December has started well, in terms of writing. I’ve had a piece (somewhere between poetry and prose) accepted this week and another flash fiction accepted earlier this year will be published soon. In fact, I’m informed both will be out next week. I will, as usual, keep you posted.

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Two poems I’d submitted to an extremely prestigious journal in May have finally been kindly rejected. It’s a sense of relief in a way that the wait (pun intended) is off my mind. And for the first time in a while I’ve had to withdraw my writing from consideration in various journals because it has been accepted. I’m still getting used to that idea: people wanting to publish my writing. This situation is a weird thing to get used to since I’ve only been trying (inconsistently) for 18 years or more for this exact thing – being published. It’s a funny old world eh?

Anyway, here’s the latest in my 2020 numbers game so far.

• Accepted or published: 13
• Rejected: 76
• Pending: 26

Other fun numbers: there is no pattern to writing being accepted. Some of my stories and poems have been accepted for publication within a day or a week of submission, and others, only after five months of consideration. This is the same with rejections. Some rejections have taken most of the year, others less than a week. It might be a numbers game, but it is also a waiting game.