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Reached my 1400th short story rejection!!!

rejection-letter-quote-signYep, reached the big 1.4k a few days ago. These milestones haven’t felt as large since I hit 1,000. In fact, I didn’t notice this one until a few days after it happened.

My submission volume is way, way down. I’ve gone from writing 20-30 stories in a year to writing, well, fewer than that. Although this year I’m already up to ten, so who knows?

1400 is the close of a decent century. I sold a story to Lightspeed, “Here Is My Thinking On A Matter That Concerns Us All” is going to be in their November issue. And I sold a story to Nature: not sure when “Corridors” is going to appear, but I think it’ll be before the end of the year.

As always, previous rejection milestones are listed below:

That’s nice. This blog has been around for so long! And I’e been submitting stories for sooooooo long. I’m sure nobody will do this other than me, but it’s interesting to go back through the milestone posts and see the change in mood over time. There are some pretty major variations in my level of optimism re: my writing prospects. Nowadays that anxiety has simmered down a little bit, especially with regards to my short fiction. I’ve certainly had better years, in terms of selling stories, than this one. But it also hasn’t been terrible. I feel like nowadays I’m in it for the long haul.

Comments (

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  1. Sean Patrick Hazlett

    I always appreciate when you publish these milestones. They give people a good perspective on just how hard it is to sell speculative fiction and how much perseverance it takes to make it.

    Keep it up!

    1. R. H. Kanakia

      Yes, it’s definitely not easy. Probably harder to sell to a top pro magazine than it is to sell a novel.

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