Daily Goals Progress (Accountability and Encouragement!)

Nothing yesterday (anyone else noticing a pattern here?), but 1149 today for a total of 21612.

I submitted another short too.

@pdblake I note two patterns

1. Your word counts are feast then famine. Or maybe Famine then feast?

2. You post. Then I post.

Hopefully some more people will feel inspired to post and break at least one of those patterns

I think the first one though is natural and healthy. The writing-brain needs think-time too!

Yesterday was editing a story. Today was more editing of that story and then trying to cut something down to meet Fantasy's word count as I didn't have anything in the right word count that they hadn't seen, though I did have things in the wrong word count

Probably only about 200 words of original fiction written

1560 today for a total of 23172 and another chapter done.

One flash written this weekend, then edited. Brought it down from 1.3k to 750 words, so I did a good job, I think. Slush keeps on piling. Another 50 stories just appeared today, and I only read 40 out of 50 from the batch I received a few days ago. But I'm catching up.

I'd really like to sub to Fantasy, but all my stories are dying in other mags' slush piles and have been doing so for months. I'm always reluctant to withdraw when I've been waiting for 90 or 100 days for a reply from a mag I really like. I love Fantasy mag too, but the whole market becomes so hard to understand. Are 3 to 4 months a hint at a possible interest? Or perhaps they haven't even opened the file yet? Will Fantasy even open again, and perhaps this is a last chance to finally sub to them?

@hannya Sometimes it means they are considering it but I would say in most cases there's no definitive message in how long a publication holds your piece - some mags will review a piece in hours (The Dark) to days (Clarkesworld) and others will leave it sitting on a desk for 3 months before spending the same amount of time reviewing it. Use submission grinder to check whether you are being held longer than other pieces submitted at that time. The graph is more useful than the average wait times for this. Even then, this has misled me many times as perhaps its in the queue of a slow slusher, or that slusher had some 'life' happen and are struggling to catch up or its been reassigned. Always check the spam box if they are not a moksha - The Colored Lens for example often ends up there for some reason. 

@hannya oh...and as to Fantasy Mag, they've only just relaunched and have been talking about doing so for a long time so I doubt they are opening under new ownership just to close after 1 issue.

What about your week 0 or week 1 WW pieces? Were they fantasy? As someone on that forum mentioned, sometimes its worth adding upcoming open to submission magazine criteria or flash prompt to the WW prompts so you create something instantly usable.

@gideonpsmith Yes, it's so true. I monitor my subs in the Grinder (too often, lol) but it can be the impact of end-of-year holidays, an influx of subs, or like Apex for instance a new reading system. I'd say that most of the times, especially for mags sending hold notices, a no-reply means a not-yet-read. Even after months. Which can be frustrating when another dream market opens for a handful of days, and the decision to withdraw somewhere else stresses me haha.

My 3 flash are fantasy indeed, which is surprising as I've mainly written scifi over the past few months. But they're so terrible. I think I'll trunk them all. Not bad for a rushed attempt, but not good enough to sub anywhere even when polished. Which doesn't mean I didn't have fun when writing them!

But you're probably right. They'll probably reopen. But when? If they get 1000 stories or more, it might be they'll have enough for the year, maybe part of 2026 as well. Same as Apex: now we don't know when they'll reopen; they do say they probably have more than enough for 2025.

Submission tetris is so much fun 🤣

Posted by: @hannya

↑

 

Submission tetris is so much fun 🤣

Honestly, if there were a service that took all my short stories and formatted them (anon vs Shunn, Times Roman vs Courier, etc) and just submitted to matching magazines per length and genre for me, and just kept them out there and ONLY notified me when I got an acceptance. I would pay them my entire payment on the short fiction I wrote to handle that. 

'Submission Grinder' despite its unfortunate choice of name, is at least apt - submissions *are* a grind

Nothing for a couple of days now. I've got a bit of a stomach bug and I'm feeling a tad knackered so I'm revising my target for the month down to 25K, which is still double what I wrote last month so I'll take it.

Ok, I managed 2220 today (nice round number) for a total of 25392.

Just 1084 today for a total of, wait for it, 1084.

I also submitted to two agents and submitted two short stories, one of which I received an email for telling me that they enjoyed reading it and were holding it for consideration, on the same day. That's the quickest held notice I've ever had. I'm not sure I've had a rejection that quick to be honest.

managed a 30 day writing streak January, but broke it yesterday. 'Life' is not cooperating!

I wrote 5300 words today.  

1581 today for a total of 2665 and another chapter finished.

Brain's a bit fried (actually, you never know, that might be some kind of treatment) so taking a day off. Instead, I'll try to get the next chapter straight in my head. 

1933 words yesterday, 1788 today, and they're quite decent if I may say so

wow @marius @pdblake @annax - you all are killing it on the word counts!  

oh, and a meager 740 words from me today!

