How I Got My "Writer" Groove Back

Despite being in the midst of a novel edit and having written a new novel just last November, I haven't truly felt like I've been in my writer groove for quite a while. I submitted some stories last summer in a flurry of productivity, but most of them have still netted no reply. I haven't written a new short story in ages.

That's about to change, however, as I've been invited to submit a story to an upcoming anthology edited by Julie E. Czerneda, to be published by DAW. I don't have a story ready that fits the guidelines for the anthology, so I'm busy percolating ideas right now. I have less than two months, which is short for me, but I will have a story to send. It's very exciting. It's making me feel like getting my groove back on.

So I've spent this afternoon going through my inventory of short stories and trying to put some new market plans together. I used to be good at keeping things in submission, but I've become slack. In a way it's no wonder: stories wait so long for a reply that by the time a reply does arrive, most of the market research one has done is out of date. Many, many markets are temporarily closed because of backlogs. Many more have cut their word count limits, pay rates, or publication schedules. There are still a lot of markets out there, but it takes a major investment of time to go through them, searching for the appropriate ones for just one story.

However, I'm not posting this just to gripe. I'm feeling good about getting back on track and having this new opportunity. I'm about to start a seven-session writing workshop that should also help me focus, and once this novel edit is done I'm going to start market research for that.

Hard work, all of it. But no-one ever said this business was an easy one.