Aeryn Rudel's Blog, page 24

The Complete Picture: Nine Years of Submissions

Anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time knows how much I love stats. From rejections numbers to acceptance percentages, I enjoy diving into the data to see how much I’ve progressed as a writer over the years. Now, normally, I pull these numbers from Duotrope by running Excel reports, doing a little math, and then pulling important data that I often share. Well, Duotrope has a new (I think?) feature that gives you all the basic submissions stats by year, and when I ran it, I real...

Weeks of Writing: 1/1/21 to 1/10/21

Here’s my writing report card for the first week and change of the new year. Let’s take a look.

Words to Write By

I really like this quote from novelist and playwright William Somerset Maugham,

“There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”

― W. Somerset Maugham

I can go on Twitter right now and find a dozen different posts telling you dozen different ways to write a novel. Some of these posts will even be quite emphatic about how you must write said no...

2020 Writing Review Part 4: The Novels

I thought I was done with my writing review posts, but I spoke too soon. I, uh, remembered that the bulk of my writing time in 2020 had not been spent on short stories and their submissions, but on a pair of novels. So, you know, maybe I should talk about that.

2020 Writing Review Part 3: Acceptances & Publications

Today we’re getting to the good stuff, and in the third and final part of my 2020 writing review, I’ll cover the acceptances and publications I received last year.

Let’s get to it with some basic numbers.

Submissions: 87
Rejection: 68*
Acceptances: 19*
Acceptance Percentage: 19.8%/20.9%

The 19 acceptances I received in 2020 ties my yearly best. The reason the rejection and acceptance numbers are starred is because some of them (two acceptances and four rejections) came from stories submitted i...

2020 Writing Review Part 2: Rejections

This is part two of my year-end writing review. You can find part one here. Today, I’m going to be looking at all the rejections I received last year and try to live up to the name of this blog.

2020 Writing Review Part 1: Submissions

This year, I’m going to break up my year-end review into three or four posts so I can do a deeper dive into the data. I’m starting off with the raw submission numbers, and I’ll cover rejections and acceptances in their own posts, as there are separate points I want to make about them that don’t fit into this broad overview. Okay, so how did I do submission-wise in 2020?

Submissions: 87
Acceptances: 19*
Rejections: 68*
Withdrawn: 1
Pending: 5

My goal was 100 submissions, but I’m more than happy...

2020 Review Part 1: Submissions

This year, I’m going to break up my year-end review into three or four posts so I can do a deeper dive into the data. I’m starting off with the raw submission numbers, and I’ll cover rejections and acceptances in their own posts, as there are separate points I want to make about them that don’t fit into this broad overview. Okay, so how did I do submission-wise in 2020?

Submissions: 87
Acceptances: 19*
Rejections: 64
Withdrawn: 1
Pending: 5

My goal was 100 submissions, but I’m more than happy ...

A Week of Writing: 12/14/20 to 12/20/20

One more week of writerly endeavors. Here’s how I did.

Words to Write By

Here’s a great quote from novelist Nora Roberts

“[As a writer] you have to have the three D’s: drive, discipline and desire. If you’re missing any one of those three, you can have all the talent in the world, but it’s going to be really hard to get anything done.”

― Nora Roberts

I believe talent is a necessary element in the makeup of a successful writer, but is it the most necessary? Some very successful authors like Nora ...

Close Calls: The Shortlist Rejection

I’ve discussed the shortlist rejection a few times on the blog, but it’s worth revisiting, mostly because I’ve gotten a bunch this year.

A Week of Writing: 12/7/20 to 12/13/20

Another week down. Here’s how I did.

Words to Write By

Here’s a classic quote from William Faulkner.

“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”

― William Faulkner

We’ve all heard this one before, and it’s been repeated by a lot of authors. What does it mean, though? Like all writing advice, its open to interpretation, and it likely means different things to different writers. For me, a darling is usually a humorous line of dialogue or a character thought I fall in love with that doesn’t real...