2014 in review

42 acceptances (vs. 40 in 2013).

21 rejections (vs. 8 in 2013).

36 short stories published (vs. 45 in 2013), 1 article/essay published (vs. 0 in 2013).

I completed 53 short stories (vs. 40 in 2013).

I completed (to final draft) 198,000 words of short fiction (vs. 142,500 in 2013).

That's an average story length of 3,735 words (vs. an average of 3,563); the shortest story was 300 words; the longest was 10,000 words.

I completed and submitted an average of 1.02 short stories each week (vs. an average of .77 each week in 2013).

(I only track completed short fiction word counts, not words written for incomplete projects, nor words written for other forms of writing.)

Observations:

My productivity increased last year while my rejections increased and my sales decreased. There are at least two reasons for this:

1) I wrote a handful of stories just for me rather than for specific markets. Though I have already found homes for a few of them, these stories tend to be difficult to place because they don't clearly fit the needs of existing markets with which I am already familiar. They tend to collect rejections while I work my way through potential markets.

2) I attempted to crack new markets, and I put some effort into writing for markets to which I have not sold anything in several years and had not submitted anything to in quite some time. I had limited success with these efforts, though I collected some really nice personal rejections.