writer of speculative fiction.

2024 Writing Wrap-Up

Well, it is inexplicably somehow 2025, which means it’s time for a 2024 writing wrap-up post! One year ago, I decided to set a formal New Year’s resolution for the first time. “I think I want to try writing short stories,” I told my wife (who was promptly like “yes, obviously you should do that, you’ll crush it”—shout-out to love, 10/10, highly recommend). And then, much more hesitantly: “I think I want to stick with it long enough to get fifty rejections.”

2024 was a life-changing, eye-opening sort of year. It was also often an overwhelming, exhausting, and painful year. There were months of 2024 that were, no question, the most stressful months of my life. There were also moments in 2024 that were, no question, some of the most joyful moments of my life. And… so much of the joy comes back to that New Year’s resolution, to letting myself take writing seriously, to the community of other writers I’ve been lucky enough to meet.

So! First, some sappy rambling about some of the highlights of this year, like attending the Viable Paradise writing workshop or my time as a first reader for Diabolical Plots. Then some charts and stats and numbers. And then some goals (sort of) for 2025! Like everything I write, this post will be unnecessarily long, but I hope you find something interesting or useful here.

A blue-tinted image of books. White text reads: "2024 Wrap-Up: The Year in Sappy Rambling."

I am, historically, not the best at rejection. I am easily discouraged, inclined to think “oh, I’m just bad at this, no point in trying” at the first sign of failure. And I’ve also historically been anxious and protective around my writing, especially when it comes to fiction, something I’d always wanted to do but felt like I couldn’t do… like that was something for other people, not for me.

In other words, resolving to 1. write short stories, 2. share them with strangers for judgment, and 3. intentionally collect rejections was sort of like resolving to do the three most stressful things possible all at once.

And I did it.

Allowing myself to make space for fiction in 2024—and allowing myself to believe that my words are worth sharing—has been nothing short of revelatory. So, before I get to my submission stats, I wanted to linger on some of my favorite experiences from this year:

  1. I expected to spend months (if not years) collecting rejections before ever getting good news in my inbox. And… that wasn’t the case. But that’s only true thanks to a very patient editor who gave a novice writer a chance—and who was willing to spend an astonishing amount of time and effort helping me shape something imperfect into the best story it could be. Working on edits for “Linden Honey, Blackcurrant Wine” remains and will probably always remain one of the best writing experiences of my life, fiction or otherwise. I will always remember the thrill of getting that first email inviting me to revise the story (and every time I sit down with an academic revise-and-resubmit request, I will think wistfully of the generous and detailed feedback I received on this story). I could not have asked for a better start to this year of writing.
  2. This summer, I joined the Diabolical Plots team as a first reader, and I read… an absurd number of submissions. I could not stop reading submissions. I was painting my parents’ living room while reading stories on my phone; I was reading stories while walking my dogs, who could not figure out why I was paying less attention to them; I was staying up late and waking up early just to read stories. I learned a lot from all that reading. But, more importantly, I loved being part of that team! Everyone there is lovely, and they’re all so generous with their time and expertise. I even got to shadow the editing process for one wonderful story, and ended up getting credit as a co-editor, which was extremely nice of the actual editor, Hal Y. Zhang. I’d love to do more editing in the future, so that behind-the-scenes glimpse was fantastic.
  3. Attending Viable Paradise was not only one of the highlights of this year but one of the highlights of my life. (At some point I should probably write a blog post all about that experience.) I get emotional every time I think about it. I met some of my heroes, and said embarrassing things to them about how much I love their work, and they were still nice to me afterwards; I made new friends;  I learned so much not only about craft, but also about how to talk about craft, how to articulate why we do the things we do; and I left feeling more confident about my writing than ever before. I just feel better. More certain that I have something worth saying and that I can say it in interesting ways. More convinced that a form rejection does not mean “not only do I hate your story, but I hate you on a personal level, you little weirdo.” I loved every minute of that week.
  4. The biggest highlight of this year has been community, in all its different forms. I’m not a big social media person, in my non-writing life—but, when I started writing stories in January, I also joined Twitter and started very nervously inserting myself into conversations with Real Writers. And even before I made that first sale, a handful of folks treated me like I, too, was a Real Writer. I won’t list their names, since that would probably creep them out, but I will forever be grateful for the kindness of those who helped pull me into that virtual community as if I belonged there. For all the miseries of social media, I’m not sure I would have managed to stick with writing all year without those connections. Both online and in-person, I’ve met so many wonderful writers, some of whom have become real friends.
  5. Alongside a couple of those friends, I’ve started work on [SECRET REDACTED PROJECT]. 2024 has included months of planning, thousands of messages exchanged, so many spreadsheets, and boundless excitement for everything that comes next. I can’t wait to tell you more about [SECRET REDACTED PROJECT] later this year; we’ve started dropping some social media hints, for the eagle-eyed and/or the chronically online. More details soon.
A blue-tinted image of books. White text reads: "2024 Wrap-Up: The Year in Numbers."

