A short retrospective of my writing achievements (and failures) in 2021.
This year started incredibly well, with me writing 7 short stories for an anthology, which will be released next year. Unfortunately, I cannot say anything more about it at this point, but it was an honor and exciting to work on this project, and I can’t wait to see the final product!
After being published with a short story for the first time in 2020, I continued the trend of submitting my stories to various online and print outlets, and can celebrate 2 publications in 2021:
- My short story Snowstorm was published by Land Beyond the World Magazine on April 12th
- My short story The Way the Wind Blows was published by City. River. Tree. on September 16th
I further received 2 more acceptances for stories that will be published very soon next year!
The full submission overview for 2021 is as follows:
- 47 submissions total
- 4 accepted (2 published)
- 32 rejections
- 3 withdrawn
- 6 open submissions
My big writing goal for 2021 was to finish the final edits for The Cats of Yesteryarn, and while I didn’t quite achieve that, the edits are almost complete, so I can hopefully start querying for it early next year.
This year I also tried writing something new for NaNoWriMo, but had to give up halfway due to burnout, which provided a valuable lesson for me. Keeping a balance between work, writing, health, and other aspects of life is difficult but very important.
I was rather active on Twitter and tried to write a #vss365 story every day – I did not always succeed, but I managed to write something for almost every prompt word. Going through all my very short stories for 2021 and picking a handful of the best is more effort than I can spare at the moment, so instead, here are my favorite 3 #vss365 tweets from December:
Something was missing this Christmas. It wasn’t the snow or the smell of a real pine tree or the exuberant food or the presents. It was the soft #jingle of a tiny bell on a cat collar.
— S. J. C. Schreiber 🦇 🎄 fruitbatwoman (@fruitbatwoman) December 22, 2021
This Christmas, the house was #quiet. #vss365 #vsschristmas
“Mom, I want a pony!”
— S. J. C. Schreiber 🦇 🎄 fruitbatwoman (@fruitbatwoman) December 23, 2021
“#hush, I told you, Santa can’t bring you a pony – it doesn’t fit through the chimney.”
Hours later, the construction dust settled on a girl with a sledgehammer.
“There, I fixed it. Now there’s no #reason he can’t bring me a pony!” #vss365 #vsschristmas
“After trying the demo version of ‘adult life,’ I decided to not purchase the full experience.”
— S. J. C. Schreiber 🦇 🎄 fruitbatwoman (@fruitbatwoman) December 29, 2021
“Are you sure? There are fun DLCs like ‘first mortgage’ and ‘tax return’, and our popular nuclear family #bundle!”
“No thanks. It feels too much like pay-to-win.” #vss365
Happy New Year, and thanks for reading!
S. J. C. Schreiber 