2022 Annual Wrap-Up Post

Happy New Year, everyone!

I’ve already shouted about my publication successes for 2022 in my 2022 Awards Eligibility Post, so in this post, I thought I’d share some statistics about my submissions, a brief writing retrospective, and some random trivia about my stories, published this year, and my goals for 2023.

(If you’re curious how this compares to 2021, you can find my annual wrap-up post for 2021 here.)

Statistics

According to The Grinder, in 2022, I:

• made 200 submissions (vs. 224 in 2021)
  • NOTE: I made 33 (or 16.5%) of these submissions during the last week of December.
• received 5 acceptances (vs. 8 in 2021)
  • NOTE: One acceptance came in yesterday, on December 31!
• received 122 form rejections (vs. 210 in 2021)
• received 22 personal rejections (vs. 45 in 2021)
• ended the year with 2 hold notifications – one for a story, one for a poem!

In 2022:

• 2.5% of my submissions were accepted (down from 3.6% in 2021 and 3.9% in 2020)
• 11% of my submissions got personal rejections (down from 20% in 2021, but up from 8.7% in 2020)

I will admit, it’s hard to see the acceptance and personal rejection numbers decrease from 2021 to 2022, but anything above 0% is still a huge win!

Fun fact: Of the stories I’m shopping around right now, about 40% are original translations!

Retrospective

Let’s see how many of my goals for 2022 I managed to complete:

• [WORK IN PROGRESS] Grow my editing and translation business.
  • I made less income on editing and translation than I have in past years, but I worked on several new translations, identified gaps/problem spots in my workflow, and traveled to Spain to meet more authors of Spanish speculative fiction.
• [COMPLETE] Blog more regularly.
  • Posted 13 times in 2022 vs 2 times in 2021!
• [COMPLETE] Make at least 200 submissions for the year.
  • I’ll be honest – I entirely forgot this was a goal and managed to pull it off unintentionally.
• [COMPLETE] Keep writing more stories.
  • I wrote 7 new stories in 2022, all because I signed up for various NYCMidnight challenges and advanced to the second round in a few of them.
• [COMPLETE] Keep writing more poems.
  • Not sure how many I actually wrote, but I think it was at least 20. Currently revising several from my 600+ poem catalog & shopping several around.
• [COMPLETE] Keep reading more books.
  • I don’t do Goodreads (it’s too stressful for me), but rest assured I read many, many books in 2022! Some highlights of the year:
    • Anthology: The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories
    • Poetry: Ai Qing: Selected Poems and Malta: The New Poetry; an anthology of modern Maltese verse
    • Graphic novels: Dear Sophie, Love Sophie and Pinball: A Graphic History of the Silver Ball
    • Manga: Girls Last Tour and Laid Back Camp
    • Children’s book: Diario Interestelar
    • Nonfiction: American Brujeria
• [COMPLETE] Attend some specfic conventions.
  • Attended Flights of Foundry, Balticon, and HispaCon!
• [WORK IN PROGRESS] Keep helping writers improve their storytelling skills and reach new audiences.
  • I don’t know that I’ll ever consider this task complete, but I hope I’ve managed to help some folks in 2022!

Trivia

1. “Second Hand” (published in Shoreline of Infinity in June 2022) is set on the same worldship as my first-ever published story, “San Cibernético”. I wrote this one for an NYCMidnight prompt (genre: science fiction; setting: second-hand or thrift store; mandatory noun: a saw)!
   
2. “Handlebar” (published by Dark Recesses Press in August 2022) was almost entirely based on a nightmare I had (except for the opening, which is 100% based on a creepy experience I had while walking my dog).
   
3. “9 Dystopias” (published by Paranoid Tree in November 2022) was originally based on a dream I had shortly after the COVID-19 lockdown began in my area. None of the characters originally had names, the scenes were in different orders, and the piece was close to 1,000 words (+ rejected 30+ times) before I trimmed it down specifically to submit to Paranoid Tree.

2023 Goals

• Grow my editing & translation business! (I have several exciting editing and translation projects on the horizon + several more I’m working on. Hopefully they will all be complete by the end of the year!)
• Blog regularly!
• Self-promote every day of the year, per my 2023 New Year’s Resolution!
• Make at least 200 submissions!
• Write more stories!
• Write more poems!
• Read more books!
• Attend 1 spec-fic convention per quarter!
• Keep helping writers improve their storytelling skills!

My caffeine has kicked in – can you tell?

Last Things

Thank you to my family, friends, colleagues, clients, and everyone else who supported me this past year! Special shout-outs to everyone in The Dread Machine‘s Discord server + the queer writers’ server I’m in. I can’t express how much your encouragement has helped me get through some of the personal crises and rough patches of 2022.

If you’d like to work with me for Spanish-English translations or on editing projects, you can contact me by:

• Emailing me at fullstopventures[at]gmail[dot]com
• Sending me a direct message on Twitter @molo_writes
• Contacting Strikethrough Editing.