Things I want to improve: production in the new year

[swan_tower]

I didn't publish a whole lot last year, in comparison with the previous five or so. With Fate Conspire, Dancing the Warrior (the doppelganger novella), and three short stories ("Two Pretenders," "Love, Cayce," and "Coyotaje"). The forecast isn't good for this year, either, because I didn't write a whole lot, either: A Natural History of Dragons, Dancing the Warrior, "Coyotaje," and a novelette I can't tell you about yet, but which has already been sold. In other words, everything I wrote vanished from the pipeline pretty much as soon as I finished it.

I've posted about that latter bit before, reminding myself that selling stories is the goal, not submitting them. Still, I have only four things in the submission queue right now, and one or more of those probably ought to be retired. Even if I sold all four of them right now, and all four saw print this year -- both of which are unlikely -- that's not a lot of new publications compared to some past years, and it leaves me with nothing for next year.

Okay. So I need to write more short fiction. I've vowed this before, and met with moderate success; let's try that again. Simple to say, not so simple to do, but putting it here where the internets can see it should help.

Comments

[jsbangs.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

Interestingly, this was also my resolution for the new year. I was pretty embarrassed when I realized that I only finished two short stories and one novel over the last year, so my goal for the next year is to polish the novel and write SIX short stories. I already have one started, so I think it's doable.

Good luck to you on your goal!

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yeah, six short stories would be nice. That's only one every two months; it should be entirely feasible.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I know exactly what you mean about having to remind yourself that selling stuff is the goal, not submitting. I think partly it's a trick we do to ourselves to keep the responsible end of things up, assigning virtue to keeping stuff in the pipeline, and certainly it's better to do that than to let it languish. But there have been times when I sold a story and then thought, "Oh no, now I'll only have x things on submission!" And that's just silly.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I mean it's smart goal-setting to focus on the thing you can control, which is submitting. Except when the thing you can really control is only the rate of stuff going into the submission pipeline, not the rate of stuff going out.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we're on the same wavelength with that one.

[shadows-gallery.livejournal.com]

Hello; I was browsing around LJ tonight and followed a link back from yuki_onna's journal. You seem rather interesting, and I love following author blogs, so I hope you don't mind the add!

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I don't mind at all. Welcome!