Here are my story stats for the first quarter of 2019. The end of a quarter is a good time to measure performance, find bottlenecks, and adjust strategy.

Current Pipeline Snapshot on March 31, 2019

• 16 ideas for stories are in my ‘ideas’ file.
• 6 stories are in various states of draft but are not completed. I may end up abandoning 2 to 3 of these because I can’t figure out a good way to proceed or I’m not happy with how they’re turning out.
• 2 stories are currently in a workshop receiving comments. I normally have three but one was too long and had to take up two of my three allowed slots.
• 7 stories have been workshopped and I’m in the process of making suggested changes and/or preparing to send them out.
• 8 stories are out sitting in slushpiles.
• 1 story is under contract and about to be published (pro market, FFO)

Productivity During 1Q2019

Another way to look at the same data is to consider production over the course of the three month period, January 1 to March 31, 2019.

• 9 stories were started, workshopped, completed, and sent out to market, 1 of which sold so far.
• 7 additional stories were started and workshopped but not completed. In most cases they need a couple hours of work to incorporate workshop comments. These will probably all go out to market in April. None of them have major problems that would hold them up (based on workshop comments and my opinion).
• 6 stories are started but not completed to a first draft stage, of these probably 3 will be completed in April and the other 3 might be abandoned.

Note that when I abandon a story, it may sit on my hard drive for several years but I typically do figure out a way to complete them at some point. I may finally have an idea of where to take them, sometimes a month later, sometimes a decade.

Bottlenecks

Where are the bottlenecks in my work flow?

There are plenty of ideas, and I got a lot of stories started.

I was able to get enough stories through the workshopping process. This is mainly because there are several workshoppers who almost immediately review whatever I post, so I can get a story reviewed typically in a week to ten days.

I need to do a better job of feeding back workshop comments into stories to complete them. There are 7 stories waiting for those final edits.

I don’t have a huge problem with starting stories and never finishing them (something I have heard other authors complain about with themselves). If you look at Q1 data, of 24 stories started 18 were either completed or are very close to completion with no obstacles, another 3 are expected to complete, only about 3 look sketchy. I would expect, in other words, to complete 21 of 24 stories or about 88% within a short period (a few months). But, I am trying to figure out where I went wrong with those three stories that face abandonment so I can reduce that kind of issue.

Status of Goals

With 9 stories completed in the first quarter and 7 more close to completion, I believe I’m still on track to hit the goal of 50 completed stories in 2019.

Regarding sales, it took most of the first quarter to start getting traction in markets but now I’ve got one sale and I’m getting “second round” notifications more frequently so hopefully the pace of sales picks up in Q2.

There’s a significant time lag between completing a story and selling it since most markets will take weeks to give you an answer, and most markets do not allow simultaneous submissions. Since the top markets have extremely low acceptance rates (half a percent to a couple percent) that means it will probably take at least a few tries to sell even a very solid story, and each of those tries may consume additional weeks.

Given these facts, it’s not surprising that only a single story sold in the first quarter back from my hiatus. It takes more than a quarter to sell most stories.

The answer to this is: get even more stories in the slushpile pipeline.

Strategy for the Second Quarter

My plan is just to keep plugging away, writing the best stories I can, and the sales will hopefully follow.

I will have enough material to increase the number of stories out to market from the current 8 to perhaps 12 or even 15 by end of Q2. Playing the numbers game, in effect. The problem at that point will be finding enough pro and solid semipro markets that match the genres and styles of that many stories. I have not tried going the antho route yet, but that’s a lot of markets so might be worth trying some of those in 2Q.

In the second quarter I will also probably write fewer new stories and concentrate on clearing my backlog of stories waiting for final edits, especially in April.

Do you have suggestions or techniques you use to help your productivity and sales? If so, please share in the comments!

See also: The Short Story Funnel: Tune Up Your Writing Process