No not in a 50 shades kind of way, I'm talking here about short story submissions.
Last year I only had two short story submissions accepted but when I reviewed my submissions at the end of the year, I found out that I had only submitted ten throughout the year.
Don't get me wrong, this wasn't the full extent of my writing during the year, but it did bring home the fact that you really have got to be in it to win it.
Rather than setting a target based on number of submissions throughout the year, in January I decided that I was going to aim to have at least ten short stories under consideration at any one time.
By the end of March I only actually had four under submission, so I decided that I wanted to submit another three during April and three more during May so that by the end of this month I would have achieved my aim. Obviously this is with the hope of building on this to exceed my target by the end of the year.
By the middle of April I had only submitted one story and then the following week I received one back so it was time to get moving.
To be honest, I haven't written much new so far, but I have been trawling through my laptop and found some I had written earlier! Some I've been editing, some I've completely re-written.
By Thursday though I still hadn't submitted, so I started on a period of intense editing and by yesterday afternoon I had hit my target!
Feeling quite pleased with myself as today I have edited another story which I plan to send to a competition.
Maybe finally I'm getting into the swing of things!
Hope your weekend is going just a well as despite the weather!
This is an excellent way to work. Before writing the novel, I always had at least twenty stories in circulation - it's a numbers game as much as anything. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteSounds like giving yourself a deadline is working well :-) Good luck :-) xx
ReplyDeleteThank you both. I'm just hoping that the ones I have already submitted don't come tumbling through my letterbox in a great bit waterfall!
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