It's the end of August, and it's a good time to do an update of if I'm meeting my yearly goals as a writer. I posted one of these updates at the end of April. Because my goals aren't huge in terms of numbers, only updating about every four months is reasonable. If I had daily submission goals, updating on a monthly basis would be a better interval.

I wish I had better news regarding updated numbers, though.

Short Stories Written and Polished: I have six stories that are polished to submission status, one that was but I pulled and need to polish again, and another that's mid-polishing. Two of these were already self-published, either on the blog via the Writer in Motion program or in my first Newsletter. It's a bit shady to include those two because getting them published via another outlet may not be feasible now that they already appeared once. The purpose of the polishing goal is to write stories that I can submit to markets. 
Including the four stories that probably should not be included, because they are being re-polished or already self-published, puts me at eight stories for the year - right on track! Not including them actually puts me behind my April update of five. 

Story Submissions: I have submitted stories 27 times so far this year. This is exactly on track. 
I made a goal mid-year to try to always have something submitted to Daily Science Fiction. They have a 2-4 week response time. If I kept up my short story polishing goals, and the word counts met those for Daily Science Fiction, I could meet this goal. However, not everything I am polishing right now meets their requirements, so this goal is on hold while I figure out how to meet it properly.

Rejections: My goal is for a 100% rejection rate on my submissions. This keeps me submitting, and I win if I meet it, and I win if I don't because stories were accepted! I am currently at 27 rejections. 

Stories under consideration at this moment: Three.
​The numbers look odd because I had six submissions with only one rejection in 2020. One of those stories was accepted and four have since been rejected. I also had another acceptance in 2021 of a 2021 submission. My numbers don't look like they add up, but they do. Writing this blog post made me check the accounting. I use both a tracking spreadsheet and The Submission Grinder hosted by Diabolical Plots. 

Querying: I sent my first query on April 18 and have sent 37 queries to-date. I received a partial request and a full request. I have had 29 rejections or no response after X time is a pass. 
I also haven't sent a single query in August. Why not? Over the course of querying, I came to the conclusion that my opening pages were in the way of requests. At the end of June, I wrote a new chapter 1 as a writing exercise - not a replacement, but a step back. I've been editing and polishing it, very slowly, since. Unfortunately, I've had two weeks where I'm trying to finish a critique I promised for the end of July and therefore not working on my own stuff. On top of that, I have some ARCs to read and review. Time management of my writing, editing, critiquing and reading time, which are essentially the same time, has been poor over the summer. My reading speed has tanked in 2021. This is a problem.
Overall, I'm not at novel goals at all. I don't have a dozen queries out right now. I'm not at a 10% request/response rate. 
Just as soon as I finish/send off this critique, I will focus on the novel chapter and then push my query numbers back up to a dozen out.

I currently have over 30 flash and short stories to finish and polish. I have two novels to edit and do more with besides the novel I'm querying. I have a third novel to finish. I have two novellas that I need to decide what to do with them. And I have a novellette I need to finish. I have more writing and editing than I can do unless I devoted my full time to it. Unfortuantely for writing (but fortunately for my bills) I have a full-time day job. However, fall and winter are coming. My mountain-faring will be reduced. My schedule will be shuffling. Maybe I'll take the advice I was given by a successful author: While querying my novel, plan and write the novel I would write if I could write anything. Now that I've already done that 3 times, cough. What do I want to write now?

This week I only have six stories for you because yesterday I celebrated my one year anniversary of starting social media as Adria Bailton, of working towards building a readership. Thank you for reading my original short stories, my goal blog posts, and my short fiction round-ups. I hope you enjoy these stories.

Fireside Fiction published Across the River, My Heart, My Memory by Ann LeBlanc in July.

Preface to "Monster Hunter" by Mary Soon Lee was published by Daily Science Fiction in June.

Seven more stories for you this week! Please enjoy.

As I Wait for the Killing Blow by M. Shaw was published by Fireside Fiction in June. It's about a 9-minute read at under 2000 words.

Daily Science Fiction published Too Cuddly by Mary E Lowd in May.

Today I bring you seven more stories for your enjoyment. This week had a good mix of spec fic and literary genres. 

Weaving by January Adams was published by Fireside Fiction in May, and is about a 13-minute read.

Daily Science Fiction published The Day Before the Wall Street Inferno by Lora Gray in May.

S/c/h/i/z/o/p/h/r/e/n/i/a/ & American Boy Shares Death Metal with His Abuelo by Brandon Melendez are two poems published by Lunch Ticket in 2018.