I didn’t do a spectacular job tracking any kind of metrics this year beyond those details stored in the Submission Grinder. For example, I don’t know how many hours I spent writing (too many, according to my back) or exactly how many total words I wrote (too many, but also, somehow never enough). But I do know how many stories I submitted and what happened to them, and I also know that I always find it super helpful when other writers share that information, so I figured I would share mine too!

So, here are my numbers for the year:

A pie chart in shades of pink, purple, and blue, breaking down 85 submissions into different categories. The numbers are repeated below the image, so it's purely decorative.

And here are those numbers, accompanied by some thoughts:

  • I sent 85 total submissions into the world in 2024, 16 of which are still pending.
  • I received a total of 58 rejections in 2024—which means that I bested my 50-rejection goal—including 11 personals and 47 forms. I celebrated 50 rejections with a cookie cake.
  • I withdrew 6 stories (3 of those withdrawals were for “Linden Honey,” and the other three were all different stories).
  • I had 5 stories accepted.

All of that translated to one story published in 2024 and four stories coming in 2025! Publishing is so much slower than I expected. I mean, I knew vaguely that the publishing industry was slow, but I didn’t realize that was true of short fiction too. My longest-pending submission is currently at 154 days; the average age of my pending submissions is 64 days. And, while three of my accepted stories will be out in early 2025, the publication date for the fourth is still TBD.

(Of course, if you’ve been publishing for a while, none of that is surprising. But I wanted to mention it here, for any newish writers who might be reading this post, since it did come as a surprise to me!)

Here’s what my year looked like, month-by-month:

The first submission went out on January 23 and the last three went out on December 19. My submission numbers got a little higher on average later in the year, which makes sense: I had more stories to submit! The ratio of rejections to submissions stayed fairly consistent. I quickly discovered that, as many people mentioned, rejections feel better when I’m sending out new stories too. May was less fun than June, even though the number of rejections stayed the same.

I also think talking frankly about money is important, something I’ve learned in my non-writing life. I always appreciate it when I see other writers doing so. I’ve been paid for four stories (one payment will come closer to publication) for a total of about $730. The fifth payment will put me at about $1050 for sales made in 2024. My hourly rate for writing fiction is probably a fraction of a cent. At this point, writing fiction is a hobby, not a notable source of income. It is cheaper than some of my other hobbies, at least—unless short story magazines start selling shiny dice and unpainted miniatures, and then I’m doomed.

(In other words: “I want to make lots of money” is not a good reason to start writing short stories. “Writing short stories makes my life happier and more interesting” is a pretty good one, though.)

So, okay, what exactly did I write in 2024? The Submission Grinder tells me that I finished 21 pieces. 13 of those were micros or flash, 1 was a novelette that I now think may turn into a novella, and 7 were short stories in the 2k-5k range.

