Tag: submissions

Updates

2024 Writer’s Round Up

mwinikates

It’s been a year, hasn’t it? I have two small children (getting less small by the day!) and looking back at pictures from the beginning of 2024 just has me stunned by how much can and does happen in a year, how much growth can occur, and how much it’s worth taking some time to appreciate it all as the year turns. So here’s a brief roundup on writing things I accomplished in the last year.

By The Numbers

  • 13 new works written and completed to the point of submission this year (with a few other partials or nearly-ready)
  • 45 works submitted for potential publication or entered in contests and pitch events
  • 30 rejections or passes, though several invited me to send other work, and one held a submission for a few extra months for further consideration before finally passing.
  • 4 still out waiting for responses
  • 1 acceptance
  • 1 Picture Book Conference attended
  • 1 Published (or soon to be) work

Contests and Events I Participated in:

  • #SkyPitch (I got one agent “like” on a pitch and made my first agent query)

I’m not quite done for the year yet, one or two more projects to finish in the next few days, but I can look back and say I’m really pleased with my writing year. Here’s to more good words in 2025, and good wishes to you all!

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Find out what the bees know

mwinikates

Zip right on over and check it out! "Bee Line logo" by SPUI at Wikimedia Commons
Zip right on over and check it out! “Bee Line logo” by SPUI at Wikimedia Commons

What’s the buzz, you ask? The summer issue of Window Cat Press is out, and in it are four of my poems, accompanied by photography by the ever-delightful Michele Morris. Check them out, and all the other goodies within here!

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Submissions feel like chocolate cake tastes

mwinikates

2014 is off to a good start!

For those of you who actually click through to my whole blog, you’ll have noticed that we have a spruced up theme for the new year, complete with a breathtaking family photo from Cape Breton’s Cabot Trail for inspiration.

It’s also been a good year for progress on assorted writing projects.  Aside from the 30ish letters sent this past month which included progress on my collaborative Modern Epistolary Novel Project, I’ve workshopped 20ish pages of Dragon’s Midwife with my writers’ group, and got some useful feedback that I’m eager to get back to, as soon as I finish those last few tricky climactic scenes in the first draft.  (Does anyone else have trouble beating up on their favorite characters? I do!)

And finally, I also submitted a flash fiction piece to Three Minute Futures, which was good fun.  Brevity is not my natural inclination, so a story in under 600 words was a great exercise.  Results come out in early April.

Plans for March include finishing the Dragon’s Midwife draft and starting revisions.  Hoping to have a nice thick binder of material to scribble all over on the plane to Florida!

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Not much of a splash

mwinikates

courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, National Postal Museum
courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, National Postal Museum

Well, my first official ‘no thank you’ letter arrived today for “Fish Girl.”  However, I do not lose heart–an official ‘no thank you’ is like the Post Office declaring that Kris Kringle is Santa Claus: I must be a real writer!  *wry grin*

“Fish Girl” did not find a home at this particular magazine, but I got invited to try again, so that could have been a lot worse.  Sadly, it was basically a form letter, no particularly helpful comments included on letter or manuscript, but it’s all ok.  I would have been pretty ridiculous to expect instant success, and didn’t.  So I shall try again, with this publication or another, with this story or another.  I have a lot of works in progress and a lot of ideas still bubbling away in the back of my head.  Shall file this one away and keep going.

In other news, I now have a new desk chair from which to keep writing (yay!) as well as new curtains, some picture frames, and a rug.  My room is looking stunningly habitable these days…pity I never seem to be in it.  When is April vacation week (3rd busiest week in the museum calendar) over?

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Fish Girl Upon the Currents

mwinikates

Despite running into a number of roadblocks, including a fussy printer and a number of magazines which have ceased operation, I managed to get “Fish Girl and the Kapok Spirits” out in the mail today!

Given the number of closed magazines in the last few months and also how ‘plugged in’ the sci-fi/fantasy crowd is in general, I am also interested in looking at submitting to webzines. Does anyone have any leads on where I’d start that kind of search? Writer’s Market only covers periodicals which have printed editions.