July Progress Report and August Goals (2016)

Back when I was blogging daily at my author site, I ended every month with a post looking at my writing accomplishment for the month and a look at my goals for the next. While recording an upcoming podcast on getting discouraged, I realized that putting my monthly “report card” out there was actually quite therapeutic and publicly listing my goals for the next thirty days helped hold me more accountable to reaching them.

And while it was mostly for my own benefit, I do think for the newer writers out there, those posts did present a good look at some of the day-to-day stuff us writers do that we don’t often talk about.

So…I thought…now that the blog at www.JasonBougger.com has evolved into Write Good Books, why not bring back that feature to this site?

And with that said, let’s take a month in review for all of my writing/editing stuff.

Short stories

First, in the world of short stories, I was sad to see the announcement that Strange Musings Press would be closing its doors on July 1. I had two stories published in their Alternate Hillarities anthologies, including my flash piece, “Waking up in the Woods,” which was my first semi-pro sale. The other was “Death Cat Saves Halloween,” which is still one of my favorite story stories.

Anyhow, with the closing of Strange Musings, I now had two out-of-print stories to try to find new publishers for. I found some new markets accepting reprints and send them off. This prompted me to go ahead and resubmit a few other out-of-print stories I had, so all in all, I sent off five total reprints. On top of the five unpublished short stories I have out, that brings me up to ten short stories currently under review. One story, a flash piece titled “Premonition” was accepted by an online magazine and schedule for print in April of next year. So yay!

Here are some quick stats:

• Number of submissions: 10
• Number of rejections: 3 (2 personal, 1 form)
• Number of acceptances: 1
• Number still pending: 10, with one shortlist

WIP Novel

I finally have a title I’m fairly happy with, but I’m not ready to share it yet, because this book has changed titles more times then John Mellencamp. I’ve made great progress with the current revision. I’ve been reading through and creating a new outline, focusing almost entirely on the plot, and also noting which parts need more detail, and which characters need more depth.

The one thing I’m realizing about this novel is how much I enjoy it. The writing still needs  a lot of cleaning up, but there really is a great story in there. I’ve got just over a month until the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold Conference and I plan to pitch the novel there.

I have no doubt that I’ll be able to meet that deadline.

Theme of Absence

Theme of Absence continues to grow and even after 2+ years, I still enjoy running the site. I’ve been so fortunate to have the talent of Betty Rocksteady and Tim Bougger providing art, as well as the huge pool of talented authors who submit work to the site.

In July, we received 13 submissions, down slightly from previous months, and have an overall acceptance rate of 26%. If you’re a writer, you should definitely consider sending something in and if you’re a reader, be sure to check it out as well, as we’ve got a great variety of fiction archived there and have been publishing original short stories since June 2014.

Write Good Books Podcast

Scott and I have continued recording and the podcast is 15 episodes strong. The big news this month is that I have begun the process of uploading the podcast episodes to YouTube. The Write Good Books YouTube Channel will eventually host other fun stuff, but for now, give it a look and check out some back episodes of the podcast.

Goals for August

Finally, let’s close out with some writing goals. My focus this month will be to “finish” the novel. By September 1, I should have a draft suitable for pitching at the conference. If I can complete it by then, I’ll have the first week of September to practice and perfect my pitch. So with me luck 🙂

As for other stuff, I’m really planning to get back to posting here a little more. Let’s shoot for new content on Mondays and Wednesdays, as well as continuing Five Links every Friday.

And that’s it for now. I hope your weekend has been great so far, and I hope you have a great and productive month of August.