Report for April
Here are my monthly stats for April:
- 9,100 new words of fiction written this month. 1
- 17 first drafts currently in progress (some untouched for a long time)
- 2 first drafts currently "ripening" before second draft.
- 2 second drafts currently in progress
- 1 second draft currently in the hands of "trusted readers."
- 2 third drafts currently in progress. (stuck, stuck, stuck)
- 0 third draft currently awaiting polishing.
- 1 fourth draft in currently in progress.
- 13 stories currently submitted to markets2
- 100 words in shortest story currently submitted.
- 14,000 words in longest story currently submitted.
- 0 offers of publication received this month. (Did get a "rewrite request," though...)
- Longest current wait without response: 345 days.
1 Best I've done since November, though still lower than it should be. A lot of the work this month was revision on two different stories, but I also did one complete first draft of a short story, two new drabbles and a lot of background writing on a new story idea.
2A higher-than-usual number of these are contest entries. Also, one market suggested that I submit my novelette in serialized pieces, so I'm trying that too.
To the extent that I'm submitting stories, checking submissions of stories, wondering about submissions of stories, I'm not writing. I spend an awful lot of time spinning my wheels that way. Thank how much you could write during that time!
The "fourth draft" is really something like a fifth draft, by now. It's a story I first started working on last July; I finished the first draft in October and the second draft in December. The comments I got in December made me realize the whole structure was wrong, so I did a third draft in March, and another in April. One perceptive reader pointed out a problem with two of the characters, and have to resolve it in this fifth draft.