2022 Writing Rearview Review

Aeryn Rudel

Jan 3

Well, 2022 is in the books, and, as usual, I've put together a quick roundup of my writing endeavors and results for the past year.

Submissions

Sent: 83
Accepted: 14
Rejected: 61
Withdrawn: 6
No Response: 2
Accept %: 15.2/17.1

My goal is always 100 submissions per year, and I clearly fell short of that. I just kind of ran out of steam in late November. I also ran out of good stories to submit, which is something I need to address very soon. Still, overall, I'm satisfied with my numbers. My acceptance percentage is solid at over 15% (the second, higher number is the percentage if you don't count the withdrawals and no responses). I wish I'd sent more subs, of course, and if you just go by the numbers, I might have netted another acceptance or two if I had.

Output

Words published: 56,184
Words To Be Published: 37,532
Total Words Written: 150,000*

So, I had a total of 93,716 words published or accepted to be published in 2022. That's a novel's-worth of words, so not too shabby. The Total Words Written is really a guess, as it includes things like blog posts, microfiction, unfinished projects, and finished but unaccepted/unpublished projects. It's probably a bit more than that 150k, but I'm being conservative. I'm a little disappointed with this output, as I think I should have published a bit more. There are lots of reasons why that didn't happen, and ones I hope to rectify in the new year.

Notable Publications

I had some good publications in 2023, but the best of the bunch is my baseball horror novella Effectively Wild. You can be a pal, click the cover below, and get yourself a copy.

In addition to the novella, I published a fair amount of flash fiction, much of it free to read on the interwebs. Here are three of my favorites and the links to check them out.

Goals for 2023

Well, you can't have a year-end writing review without talking about goals for the coming year, but I'll be brief. Here are a few of the things I'd like to get done in 2023.

Send 100 submissions
Finish revising the novel that's been sitting on my hard drive for two years.
Write more freelance material, be it media tie-in or nonfiction articles
Continue my monster baseball series. I'm writing the second novella now
Release a collection of my short fiction

Those last two WILL happen, and the other three are certainly doable. Of course, there are other things I'd like to get done, but most of that is marketing related and, frankly, pretty boring, so I'll end here and say I'm optimistic about 2023.

And that, friends, was my 2022. I'd love to here how your writing year went. Tell me all about it in the comments.

Comment