Well, that just happened, three more months on their way.  Let’s see how I did.

• Words written = 9,300
• Submissions = 38
• Rejections = 31
• Acceptances = 0
• Publications = 0
• Awards = 0
• Withdrawals = 1

The submissions are up, but the word count is down.  I should say the word count is down further.  I haven’t met my target word count either quarter this year.  I’m halfway through the year but only a third of the way to my word goal.

I realized recently I’ve taken on more in my personal life, such as being president of the Northern Virginia Writers Club, which has left less free time to write.  I’m also writing fewer longer stories, instead I crank out a lot of flash fiction these days.  I find I feel more productive when I can hammer out a 1000 word story in a day or two, rather than struggle to find the time to get through a 6000 story.

The submissions were up thanks to a backlog of flash pieces I finally started sending out the door.  That also helped the rejection numbers increase as those same stories started came back.

In addition, I had packaged most of my earlier sci-fi stories into a collection and submitted it to the C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize.  That got a bunch of stories out the door at once but also meant those stories stopped making the submissions rounds for a while.  I found out on July 1 that I would not be a winner.  I’ll count those rejections in the third quarter.

I did have one first — a withdrawal.  I had submitted a short story to a market in 2018 and received almost an immediate response thanking me for the submission.  Then nothing, though the market remains open.  At the year mark, I decided that was long enough and withdrew it.  It went immediately to the next market, where it sits currently.

Now I need to figure out what to do during the current quarter besides the usual rounds of submissions.  I still have the sci-fi novel I got 20k words into.  I also started plotting a middle grade novel, but I don’t want to start that one until it’s mapped out a little more.  I’d rather plug away at the sci-fi novel before starting anything else of that length.  And then there are always the random short stories that pop up.  Got to get those out of my head as they come along.

Let me know in the comments how you did with your writing goals last quarter and what your writing goals are for this quarter.