Seven more stories this week! Some weeks almost have a theme, which is honestly unintended. I notice there are several quite dark stories in this week's selection. Most of these sites will have content warnings, so please protect yourself. Some days these stories work for me and some days they won't. 

Beethoven for Chinese New Year by Morgan Song was published by Lunch Ticket in 2019.

For those just joining me, this summer I participated in the Writer in Motion program. 
​In Week 0, we were given a prompt to reflect upon.
In Week 1, we posted our inital, rough, unedited drafts.
In Week 2, we posted our self-edited drafts.
In Week 3, we posted edited stories after receiving feedback from assigned critique partners also participating in the progam.
During Week 4, we received feedback from a professional editor, and posted our final drafts.

This week is a reflective post. What did we learn from the program? What did we love or hate about it? How did it help us and how do we see it helping others?

Going back through, what the early week of Writer in Motion showed me is that I must do more on-the-fly editing than I thought. Keeping in mind that self-editing was for the next week, I actively kept myself from editing. Because of that, I ended up with a mess of a story since I didn't allow myself to erase things that I knew weren't working from the outset. And so, while I thought I believed in the "Write. Don't edit!" words on paper method of writing, it turns out I do not actually practice that method. When I'm "forced" or am trying to follow the rules of "no editing now, only edit later" I end up with everything on paper and it is a mess I despise. 

This makes a lot of sense to me. I tend to believe in "clean first drafts." Therefore, my first draft must be edited as I go along. However, I have never gotten stuck in a first draft because I was editing too much. That's when the "write, don't edit" is required and comes into play.

A big difference this program had is that I require myself to step away from a short story for one week before going back to edit it. I did not have that luxury in order to stay on track for the program. Each week, we were to do some form of editing. I would normally let my edited version sit and be revisited with more time between edits before sending to critique partners (CP). I usually go through CP feedback more than I was able to. There are suggestions and questions my CP raised that I feel could be explored but I simply didn't have time to incorporate because I needed more space and percolation time to do it. Even thinking I'd add them in for the final version, ten days of percolating was not enough to implement those ideas in a coherent manner. 

​I am so glad Erin Fulmer tweeted about this program and I joined it. I wish there was slightly more time and space for writing, reflecting, and implementing feedback. But I also see how it's easier to forget to work on your piece and post it with a two-week interval rather than a one-week interval. I love that the program pairs with editors. Getting editorial feedback above the writers group is an experience I've not had on short work. I'm pleased I was able to get that experience before the stakes are for a story for paid publication.

I will definitely participate again, should Writer in Motion have another season. 

Below is a selection of stories that were written for the program. It is not a complete collection and they are listed in no particular order. The genre and word count vary. Some are portions of novels. Many stories are posted for the program, but may be removed for market submission purposes.
In the Country of Shadow - Adria Bailton 
Fire Season - Erin Fulmer [Short story]
Smoke - Cheyanne Monkman  [Short story]
Smoke on the Water - Kristen [Short story]
The Looking Glass - Megan Van Dyke [Short story]
The Guarded - Amber Roberts [Short story]
Sulphur and Smoke - Meredith Crosbie [Short story]
Ravlenna's Fire - S.M. Roffey [Short story]
​Half Past Chai (or Too Thoughtful for a Haunting) - Keir Alekseii [Portion of a novel]
Becoming the Storm - Stephanie Whitaker [Portion of a novel]
Read more at the Writer in Motion Forums.

For those just joining me, this summer I participated in the Writer in Motion program. 
​In Week 0, we were given a prompt to reflect upon.
In Week 1, we posted our inital, rough, unedited drafts.
In Week 2, we posted our self-edited drafts.
In Week 3, we posted edited stories after receiving feedback from assigned critique partners also participating in the progam.
During Week 4, we received feedback from a professional editor. I was paired with Justin Manzano, who provided helpful feedback in both line edits and a short edit letter. 

I cannot thank my critique partners and editor enough for their feedback in helping me clarify the story, and for correcting that spelling error and line edits.

Below is my final version of In the Country of Shadow.

[Removed for Submission Purposes]

I hope you're enjoying the extra blog posts about Writer in Motion lately. I still may not have a bbok post this week because I've been reading not-yet published work as a beta reader. However, I still have your weekly short fiction round-up.

Fireside Fiction published Ren of the Thousand Faces by M. Elizabeth Ticknor in May.

Safe as Houses by Avra Margariti was published by Daily Science Fiction in May.