It is the last Friday of the year and time to assess my goals from this year and set new ones for next year. Strap in, this is a long one.
Click my Goals category to read previous goal setting and updates. But I’ll review the previous year’s throughout.
If you’re in my Discord, you’ll know that my last few weeks have been a wild ride. I’d hoped to have some news that I could give in this wrap-up and setting post, but it will have to wait. I won’t keep you on tenterhooks, read through the Novel section to find out why.
Short Stories: Goal Review
Short Stories Written and Polished in 2024
After an abject failure of meeting my short story writing goals for a couple of years, I set the bar low for 2024. I needed something I could clear.
My goal : Write four (4) new stories. ✅
If you read any of my updates, you know I met this goal within the first couple months of 2024 due to a flash writing context with the Codex group. I wrote six (6) stories in January and February and another three (3) in June and July. I’m proud of myself for accepting that I met it and not moving my goal post. I have a problem moving goal posts when I meet goals much sooner than expected.
Feeling great about how many stories I could polish, I figured one per month couldn’t be that big of an ask.
My goal: Polish 12 stories. ❌
By my August 30 update, I’d polished seven (7) stories, including ones for my newsletter. After that update, I failed to note in my spreadsheet any further polished stories. Oops. Fixing that now, I had one more polished newsletter story for a total of eight (8), and that’s it. The novel section will tell you I ended up unexpectedly writing and revising a novel this year which why I fell four stories short of my polishing goal this year. I don’t like to include stories polished specifically for my newsletter since that puts stories into reprint and the goal is really to get new stories ready for submissions for first publications. But I’ll bolster the number this year just for the 75% completion rate.
Story Submissions in 2024:
In 2021, my goal was to submit 39 stories and I submitted 40.
In 2022, my goal became a stretch goal of sixty (60) submissions. I submitted sixty-six (66) times.
In 2023, my goal was to submit ninety (90) stories, and I submitted ninety-five (95).
In 2024, my goal was 120 submissions. I blew that number out of the park with 133. 🎆
Rejections in 2024:
My goal, as always, is 100% rejection rate. That way, I’m successful whether I meet it or get acceptances.
Normally I post my Submission Grinder screenshot, but it is tainted by tracking a few novel submissions there this year, which don’t count here.
This year resulted in four (4) notifications of holds, one of which turned into a sale and three of which did not. This more than doubled the number of official holds. I’m at a 33% acceptance rate on official holds, which is not bad. I also had some very long response times where rejection waves passed over my story at several markets, which I consider unofficial holds. This is good! It probably means I’m improving as a writer.
I had my first R&R, revise and resubmit, which I acted on and got an acceptance! 100% acceptance rate on R&R so far, which is not hard with one but also a completely unreasonable bar setting.
I had a large number of withdrawals and never responded this year. I had multiple simsub stories (story submitted to multiple places at the same time when guidelines allow) that were accepted and then required withdrawing from the other magazines that I hadn’t yet heard from. My spreadsheet shows twenty-seven (27) withdrawn/never responded from this year and past years. Some writers won’t count the withdrawals in their total submissions, but I figure they all had a chance to reject or accept my story, so it counts.
According to my tracking spreadsheet, I had a total of ninety-seven (97) rejections. This includes stories submitted in previous years that I didn’t hear back from until 2024.
I had an increase in higher tier forms and personals this year over previous years percentage-wise. I don’t actually want to make that a metric because I’m not sure it means a whole lot. Personals, encouraging form rejections, and higher tiers tend to indicate the stories are getting closer to publication and therefore better. But I also know that publishing is highly subjective. It’s the right story with the right readers and editors at the right magazine at the right time. Diffferent magazines have different rules for sending types of rejections. Some only ever send forms, some always send personals, some always send encouraging rejections (and only withhold those from egregious guideline breaking submissions), so it may be I submitted to more of those. Maybe editors have more bandwidth this year to send higher tier forms or personals. But it is nice in some ways to see that increase!
