Earlier this year I was really looking at my goals and what I wanted to achieve. I had this cocky idea of trying to publish 26 stories for the year – that’s one a fortnight. Crazy stuff. Especially considering in my entire publishing list up until the end of last year was a total of 17 stories – since the first in 1986. In the whole of the nineties I only published five (and one of those was a short poem). My best year until 2008 had seen three stories published, and in 2008 there were four. There have been a lot of years with none at all.
26 is pretty crazy. Anyway, I’ve published nine so far this year [will update the bibliography soon – but check posts below for more recent details], with two more coming out later in the year (okay, one of those is three poems, but I’m going to count that as a publishing credit). I’ve got another five submissions out in the world so I feel like I’m nearly halfway there, halfway through the year.
I’m stoked, really, this has been my best year ever, more than twice as many stories published as my previous best (2008) and more than in the whole of the eighties or the whole of the nineties or the whole of the rest of the 00s – very close to the whole of the eighties and nineties combined.
Admittedly I’ve found some friendly editors (thanks especially Aldo and Nathan), but I do think my writing is improving. I’ve just had some amazing feedback on a rejected story, from a very generous editor, that has thrown new light on my approach to writing and revising.
Next year’s goal will be even crazier – I’m planning to create a separate blog about that.
