The Revision Diaries: Episode 4

Hello Funny People.

Recently on Twitter, my colleagues and I decided to do something fun called "The Mid-Year Submission Update". Essentially, each of us posted a single tweet detailing our number of submissions in the first 6 months of the year. My stats stood thusly:

Submissions: 60

Acceptances: 1

Form Rejections: 34

Personal Rejections: 10

Pending Subs: 15

Now, I know that looks bad, but thankfully, this is writing, not sports. 

And for someone like me, who to this point had maybe submitted stuff 2-4 times a year only to be so badly set back by the rejections that he'd stop writing for months on end, this is progress. This is effort. This is creative gumption. This is me persisting in the face of failure.

That isn't to say I haven't had some low points. When my parents both had health scares within this period (I'll spare you the details, but it was frightening and emotionally exhausting in both cases), I genuinely thought I'd be done submitting for the year, but a habit, once formed, is hard to break. Each time a rejection would arrive in my inbox, I'd double down and not only resubmit the rejected piece elsewhere (sometimes after tweaking it a bit), I'd send out another submission on top of that. That's been my coping mechanism thus far, and it seems to be working.

I'm hoping to get at least one more sale before the end of the year. I love that I sold "The God's Apology" to Wyngraf earlier this year, and I hope to sell more stories to them when they reopen, but I'd like to get another sale to another zine or anthology call, if for no other reason than the extra, diversified pub-credit. No guarantees, of course, but I'll keep going no matter what.

In other news, just recently, my cohorts and I began to finalize our shape-shifter anthology, now officially titled In All Our Forms. Our leader and editor, Nikki Mitchell, is in the progress of putting the finishing touches on the book, which will hopefully be out before the end of summer. The charity all profits will go to will be Doctors Without Boarders, who are currently doing amazing work helping the people of Ukraine in the ongoing conflict. As more progress comes my way, I'll keep y'all updated.happy.

I also finished up my story for the Monthology project last month, presently titled "This is What Comes from Saving Monsters," about when a Sisimito and a Brownie meet under unusual circumstances. Our editor, Bree Gary, is set to work with me—and everyone else, I assume—to hopefully improve it somewhat, but she has presently slated it for inclusion in Monthology Volume 1, which will consist of the first 25 (of 50), completed stories set in the world of The City and its surrounding districts.

Finally, I'm back to work, at last, revising my novel again. I can honestly say, taking this much time away from the revision has been hard, largely because I initially lost a bit of sense of where the story was going (sad, I know). But just over the weekend, after having it nag at the back of my mind for so long, I figured out where and how I'd veered, and I plan on mitigating the problem asap.

That's all for now, Funny People, but as more stuff happens, I'll keep you updated.

P.S.

On July 20th, I received my 2nd acceptance this year from Cloaked Press's Fall into Fantasy anthology series.