While I didn’t track my total wordcount for the year, which is undoubtedly higher than the below—maybe even double it, given what an outliner I am—I can say that I wrote at least 175k words in 2024. I calculated this number by adding up all my finished short fiction, as well as some of my academic writing. (I fiddled with novel projects in 2024, too, but didn’t track that.) I did not include unfinished stories or notes/outlines, and these numbers also don’t really reflect revisions that may have shortened stories. So… not perfect, by any means, but it does give some sense of how my writing time was divided this year:

A pie chart breaking down 175,000 words into categories. 81.5K was nonfiction notes, 35K was nonfiction, 13.5K was a novella draft, 35.5K was short stories, and 9.5K was flash fiction.

Of the fiction, it’s all speculative (or SFF, or “genre,” or whatever you want to call it), and almost all fantasy. Off the top of my head, I think I wrote 6k words of sci-fi: one short story, which sold, and a flash piece, which has not. Much of it is historical fantasy, though the novelette-that-may-become-a-novella is set in a secondary world, and a few other stories are passably not-of-this-world too.

Some increasingly specific miscellaneous categories, just for fun:

  • 11 of the stories are supposed to be sad.
  • 5 of the stories are supposed to be devastatingly sad.
  • 13 of the stories are about women in love.
  • 10 of the stories have titles of 6+ words.
  • 6 of the stories are about a very old woman.
  • 3 of the stories are about a very old woman going for a walk and meeting up with an eldritch being.

And… I think that’s everything worth mentioning! Actually, if anything, that’s too much. This post is comically long. But I started writing in January, when lots of people were sharing wrap-up posts like this one, and I loved reading them. It meant a lot to get some kind of glimpse behind the curtain of this impossibly mysterious world of short fiction. So, if you’re in the same spot, I hope this post might be clarifying in some way. I hope it at least gives you a useful sense of what a year spent writing might look like.

Lastly: if you’re like me a year ago, and you’ve spent your whole life telling yourself that you aren’t a writer, take this as your sign. Go write a story. Send it somewhere. See what happens. If you ever have any questions, or if you’re just in need of enthusiastic encouragement, please don’t hesitate to reach out here in the comments or by sending me an email. I would love to be useful in any way that I can. I’m not at all an expert on anything in the world of writing/publishing! But I’m always excited to cheer others on, and I can point you in the direction of other resources, too.

A blue-tinted image of books. White text reads: "2024 Wrap-Up: Goals for Next Year."

This is going to be, I suspect, a chaotic year. Not a bad one, but full, and hectic enough that setting new fiction goals for 2025 feels tough. I’ve got a lot going on professionally this year—including finishing my dissertation, which should be more than enough to keep me busy. Outside of academic work, I’m also trying to leave plenty of time for [SECRET REDACTED PROJECT]. And, while I returned from Viable Paradise thinking 2025 might be the year of focusing on my novel, I just don’t think I’m capable of holding two massive projects in my head at the same time. The dissertation wins by default. Everything will be different (maybe???) once that’s done.

So, instead of trying to break my 2024 records, my 2025 goals are just to hold steady:

  • 50 rejections
  • 75 submissions
  • 5 new short stories written

Those are the only numbers I’m aiming to hit. More abstractly, though, I’d like to keep finding joy in writing. I want to feel myself improving. I want to try writing stories outside of my comfort zone. I want to deepen my connections with friends and community. I want to keep making space for fiction, even when I’m overwhelmed. And, most importantly, I’d like to spend this year writing stories that matter. In 2024, I wrote a lot of stories about queer love. In 2025, I’m more committed to those stories than ever before. I’ve talked about this before, but I feel like I’m often writing stories for my younger self. I’m thinking a lot about her lately, and all the young people like her. So… this year, and every year, I want to keep writing those stories and sharing them.

Outside of fiction, I’m committed to being a loving partner, friend, and family member. I’m excited to return to teaching this fall, because my students are the best, and I love them. I want to be more involved in my community, especially when it comes to supporting local organizations fighting for justice in a time of injustice. To borrow from Rasha Abdulhadi, I want to throw sand on the gears of genocide. I want to survive. I want to help others survive. I encourage you to think about how you, too, might deepen your commitments to those in need in your community, in Palestine, and around the world in 2025.

Wishing everyone the very best year imaginable. Write something weird. Tell people you love them. Be safe, be well, be brave.


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