Personal Writing Summary 2008

Back on January 3rd in a post titled “Collateral Light” I wrote:

“In 2006 I only earned four story rejections. In 2007 I received 19 rejections, 12 of them during the last two months of the year, which isn't bad at all considering that was a busy-as-hell (bah, going forward) time at work. During 2007 I wrote twice as many stories as during 2006, and poems as well.

2008: Goal is to earn at least 50 rejections (of course, always hoping for a sale!) and write at least 20 stories (which means again doubling 07 production).”

So how, in fact, did 2008 turn out?

I exceeded the goal of 50 rejections, earning a total of 79.

I sold four stories throughout the year (two of which have been published and two of which will appear in ’09), but alas none to Pro-category markets.

I ended up writing 17 new stories, so not quite 20 but pretty decent. I also continued trying my hand at poetry, but didn’t sell any of the poems.

I’m feeling good about my progress, specially as I went from zero sales to my first four.

And then there’s also the non-fiction writing, which just kind of evolved out of my desire to analyze and talk about what I read, and was unplanned.

I wrote/published 23 critical pieces in all: 16 reviews for The Fix, 1 review for Foundation (to be published in ’09), sold 2 reviews to Strange Horizons, sold 2 reviews to Fruitless Recursion and 2 essays to IROSF.

Counting this entry, I blogged 200 times in 2008 (so far).