“Tumbleweeds and Highways” was published in Clean Sheets.

“Web of Death” was published in MicroHorror.

I also finished the month on 100 Words which you can read at Val Gryphin’s December Batch.

Go check them out and if you have any comments feel free to leave them for me.

Go! Shoo! Then you can come back and read my stats!

Now, where were we. Ah yes.

In the year 2008, (According to my lovely Duotrope) I had 74 new submissions to 57 different markets, on 17 different pieces, with 11 submissions still out for consideration.

Of those 63 completed submissions I had 48 rejections:

• * 1 assumed rejection
• * 7 personal rejections
• * 40 form rejections

I also:

• * had 1 rewrite request
• * withdrew 7 submissions

And, (the best part) I received 7 acceptances, of which 3 have gone to print.

Other interesting facts:

• * the shortest response time was 0 days
• * the longest one is still out at 216 days
• * the next is an assumed rejection at 200 days (yes, I had emailed to check on it.)
• * the longest actual rejection was 189 days
• * of the acceptances, I had one that was 0 days and one that was 127
• * the piece that went out the most went out 13 times so far (and still not accepted!)

Overall I consider it a very successful year. I met agents and learned more about the business at a writer’s conference, and developed an elevator pitch I was able to give to an agent I respected. I was also requested to send the first 100 pages of my novel, which, even though it was rejected, was a great experience. I completed both NaNoWriMo and a month of 100 Words. I did a hard revision on Moving on Nightfall and am 2/3rds of the way through my second novel.

Yes, overall, it very good writing year.

Haven’t worked on either novel, because of my schedule, but I haven’t been totally non-creative. Last week between my daughter and I we made ten different batches of cookies. Wouldn’t think all that cookie baking would be a lot of work, but it is. Plus it makes me move slower than normal lol.

I have been a Woot.com fanatic for years. Woot is a daily deal site where at midnight central time (I’m in eastern, d’oh!) they put up an item for sale for 24 hours for a great price. Now, not too long back, they started a spin-off site called shirt.woot.com (there is also sellout.woot.com, and wine.woot.com, but we’re not going to go into them.) Shirt.woot features a new t-shirt design every day of the week, and three of those designs are the top three vote getters in their weekly competition called a “Derby.” That’s where the designers post their concept ideas for t-shirts and the Woot community votes on which they like. And yes, if you are one of the lucky three top ones, you do get paid $$$ for your design.

I’d been following the site for a while, but been a little more serious about it for a few weeks. I have been following the derbies, and tempted to try them. Now, as I said before, I consider myself a writer first, and an artist second, but I have been trying to bump up my art. I kept wanting to try, but kept holding back because of a) slight intimidation, and b) the damn wrist. I can’t hold a pencil for long enough to do a detailed drawing fast right now. (They announce the theme on Thursday, and open for submissions from Friday to Thurs, but if your submission isn’t in the first two days it’s got a really hard hill to make it to the top.) But this week’s theme was neat (doing the design in one unbroken line, so I decided to give it a try. (Click if you are a Woot member and want to vote for me!)

it’s not what I would call perfect by any means, but I did it and that is what matters. I had done some concept sketches Friday, my daughter cut her foot last night and wiped out any chance I might have had to work on it yesterday after work, but today I did it. I sketched it in pencil, then drew it with my micron pens. Scanned it in and worked on it in paint shop pro. I’m ok with how it turned out actually.

It’s titled “It’s Not Lost” and the caption is (and yes it sucks, but I was brain dead by that time):

As the world advances, and we become physically synthetic, what will we retain of our humanity?

I have a new DigiPro tablet (that I got from Woot actually!) that I haven’t broken out and used yet, but I think I will shortly. I may not do shirt.woot every week, but it is along the same kind of exercises as NaNoWriMo - it forces me to do it, and not obsess too much over getting it “just right.”

Now tomorrow I must upgrade my site to WordPress 2.7 *sigh*

I am starting 100 words, and I think it will be a really good thing for me. While I am finishing my NaNo. heh. Here’s today’s.

100 Words

She thought that the sensation of the migraine was like someone taking tweezers, and slowly pulling out the veins in her head, one by one, like someone pulling out unneeded threads from an old sweater. If she lay very, very, still, she could almost hear each one as it snapped off, leaving her face without a scaffolding. She thought about how her face would look, slowly crumpling under the weight of her skin, without anything to keep it up, kind of like one of those dried apple face dolls that sat on the shelf behind her dead grandmother’s kitchen sink.

I didn’t make it to my goal yet, but I did hit my 50k+ which is pretty damn good. I’ve been in Atlanta since the 22nd, so that substantially cut down on my writing time – plus the friend’s house I’m at had no wireless! A travesty! And all of the neighbors had their wireless locked up. So there were up 8 people sometimes (depending on who was there,) trying to use the home computer. Finally I gave in and for a thank you present I bought her a router and set up a network for her so that other people could use their laptops. I had to man.

So anyway, visiting cut down on my writing, but I still made 50k. I’m shooting for the rest of it (30k) by Dec 15-20th, depending on how busy we are at work.

I’m also doing the opposite of NaNo for the month of December – I’m doing 100 Words. Writing exactly 100 words, every day, for a month, starting tomorrow. Yeah I’m crazy. This is all about the discipline tho.

And the fact I am crazy.

More soon…

Back to work.

Almost 22k words. Hot damn!

I also got a rewrite request on a long erotic piece I wrote so I spent time working on that today as well, did a lot of revising and added about 700 words.

I also put in some edits I had done on a short piece I’m working on, but that was just adding them in, the total piece is only 611 words.

Now excuse me, I am going to go pass out now.

4,569 / 70,000 (6.5%)

And in that time period between this and my last acceptance I have also received 1o rejections.

And I have 8 stories out to 15 markets.

AND! NaNoWriMo starts in about 48 hours! I’ll be blogging my progress heh heh heh. I am invoking the Zokutou Clause as I have won NaNo before, and will be rewriting and continuing the one I started in 2003 – it is at 33k, but my writing has improved and there are some changes I want to make. I’m also shooting for 70k words rather than 50k – which means I am shooting for writing 2334 words a day. Yikes. I’ve been busting ass for a while writing though, so I’m going to try like hell to pull it off.

*starts sweating already*