Once the fall semester ended and I graded student portfolios, I devoted myself to sending out poetry written since July.
Here are my December statistics:
Poetry: Submissions to 21 journals (Honeysuckle Chapbook Contest, Gravel, Jewish Literary Journal, Rust + Moth, Foundry, Rattle, Cincinnati Review, Whale Road Review, Ninth Letter, Agni, Outlook Springs, Redivider, Manhattanville Review, Wherewithal, Bitter Oleander, Diode, Noctua Review, Passages North, Bennington Review, Literary Mama, The Literary Review), one acceptance (Rust + Moth), three withdrawals of an individual poem, and five rejections (Phoebe, Sugar House, Minerva Rising Chapbook Competition, Diode, Boxcar Review).
According to Emily Harston’s Submit Publish Repeat, it’s all about the numbers.
Creative Nonfiction: I began work on a new piece, finally.
Fiction: I have a draft of a new short story that desperately needs revision.
Academic: Submitted revision of a peer-reviewed journal article. Now we just have to wait and see.
Children’s: New idea for a middle-grade novel that came to me one night during insomnia. Revised my dance marathon picture book and will send it back in early January to the editor who requested the revision.
Book Reviews: I’ve caught up on children’s Holocaust book reviews (3) and one genealogical memoir for the Association of Jewish Libraries.
Holocaustkidlit.com: I’ve been inputting ten books a day into my site database. An estimate culled from the Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database is about 1100 titles published 2002-present, so that’s what I’m aiming for.
Big plans continue for Winter Break
I plan to revise a novel in verse, a YA historical novella, and draft an academic paper for Northeast MLA in the next two weeks before I return to campus. At the same time, I have two children’s books (one Holocaust-related) to review for Jewish Book World.
2016 Statistics
Here they are:
Poetry: Acceptances 9; rejections 52
Creative Nonfiction: Acceptances 2; rejections 4
Fiction: Acceptances 1; rejections 8
I’m not sure what to make of these numbers. I only sent out one short story in 2016 and really only one creative nonfiction piece. Sent out a lot more poetry. It would seem to me that maybe I ought to invest my time in creative nonfiction in 2017. I have an idea for a new short story that won’t require travel. The revision of my current short story WIP does require travel.
Question 4U: How is your writing going? Have you determined any specific submission strategies? How did your 2016 go?
The Whole Megillah 