I currently have eighteen (18) submissions out in the wild.
Acceptances in 2024:
While I don’t make acceptance goals (though in my heart I hope for 100%), I note them at the end of the year for completeness sake.
I had three (3) acceptances in 2024! 🥉
All 3 acceptances were from one of this year’s submissions. This is the highest number yet!
My rejection/acceptance numbers could change this weekend and early next week after this blog posts.
One more thing about acceptances. I went from April 25, 2023 to May 22, 2024—13 months—without a single story acceptance. Recall that I had 95 submissions in 2023 and 63 by the end of May this year. Then I had two (2) in a single week! This is just the way of things. It’s extremely tough to go that long without acceptances. I had holds, which is great, but acceptances are what writers hang their hats on.
Publications in 2024:
New sub-heading this year, which used to be lumped in acceptances, because I had an acceptance last year that wasn’t published until this year.
I had four (4) publications this year! 🏆
Worlds of Possibility became the first magazine to publish me twice! That’s such a great feeling that an editor likes my work enough to buy it more than once.
Copying wholesale from my Fiction page:
“Arcing” (15,000 words) – (First) Chapbook from Pulp Lit Mag – December 21, 2024
Rosa’s world is turned upside-down multiple times while she learns the meaning of love and family, and then must choose between them.
(Spec-adjacent)
“Spoons” (334 words) – Summer 2024 Issue of The Colored Lens – July 13, 2024
Sometimes gift-giving goes wrong.
(Fantasy, fairy tale setting)
“Little Known Facts About Dragons” (1100 words) – Worlds of Possibility – June 15, 2024
This young dragon happily informs you on facts about the habitats of dragons, with a little commentary.
(Fantasy, contemporary setting)
“W.F.A. #31” (160 words) – Worlds of Possibility – April 30, 2024
A wish-fulfillment agent describes a moment of their job and life.
(Fantasy, contemporary setting)
2024 Earnings:
Another new sub-heading inspired by another writer who posted her earnings in her annual wrap-up.
More than the above rejections, this section makes me feel vulnerable and is scary. I don’t make money writing. The stories I’ve been paid for so far have been extremely short. Arcing was published in the litfic vein, which is to say non-paying.
Even though some of my submission numbers are incorrect on The Submission Grinder, my earnings for short stories are correct. (In USD.)
I earned the most I’ve ever been paid on short fiction this year, nearly doubling my total for all previous years combined! But you can see, it isn’t a lot of money. Though maybe that shows that I write and submit stories for the love of writing and sharing my work. But I do want to be paid.
Just to call out 2020, I started submitting stories to paying markets on December 1, 2020 and had six (6) total submissions. An earnings of $0.00 seems totally fair and I don’t count 2020 separately, I kind of lump it in with 2021 in terms of results.
GOALS
Goal: Short Stories Written and Polished in 2025
Write: Because I’m participating in a short story writing group this year, I’ll expand upon last year’s to six (6).
Polish: With the publication of my novelette, which was a large push of my last two years’ numbers, I’ll need to do many more simultaneous submissions of my existing stories and I’ll need a lot more stories to submit. I’m going to aim for twelve (12) again. With all the unexpectedness of my 2024, 6-8 (depending on whether we count my direct-to-newsletter or not) is not too bad. I actually expect a large amount of derailing this year, but this goal is one I want to meet and need to meet.
Goal: Short Story Submissions in 2025
150 – This number is the culmination of my 5-year short story submission plan based upon submission numbers of some high submitting writers. This is a submission just about every 2-3 days. We don’t hear back from most magazines fast enough, so there will be simultaneous submissions and a requirement of more submission-ready stories from me. (Over the next year, I will have to decide where do we go from here?)
(Not to add problematic stuff to my posts, but I honestly can’t hear the question asked above without this playing in my head.)
