Writing Update for July

Guys, I’m going to mix it up just a bit…And reserve the last of the month for a post on where my writing is at. I haven’t done this in awhile, so bear with me as I dust off the cobwebs here and break it all down for you.

The Writing
I have struggled with how to quantify what I accomplish here. The simple answer is: “You can’t.” No matter how much you add up the word counts, it doesn’t really tell you anything about the quality of the work. But here’s the second turn: that isn’t really your business. You’re the writer. Your job is to create. It’s up to editors, writers and critics to do the judgement, the weighing. So, pour yourself a stiff drink and try your best not to worry too much about it.

All that being said (and even that was too much), here’s my word count for July: 7,597 + 1 day for purely plotting/pre-writing. That’s pretty good for one month for me. And remember, this is all on the weekend away from my day job. So, pretty proud of that! The secret sauce here was a stay-cation (vacation where you stay home) which I used to write. I know that’s crazy! I know! I know!

The good news is that those 7,000-some words came through well. I knew where the story was headed (generally) and just let it go. And it worked.

Total Word Count: 7,597.

The Submissions
So, here’s the big lesson learned this month: If you happen to write stuff without speculative elements and you have to submit to “literary fiction” magazines, wait until September to do it!

I had all my victims (er…magazines) lined up. I studied their acceptance rates, what sorts of submissions they look for and their typical response times. I also realized that they accept simultaneous submissions, so I was readying my Blitzkrieg of submissions and slowly, horribly, I came to realize most Lit Magazines are not open for submissions during the summer. Bargh!!! But I did find one publication that was open and sent my story along to them.

I also kept circulating my speculative story (“Pacha-Mama”) which always gets close, but never gets published. Oh well! It’s a great story,  I believe in it and will keep sending it out.

Now that I put this down on a page, I see I could be a lot more active here. Still, there are some stats on the board:

Total Submissions: 2

Acceptances: 0

Rejections: 1

There we go! My handy writing update for July. We’ll return to our regular programming in the next post…And then I’ll do a look at my writing in August.

See you guys next time.

DJ