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Rejections and Dejections – April

Rejections and Dejections GraphThis has been an amazing month. I’ve written a lot, played a lot of games and playtested a bit. Overall I feel that things are picking up, although I expect that the next month will be slower due to the amount of time I’ve spent on writing and game design this month, and not being able to match it in May.

But we’ll see. Here’s what happened this month:

Fiction

  • New words of fiction: 18 600 words, I’ve started writing a longer work, so my completed word count will remain low until I finish it.
  • Completed stories: 7
  • Completed words: 5 950 words
  • Submissions: 23
  • Rejections: 16
  • Sales: 0, although I’ve gotten through the slush once (still pending)
  • Published stories: 0
  • Currently submitted stories: 22 (of 24 total in circulation)

Well, I’m not having any luck with my submissions, but I’m keeping on writing and practicing my writing so I’ll hope that I’ll break through at least one more story this year. It would be nice to be published again, however, since I started sending out to pro-level publications only I’ve garnered a lot of rejections and nothing much more. I know I can get published in token, or even some semi-pro, markets reliably, but that’s not what I’m looking for. So I’ll keep eating rejections until I learn to write good enough stories to land in the major magazines reliably.

I’ve also retired a few stories. They’d been rejected constantly and I feel that they aren’t up to the level of my writing right now.

Non-Fiction

  • 8 000 new words
  • 5 new blog posts

Almost half of those words are my Copyright and plagiarism post. Which is fine. I haven’t gotten much traction with it yet (it’s been two days) but I’m planning on reposting it on Medium and hopefully gain some recognition there.

Also, my email list is closing in on 100 subscribers, which is a lot more than I thought I’d ever get.

Game design

  • New prototypes: 1
  • Playtests: 3
  • Games Played: 15

The best game I played this month was Star Wars: Rebellion, which I only got to play once. My most played game is Splendor, with 6 plays.

I solo playtested a few times, but still nothing much happening on this front. I’m focusing on writing rather than game design because 1.) I’m able to do it alone, and faster, and 2.) it’s more fun right now.

Dreams of Futures Past Book Cover

2 comments

  • Congratulations on getting out 23 stories last month. That’s still some pretty good progress, man.
    I put out my first short story this April, a kind of parody of Conan the Barbarian, and it got rejected also. But I’m still writing, and I’m looking forward to getting out my first novel by July.
    Send it to the big guys first, and see what happens.
    There’s always self publishing if they say no.
    And then more stories I’ve yet to write.
    Keep up the great work!

    • Filip Wiltgren

      Thanks, and you too! Keep writing, keep sending it out, and sooner or later something will stick 🙂

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