Goal: Short Story Rejections in 2025
100%
Novels
Whew! Short stories take up my goals by far, but I still have novel goals. They just get squishy. I promise we’re almost done with this wrap-up and goal setting post.
Goals for 2024:
My goal for 2024 was to “finish a revision pass on an unexpected novel and get more feedback on it, incorporate, then off to the query trenches.” Yes, that happened. ✅
New goals as of August 30 were (1) keep querying/submitting the three finished novels until my lists are done or I receive and accept an offer ✅
and (2) finish drafting this current novel. ✅
Expanding upon (1), I think I only meant for one of the three novels I was discussing in the post and I’m going to call it complete based upon that. Unfortunately, I cannot expand more upon how that goal is completed at this time. All I can say is, watch this space, my newsletter, and my socials.
Novel goals for 2025:
Well, these are dependent on things I don’t know yet. I’ll know them by mid-January, so maybe I’ll move my goal post in a couple of weeks.
I am still working on my current unexpected novel, a family searching for a safe home in the dinosaur apocalypse. I have a revision deadline on mid-January. But I don’t really know what I’m doing after that. It depends on feedback I get on whether I try to get this one query/submission ready.
TBD depending on things the first 2 weeks of 2025. I’ll post a January 10-ish update. How’s that for goal setting?
I lied. We weren’t almost done. I’m adding BONUS GOALS this year! Why? To round out some of the things I discussed above.
For my birthday, I gifted myself the Campus Pass with Library Card level of Cat Rambo’s Patreon. At this level, anyone at that level and anyone on the Discord who wants to see what the meetings are like, meet as a group with Cat every Monday to discuss weekly goals and obstacles. Of course, we’ve been focused on the end of the year. However, nearly immediately upon joining, my writerly life had a turn and I’ve been hanging on for the ride that’s been for three weeks. I haven’t had a chance to really focus more than on a week. On Monday, there’s a planning session for most (all?) levels. Cat posted questions. I haven’t had the chance to look at them until now.
First, I’ve been a member of Cat Rambo’s Discord community since 2019 when I started writing fiction again after about a 15 year break of writing stories. Though I still told myself plenty of stories. It’s a great community of writers and resources and I strongly recommend it if you’re looking for one.
I have my goals from last year’s discussion queued up and ready to go. One thing Cat has discussed is focusing on joy and making a goal that’s joy related.
One thing that’s come up, along with just hanging on for the ride right now, is that my writing time works for me right now. I have a day job, but the last 2-3 hours of every day is my reading for feedback time and writing/editing time. I prioritize whatever has the most pressing deadline. This may stop working for me and I’ll adjust it.
I learned many years ago how to make sure I was living life in a way that keeps me balanced. I only ever focus on the writing aspect of that here, and I’m feeling rather balanced and don’t struggle too much. On the recommendations of a couple of friends, I give myself a reward at the end of the year for weathering query and novel submission rejections. I get myself the covers of magazines my name appears on and the artwork associated with my stories in the form of metal prints that I hang on the walls in my house. I posted videos of this year’s unboxing everywhere. I know TikTok is going away shortly, but this is where the video appears that will embed here.
Now onto some bonus goals.
Bonus Goal: Publications in 2025
I’d really love to have at least five (5) publications in 2025, but I can’t control that, so it’s more of a bonus goal.
However, I will be self-publishing the audiobook of Arcing, my spec-adjacent novelette, so I know I’ll have at least one publication in 2025.
Bonus Goal: Earnings in 2025
Again, something I don’t have full control over. I also don’t know whether I should lump in payment from editors, whatever I earn with the audiobook, and perhaps any other money I earn from other writerly sources.
Whatever I decide above (which may have more to do with my accounting abilities than anything), my overall monetary goal will be to earn more writerly income in 2025 than 2024.
Bonus Goal: Earn enough by end-of-year 2026 to become a Full Member of SFWA.
Thanks for sticking with me until the end. See you in about two weeks for novel goal updates and four months for a general update!