Progress

I have one of those t-shirts with a sloth on it saying “We will get there when we get there” and I feel this is particularly true for my cookbook.

It’s a week and a bit later than I hoped, but the fourth draft of my cookbook/guidebook is done! I’m lucky enough to be able to say I’ve already got a few people interested in beta reading it for me. I’m hoping to have beta reader feedback by the end of June, and that should keep everything on schedule to have this thing finally published by late August or early September.

With my fiction and poetry, I recently re-calculated my acceptance rates for short works, over all that hovers around 2.5% over all the years I’ve been keeping track and this year so far my acceptances are at about 1%. Which of course suggests that if I send out a story or poem 100 times, it’ll only be offered publication once! I can math.

This rate is a bit discouraging, especially as one of my goals this year is to receive four new publication offers. And the chore of sending out submissions is not getting any more enjoyable. (I passed the 100 submissions-made-this-year mark earlier this month.) I continue to try to believe the low acceptance rate I’m currently experiencing is because I am now insisting that I get paid (even if only a token amount) for all my published work. Previously, I didn’t, and I had a 5% or so acceptance rate for awhile. Most “reputable” publications have statistics showing their acceptance rates from their piles of submissions run between 1 and 5% so I guess it all still more or less lines up.

I continue to get a fair number of “we liked it, but not enough to publish it” second or third tier rejection letters, where I feel my story or poem came quite close to being accepted. These rejections are nice, and also especially frustrating! I have one story that I’ve submitted twelve times now, and it has had five “nearly there” rejections. Just tell me what little thing more you want from this story, and I’ll change it, world! I also continue to have a story which I really enjoy and think clever, but after ten rejections so far, no-one else appears to care for it at all.

Now that my cookbook/guidebook edits are complete for now, I will be getting back to my unfinished stories and poems – my first ‘stop’ will be a children’s analogy story I wish I had an audiorecorder for back in February when the idea hit me. I dictated most of it to the shower, and I think it was pretty decent, but now I’ve got to try and remember enough of it to actually record it somehow! I’m going to start with getting this children’s story done because one of the publishers I’ve had success with before is actively looking for children’s stories.

Thinking of publishers, remember that winterjewelpublishing.ca has a call up for short stories, non-fiction and poetry from Canadian writers answering the prompt “It takes a village.”

Gosh, and I’m supposed to be working on another thing for her, too…

My spring garden could use a bit of work as well, although I see the dandelions are managing just fine by themselves.

We will get there when we get there, sloths!

The London Writer’s Salon is hosting a 24-hour writing marathon later this month, for free through Zoom. If you’re interested, you can find more information through this link.