Writing and Non-Writing News – June 2023

So… this is where I was supposed to bring June’s short story recommendations. For various reasons, though, there will be no story recommendations this months and probably not for the rest of the summer either. Instead, I bring this little news post about what’s going in my life in general and with my writing. Maybe, I’ll end making that a recurrent thing. We’ll see.

On the less than positive side of things, one of the reasons that I have no short story recommendations for June is that I simply didn’t find any worthwhile stories. Not a single one. I read stories from my usual go-to magazines, and while there were plenty of solid stories, I didn’t stumble across anything that made me go “wow, I need to tell people about this story”.

At the other end of the spectrum, our family went from three to four people during June. Naturally, this kept me from reading as much as I otherwise would, and I expect it will keep me from doing much reading for the next few months. Who knows, though? Maybe the little one will turn out to be a heavy sleeper.

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On the writing side of things, there is depressingly little to report. It has been ages seen I’ve received an acceptance letter. The only good thing about it is that rejections do get easier to deal with the more you receive. At least, that’s the way it has turned out for me.

It’s strange, though, because I really do feel like I have improved a lot as a writer in the last year or two, but I’m seeing far less success with my submission than I did in the years prior (not that a flash fiction piece published once a year is to be considered a massive succes, but still). It’s the kind of thing that can really drive you nuts as a writer if you let it. I’m trying not to, though. I just keep writing the next story and sending it out until something finally sticks.

Right now, I have pieces in the slush piles of ten different magazines/anthologies/competitions, which so far is a personal record. That is some sort of success, I guess.

And, yes, I know just writing and submitting more stories won’t necessarily change anything. Ultimately, whether a story gets published or not something I control. And, yes, some of those stories I have send out are probably too weird/experimental for any editor to ever want them. And a good deal of those stories are probably not on a publishable level either, because I’ve tried to focus more on being regular and productive with my writing during the past year than producing quality stories.

That said, there are a couple of those stories which I do feel represent my very best writing, stories I keep believing in even though they might have stacked up several rejections each.

I guess, the only I can control is to keep trying and keep improving my writing.