Having a harsh start of February. January passed in a flash (haha) because of this flash fiction challenge, but right now I'm confused and down. The last few weeks, I've had some feedback on a few stories (flash and short) and this all filled me with doubt. I know nothing is perfect and that's why I need feedback, so I can revise and improve the story. But I felt most of the feedback was kind of negative? I don't engage readers enough, the prose is decent but average, the voice doesn't work, the plot is unclear...

Yep, not negative as such, but from what I read from the crits, my stories are just that: mildly decent, mildly average, nothing really worth the effort. Edits could fix that, I repeat to myself. But I'm not sure I want to anymore. I was doing fine until this morning, and it all crashed down on me. What am I even doing here?

I'm having a break for now.

Posted by: @hannya

↑

Having a harsh start of February. January passed in a flash (haha) because of this flash fiction challenge, but right now I'm confused and down. The last few weeks, I've had some feedback on a few stories (flash and short) and this all filled me with doubt. I know nothing is perfect and that's why I need feedback, so I can revise and improve the story. But I felt most of the feedback was kind of negative? I don't engage readers enough, the prose is decent but average, the voice doesn't work, the plot is unclear...

Yep, not negative as such, but from what I read from the crits, my stories are just that: mildly decent, mildly average, nothing really worth the effort. Edits could fix that, I repeat to myself. But I'm not sure I want to anymore. I was doing fine until this morning, and it all crashed down on me. What am I even doing here?

I'm having a break for now.

what you're feeling is normal. And the WW 'competition' is awesome for 2 things - 1. getting you to produce multiple stories in a short period of time. 2. Making you feel crap about your work.

The second of those is not so 'awesome' but I do think its inevitable at a certain level. We all want to be loved. We all want our stories loved. So we hang on the opinions of 10 randomly chosen writers who may or may not be good writers themselves. Who may or may not be predisposed to your type of writing. And who are judging completely unpolished work.

If you write fantasy but they only like horror, you're not going to get either the scores you deserve nor the feedback you need. They're just not your audience. And while it seems like if ten people read your story and give feedback that tells you something sometimes it does, and sometimes it doens't. The groups may be random but strange coincidences still seem to occur. I've had literally every week the comment "needs to be longer" and "well told but I'd prefer a happy ending". The happy ending comment has been from literally everyone every week - and thats generally just not what I write. So I am, by total conincidence, in a group of writers who are not going to appreciate the kind of story arcs/endings I write. I tried last week, and it still ended up everyone dies. But you know what, Shakspeare killed everyone off too 😉

So what I'm saying is, not to just ignore feedback, but to take it with a large grain of salt, and to see what bits resonate with you. I don't write happy endings and so I'm not changing that. Most of my pieces were intended to be 1000 words as I do want to actually submit them somewhere at some point so yes a few more words may be necessary (surprise! ie I don't personally find that helpful unless its specific about what), but when they tell me they need to understand the entire religious system of a fantasy world and whats the childhood of the main character and what are the limitations of x,y,and z, thats tells me more that that critiquer isn't used tor eading or writing flash, and doesn't know/hasn't yet learned the limits of flash - they want everything to be a 10k story before they're going to be satisfied with it.

So remember the point is to produce and get some general directions from the feedback, but the latter is probably a lot less useful than the former.

ps - the proof of the above is - do you look at the high scores some stories get and yet you think "Um, I hated that". That definitely happened with me. Which just proves, this is about audience, not about value. (and if you haven't , maybe you're just in a very talented group - skim read some of the 3rd and 4th from the top rated stories in other sections and you'll see they're not universally appealing)

Personally I think the scores are too arbitrary to be relevant. They represent one persons reaction and are a measure of the persons match to the story, not just the story. Art shouldn't be graded on a 1-10 scale to one decimal point.

I'm 5700 words so far and I've got a good 3 hours left of solid writing/editing to do! I'm feeling very motivated today!  

1898 yesterday and 2533. Call me butter.

Posted by: @gideonpsmith

↑

wow @marius @pdblake @annax - you all are killing it on the word counts!  

Selection bias my friend 😉 Writing wise I had a crappy January and stayed quiet, but now that I've had a few good days I'm very eager to share the results.

I could offer the daily goal of looking at my story every day and making progress. The mountain is high, the steps are small, but I will get there.

It's just not very exciting to say, "I took three steps today."

1848 today for a total of 4513 which, considering I had a therapy session as well, doesn't seem too bad.

about 800 words today but on blog/website stuff so nothing urgent. Hoping to get back to some fiction this weekend. Hoping. 

did I just sign up for a poetry workshop when I have no time? Am I crazy?? 

Yes I did. And yes I am.

981 yesterday, 885 today. Not my best work, but the days were kinda hectic. I passed the 10K mark though, so well on my way to 20K this month.

1543 words today.