Slightly Belated 2019-in-Review Post

Before it gets completely too late to do so, I thought I should try to sum up how 2019 went for me in terms of writing stuff.

Submissions

I decided at the start of the year that I wanted to take my writing more seriously, and that included aiming for at least 1 submission per month... well I smashed that goal! My beautifully colour coded spreadsheet (who doesn't love a spreadsheet?) tells me I made 57 submission in total, some of which included multiple pieces.

I had 42 rejections (9 of which were personalised in some way, which was nice) and 4 non-responses. 2 were still out at the end of the year (I've now had a rejection for one of those, but a very friendly one!)

If your maths is any good you may have worked out therefore that I got 9 acceptances! I had to wait until the end of June for my first success but then had a steady flow on and off through the second half of the year. One of those was a shortlisting in the Writers' HQ Quarterly Flash Fiction Competition, and one was a longlisting in the Reflex Fiction Flash Fiction Competition.

6 of those pieces have been published, and the remaining 3 are due out over next couple of months! You can see a list of what's been published here, complete with links, should you so desire 😊

Events and Challenges

I took part in 28 Plays Later in February (for the second time) and Like The Prose in June, and successfully completed both, which generated a bunch of new first drafts for me (both challenges from The Literal Challenge, and thoroughly recommended if you need something to kickstart your motivation). I probably won't do 28 Plays Later again personally, as although it was fun I think I've concluded playwriting isn't for me, so I'll focus my efforts on prose/poetry instead.

Also in June I made the last minute decision to attend the Northern Short Story Festival - turned out to be a great decision as it was fab! I did some excellent workshops and met some lovely people. Definitely hoping to go again this year.

Last but not least, I also made it to two Writers' HQ one-day writing retreats, which are an amazing opportunity to just get your head down and get cracking - I came out with around 3,700 new words both times! And I'm already booked on for February and March retreats this year - starting 2020 as I mean to go on... If there's one near you, definitely check it out!

2020 Plans...

In keeping with the #Submit2020 challenge, I want to beat 2019's submission figures, so I'll be aiming for about 60 (or 5 a month). Totes do-able, right? I've managed 3 already in the first couple of weeks!

I also want to write/finish some longer stuff. I LOVE flash fiction and poetry and I'm not going to stop writing either, but I also have a bunch of longer short story ideas, and *mumblemumble* years' worth of aborted NaNoWriMo novel beginnings. As a starting point I'll say I'd like to do at least 6 short stories (of  more than 1,000 words), and complete the tree-mythology themed novel/novella I'm been sporadically working on for the last year or so.

Oh, and blog more often should probably be on the list too... although 'more than two posts a year' isn't a particularly high bar to beat! 😆