Week 33 & 34 — Year of Short Stories 2026

2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I track my short story writing, from idea and draft to submission. These are the weeks of Aug 16 – Aug 30. Stats Stories Finished: 3 Submissions Currently Out: 10 Submissions Total: 32 Rejections: 24 Acceptances: 0 Submissions and Responses Two stories came back this week with form rejections: Dr. Clipboard and Red Eye. The Red Eye response was a whopping 180 days, but this is just the price you pay when submitting a story over 6000 words. With Dr. Clipboard free of its “no simultaneous submissions” shackles, I submitted it to two less monogamous publications. Red Eye is not so lucky; most publications that take longer stories (and actually pay) like to be exclusive. Goals My goals from last week: Keep up with critiques Hit writing/editing quotas every day. This was a change of pace from more specific “get X done” goals that I’ve been doing, to pure numbers. Ironically, I didn’t quite keep up with my quotas, but I did get…