Seems like a good time for a project update, so here we go!
One of my unofficial projects during the COVID times has been trying to submit stories and/or poems to three different markets per day. Some days, I blow that goal out of the water, some days I don’t touch it. It’s a tedious process, but I find it fun because having a ton of submissions out at once makes it easier to roll with rejections.
Right now, I have 133 active submissions (peak was in late spring/early summer, at about 235, I think), but I’ve found it far less demoralizing to get rejections when you have so many pieces out at once. (Using The Submission Grinder to track submission is SUPER helpful, in case you haven’t run across it before.)
For example, if I were to get a piece rejected right now (knock on wood), that piece would be less than 1% of my submissions, so it wouldn’t really hurt. But, if I were to get a piece rejected in 2019, when I only had 29 total submissions, that would sting a bit more, because it would have been/was 3.4% of my total submissions for the year. 2017 definitely hurt – each rejection was it was 14.3% of my total submissions for the calendar year. My point? I believe I have managed to insulate myself from 2020 rejection pain by deploying too many submissions to be hurt. TAKE THAT, FELLOW EDITORS (just please don’t reject all of my 133 remaining submissions at once, that would be too 2020 for me)!
Okay, enough rambling about submission statistics (but you know you loved them anyway). On to the project updates!
- I drafted a novel back in July (it’s version 3 or 4 of the courier novel that I’ve been working on for years, but this one’s a keeper, I think)! Could not have done it without my local Camp NaNoWriMo people giving such amazing moral support.
- I’ve still been cranking out poems faster than I can aggregate them, but I swear I’ll get a poetry book manuscript pulled together… one day.
- Speaking of poems, I’ve had a bunch of poems published, with two more forthcoming (“betrothed” from Honeyguide Literary Magazine, and “when i found you”, from Octavos)!
- I have a new short story (“Mother’s Love” from The Dread Machine) coming out soon!
- I’m trying to curtail my online pandemic book spending by getting more books out from the library, since they’ve reopened for curbside pickup, but this is involving a lot more driving to the library than I anticipated.
- Still haven’t finished reading all the books I own but haven’t read yet, but I think I made it through half of the ones with which I began enduring the pandemic.
- Translated that book from Spanish to English!
- Another author has kindly agreed to let me practice my translation skills by translating their story from English to Spanish, so that is currently in the works. I’m not as far as I’d like to be, but it’s a fun story and I hope one day it will reach Spanish-speaking audiences.
- Still haven’t finished Star Wars: Fallen Order, but I recently switched it to story mode in hopes that I will get through it slightly faster. I have really enjoyed the game so far!
- Weird fun story idea still hasn’t turned into a story, but it will.
- Sci-fi librarian novella still needs editing.
- I can feel another story brewing, no idea what or who it’s about yet, but it’s coming!
MOLO WRITES 