Writing goals for 2024

Well, January may almost be over, but it’s not too late to post some writing goals for 2024. I hope!

I’ve been focusing on getting some novel manuscripts written, revised, and/or polished in recent years, and I let short fiction submissions fall by the wayside. Which is too bad, considering there are a number that I never found homes for.

So, in the interests of getting short stories out there, I decided to do a few things. One: write new stories. Two: revise old stories that were never published. Three: send out previously published stories to markets that take reprints. In other words: submit, submit, submit!

It was fun to log back in the Submission Grinder for the first time in ages, and start logging new submissions. Having written a couple of new stories at the tail end of 2023, and another at the beginning of 2024, I decided to aim high. My goal for 2024? Twelve new publication credits, either first publication or reprint. I’m not fussy! There are a lot of great magazines and anthologies out there, and I want my work in as many of them as I can manage.

I had kind of forgotten how much work it can be to find just the right market or submissions call for a particular story, and then making sure your submission package matches all the requirements. And then: the obsessive checking of email, Moksha, or Submission Grinder to see if there are any new responses. Spoiler alert: having a lot of stories out on sub does not mean an avalanche of writing correspondence.

However, I have a number of secondary markets lined up for each story I sent out, so the inevitable rejections aren’t so terrible — I can just send the story out to the next possible home. And new submission calls, special issues, and anthologies crop up all the time. I figured that to get to a dozen new publication credits this year, I would need to keep at least that many stories out on submission at all times. Right now I’ve got 14. I also have a few more unpublished stories I still like that could use an overhaul. So with a few more drafts apiece, I’ll get those ready to send out as well.

Of course, the goal is to get to zero submissions, meaning every story has found a home somewhere. Maybe I’ll get there! Then again, I plan to keep writing new stories. We’ll see where we are by December 31…