I have this nagging feeling that I’ve forgotten to do something. It’s vague and unsettling. I keep checking my calendar and Things to Do list, and while I’ve certainly got plenty on my plate that needs my attention, I keep thinking I’m missing something. If any of y’all are waiting on something from me, you might want to drop me a line.
Also, Yahoo accounts keep bouncing my emails back with a “Permanent Failure: Other address status” error. That’s not good. I’ve got several Tangent reviewers who have yahoo.com addresses. Hope they fix that soon.
Writing Stuff
After I saw jaylake‘s submission counts post, I became curious about my own (after I finished being slack-jawed at his numbers). Total number of submissions isn’t one of the things I tracked in my various marketing spreadsheets–of which I have many–but it’s a fairly easy formula to tack on to everything else. So I did a bit of fiddling in Excel and discovered that currently I’ve made 689 story submissions since I started writing seriously in 2000. That number includes 77 sales, 548 rejections, and 54 submissions currently out (there’s a bunch of reprints in that figure), with the remainder being markets that folded before responding, a few withdrawals, and other oddball cases.
I think I’m going to throw a party when I hit 1000 submissions, and another really big party when (if) I hit 100 sales.
New Words:
1400 on the new Japanese fantasy now tentatively titled “A Thread of Silk.” I’m thinking this might be longer than the 3-4K I initially figured since I just completed the first scene. It’s admittedly a key and important scene, but it went significantly longer than I’d expected. This one’s fight-heavy; I don’t do a lot of pitched combat scenes and I’d forgotten how much space they can take up.
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1,869 / 4,500
(41.5%) |
Received:
Word from my agent that the editor I’m waiting on rewrite notes from dropped him a line letting him know that the reason we haven’t heard back is ’cause she’s currently swamped working on a couple novels, but that she’ll get me stuff next week. Whew. I was beginning to get scared she’d changed her mind.
So now I need to finish this Japanese fantasy and my Aberrant Dreams story rewrite before next week. I can do that. 
Club 100 For Writers
1
I skipped several days in there while doing research and lost count anyway, so I’ll just start over again. Sigh.
500/day
9
I have this nagging feeling that I’ve forgotten to do something.
Have you looked at my restructuring of “Graveyard Shift”?
Yepper. In process. Also looking over edits for “Lace.” Will get you my input in the next day or so.
Cool news about the agent. Everything seems to be going smoothly. Don’t let a new story and a rewrite stop you 😉
54 submissions out? Phew, that’s impressive.
Thanks!
“54 submissions out? Phew, that’s impressive.“
A chunk of that number is reprint subs, and a few are novel subs via my agent, so I don’t have nearly as many original works in circulation as that figure might imply. I’ve only got *glances at spreadsheet* 24 new works making the rounds. For a while, I was trying to keep 30 out all the time, but I realized what a poor idea that was; I was, in effect, setting penalizing writing goals for myself: i.e. “Oh, another one sold, damn.” So now I’m not worrying about that number, just trying to keep my productivity up.
Lool. Took me time to understand what the problem was (brain not up to par today), but indeed, those were not very good goals 😉
24 is still a very respectable number (I was proud of having 12 of the blighters around, but you put me to shame 🙂 ).
I never keep track of submissions via Excel but simply by emails and mental tally. I rarely have more than 5 out at any one time. I am such a slow writer. Still I was curious about sales. Since I began writing way way back (arguably serious with 1995), I have
sold 1 novel
sold 1 anthology
sold 28 short stories (of varying length including yesterday’s sale)
reprinted 14 stories (or 50% of the above) a total of 21 times
sold 40 articles (including 1 interview and 2 reviews)
and this does not count the few stories original to my self-published collections.
I think my brain would explode without my Excel spreadsheets. ‘Course fiddling with them is an alluring excuse to cat wax: “It’s writing-related! It counts!”
I used to keep track of submissions but I kept forgetting and going back to the excel file and wondering what the hell I was doing… 😉
Looks like things are progressing well though and I think it’s time I joined the 100 word a day club. Tomorrow, yes, tomorrow… just you watch!
Club 100 rocks! I haven’t managed to actually hit 100 days in a row yet, but the writing spur is excellent. I mean, 100 words a day, that’s nothing, right?
It sounds like nothing but I haven’t even started yet!
*fumes*
I hope there was a lot of champagne at the party inside your head. Nothing says “celebration” quite like like marinating one’s brain in bubbly.