December Update

Nothing much to report. Still reading for Orca and having fun with that.

I am quite “behind” on my quest to write a poem for every day, but I knew when I started I would have times where poems simply didn’t happen for awhile. Now that I’ve got most of the madly-preparing-for-Christmas activities (card and letter writing, photo sorting, bit of baking despite the sugar shortage, storm watching, etc.,) I’m hoping to not only get back to writing a poem each day, but to perhaps also manage two or three poems some days and therefore make up for the missing poem-days.

I spent quite a lot of time at the end of November and in early December sending out stories and poems to various publications, and also sorting through my older, still-out-standing submissions. Since I’ve started submitted my pieces only to places that pay, I’ve seen my personal acceptance rate fall from five to six percent to about 2.5%

That’s all right, I expected it to fall. In my planning for next year, knowing my current acceptance rate, I’m able to tell myself that if I send one thing out 100 times, or 100 things out one time each (or some more likely combination of the two) then I should have two acceptances after all that submitting. I’d like to have four works accepted for publication next year. I have already drawn myself 200 little boxes on a page in my submission-tracking notebook, ready to to cross them all off one submission at a time. If I get an extra acceptance and make it to five publications next year, great! Submitting my work is my least favourite part of the writing process, but it’s also arguably the most important part in getting my work out into the world!

I’m currently working on editing a creative non-fiction piece, trying to whittle it down to its most fundamental 999 words so that I can send it off to a flash-CNF contest. We’ll see how it goes.

Pretty soon, I should be able to announce the publication of a writing friend’s anthology about wild fires – I expect it to include my first publication of 2024.

Best wishes to all of you going into the new year!