100,000 Club

So this weekend I hit one hundred thousand words for the year.

I’ve challenged myself to write at least a thousand words a day, and I hit 100K officially on March 18, which puts my average at about 1300 words a day. Not bad. If I can keep this pace up, I could potentially hit 400K for the year, which would be great.

I’ve had a few days here and there where I haven’t had the time to write, but thankfully, those are few and far between. In contrast to this I’ve had some days were I have doubled, tripled, or even quintupled my goal. I had one frenzied Saturday where I cranked out 5200 words. I’m proud of such a day, but also just as proud of the 1K’s as well. This is a long slow march to a beautiful destination, but it is also a hell of a journey, and if one is not enjoying the journey, what is the point, right?

I’ve been working exclusively on short stories at this point while I try to hone my craft. I have also worked in a little development on a novel I hope to start later in the year, but for now, the short story rules. I’ve had a couple come out at around 10K, but most have been in the nice, compact (and submittable) range of under 5K. I’ve also written a lot of flash, which I’ve really enjoyed. This surprised me, as I didn’t think I would enjoy writing such short short stories, but it turns out I do. It’s nice to be able to pull off a complete story arc in a day–really leaves one with a feeling of a job well done.

I’ve been doing a lot of submitting as well, which makes me feel great also. I just hit forty submissions for the year, and I’ve got fifteen out as I write today. Got a rejection this morning from Ideomancer. I hit Duotrope's Digest to find another market, and voila, the story is right back out there in circulation. I love getting a story right back out there. It feels like I’m a batter at the plate, and someone throws me a curve ball, but I just connect with it and knock back it into the sky. Let’s just hope it drops for a hit, or flies over the wall for a home run.

Resubmitting a story quickly, or having multiple stories out there, really takes the sting out of rejections. I highly recommend it.

Write on, kids.