2019 was a grim year for me publishing-wise. I had only two acceptances, one each of fiction and poetry, the worst rejection rate since 2012 and for the first time since I sold my first story, I went a year without any income (not even a token sum) for any of my writing.
As the chart below shows, my fiction submissions for the year were up a fair amount. Perhaps they should have been down instead? My acceptance rate was 0.5% (down from 3.6%) and my positive response rate was also down—21% from 27%.
Poetry looks a little better, but only just. The green band at the bottom of the chart showing acceptances is nearly invisible. My acceptance rate was stable at 0.4% but the positive response rate climbed from 8.2% to 17.3%. I’m beginning to feel like I have some idea of how to write a poem.
started strong but life interfered to slow things down dramatically in the second half of the month. Chapter 17 of the novel came together reasonably quickly, but I had trouble getting into chapter 18 (it’s finally beginning to flow, at least). Meanwhile in short story land, I’ve been working on a new story which is a reworking of an idea that I had as an undergrad in college but I lacked sufficient wisdom to write as anything more than an exercise in extended snark. With any luck the new version that is slowly extruding itself from my subconscious will be actual art. I do worry that, even though the concept is 33 years old, it might seem like it’s overly connected to the current zeitgeist.
through technology, we reach engineering. Spotting a book about Tesla, everyone’s favorite wizard of science, I decided I’d see what Cooper has to say, especially given his provocative title.