My 2019 Year in Writing (And Also Sometimes Not Writing)

A report on submissions, rejections, and some Medium stats for the year

Photo by Maciej Ostrowski on Unsplash

For the past few years, I’ve been doing a year-end writing round-up/goal setting post, and it’s time for the 2019 edition. You can find the 2018 version here.

So first up — submission totals. I write humor, travel, and an assortment of random other things. Some things (like humor and essays) are typically submitted as full pieces. Other things (articles and travel pieces) are typically pitches. So this reflects a combination of the two. This year’s numbers:

• Submissions: 93 — Some of these were pitches that contained more than one idea and many were pitching/submitting the same idea to multiple pubs. It looks like there were about 39 different pitches/full pieces, pitched 51 different markets, and I sent out and one piece that was submitted 8 times before it found a home.
• Rejections: 66 (31 actual rejections, 28 non-responses, and 3 random other things like a pitch expiring in a submission system).
• Acceptances: 22
• Pieces still out for consideration: 5
• Assigned pieces: 3
• Acceptance rate for the year: 24%. My previous year’s rate was 31%, but that rate is…