Holy frijoles, it’s 2024! Looking back at my 2022 recap last year, I noticed two big differences. First, I’m barely on The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter any more. Maybe a goal for 2024 is deciding on an alternative social medial platform. Second, I didn’t receive a hold request on NYE. That would have been amazing but probably unreasonable to expect two years in a row. Also, while that hold request turned into an acceptance, that publication was delayed and still hasn’t been released yet. It’s supposed to be issued this month. In the meantime, the full numbers for 4Q23 are below.

• Words written = 3,475
• Submissions = 20
• Rejections = 19
• Acceptances = 0
• Shortlists = 0
• Publications = 1
• Rewrites = 0
• Withdrawals = 0

Those quarterly numbers are pretty ‘eh,’ except in one regard.

The submissions and rejections got me to my 2023 goals. That’s great but not the exception to my “eh” year.

The words written were terrible, so that wasn’t the exception. For the last several years, I’ve done NaNoWriMo, which has contributed a bunch of words to the fourth quarter. Not this year. I had a more significant project to finish.

Those 3500ish words represent one new 2300 word horror story, a few additional words to an existing story, and the first chapter of a new piece that I’m not sure where it is headed. All I know is it’s in the vein of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so it’s solidly sci fi comedy. I just finished that series, and it’s firmly wormed itself into my brain.

The sole publication is what redeemed this quarter because that was my first short story collection, We’re Here to Help Ourselves… Short Tales of Time, Space, Aliens, and Paperwork. More on that below. I debated counting that as 14 publications since the collection includes 14 short stories. In the end, I felt that was cheating and simply counted the collection as one publication… one super, awesome, fantastic publication!

Now, let’s look at how 2023 went down.

• Words written = 11,168
• Submissions = 106
• Rejections = 111
• Acceptances = 6
• Shortlists = 1
• Publications = 5
• Rewrites = 0
• Withdrawals = 1

Again, the words written are terrible. That is my lowest in a year since I started tracking my writing. That is no where near the 36k goal I set. The number of submissions and rejections hit the mark. I aimed for 100 of both and made it. Looking back, I don’t see that I set a goal for number of acceptances, but presumably I would have gone with four. I met that, thankfully.

I was so/so on my larger goals. I made it through one editing pass in the final manuscript in my middle grade near future sci fi trilogy. I didn’t make it through another draft of the entire trilogy. However, I started something better. I joined a critique group that is working its way through those manuscripts. A goal for 2024 is to have the critique group finish reviewing all three (it’s already finished the first), and then I will do a massive edit of all three incorporating the collected comments.

More importantly, I published my first short story collection. That was the overarching goal for the entire year, and it took almost the entire year. I started the process in February and published around Thanksgiving. That was a lot of work, but I also had a lot of help.

Time to figure out what to aim for in 2024. Let’s start big. I’d like to publish a second short story collection. I already have the theme: humor and horror. I also already have about 40k words worth of stories to include. I’d like that to be 50k though, so the collection has some heft. I guess my first goal really should be to write another 10k words worth of material. Maybe that’s where this new story I’m working on will go.

Speaking of words, I’ll set those at 36k again for the year. Why not? I don’t plan to work on anything too long, so I would think 3k words a month is doable. Of course, I said that last year too.

I’ll also set my usual goal of 100 submissions and 100 rejections. I’ve consistently reached that goal, but this year may be more difficult. I took a lot of stories out of circulation with my first collection, and I’ll take even more out if I proceed with a second collection. Maybe that will motivate me to write more. More writing = more stories = more submissions.

That’s my 2024 in a nut shell. How did your writing adventure progress last year?