; hence the ending eluding me I suppose.

However, I can't exactly call May a failed month since I made ten submissions of five of this year's stories.

No sales this month, and lots of rejections coming in due to the high number of submissions the previous month, but hope still alive.

I know I'll make up for this month's lack of new output.

Just remembered: one distraction in the month of May was a novel idea that kept commanding my time, feeding me bits and pieces of what it is, what it will be. Learning about this novel bit by bit had me in a sort of spell as it teased me with glimpses I ran to write down. I can't wait to get back to it.

Actually, I'm not sure if this happened in May or June or both...