Overall Submission Record: September 2009

As indicted in a previous post where I discussed statistics with respect to Total Words Published, I indicated keeping track of certain statistics is useful, at least to me.

I should note, keeping statistics on submissions is different than tracking submissions. Once an author begins sending out works, especially multiple stories, novels, articles, and poems (among other pieces), keeping track of markets, dates and acceptances is important. But that's a topic for a future post. What is important with respect to this post is that I draw my statistics from my submission tracking file.

The table's contents is pretty straight forward except for Other. That includes situations where for example, a market closed while a piece was under consideration or I withdrew a piece for consideration.

I've been writing with an eye toward publication for about ten years, so many writers have far more submissions. In addition, my early efforts focused on novels which take longer to write and also have longer response times from markets. After my first novel I began writing articles, and before finishing my second novel, I began writing short stories, so the number of times I've submitted a piece (Submission Total) has been climbing faster. It may once again slow down as I will be focusing less on short fiction and more on novel writing since Flank Hawk has been accepted for publication.

Really, the Overall Submission Record is simply a snapshot in a moment in time. The totals changes every time I submit a new piece or resubmit a rejected piece or a piece is accepted. If I broke the statistics down further, my best success (submission to acceptance rate) would by far be for articles, so that kind of skews the table a bit. But the Overall Submission Record helps me track successes and struggles. It motivates me while keeping me humble.