Welcome to Deep Dives, a bi-monthly subsection of TMI! Here, I dive deeper into my thoughts about a topic that doesn’t fit in the weekly newsletter.
*NOTE*:
Today’s Deep Dive may be too long for email, so be sure to click “View entire message” or read on the web or app to see the whole thing.
As 2023 comes to an end, I thought it’d be interesting to take a bit of a look back at my year in writing — especially since this was the first year I really had all the time I wanted to put in to it. At least, after January 20th, that is. (Minus the mild existential crisis, obvs.)
My first couple of years actually submitting my work I barely kept records other than to label satire pieces in a spreadsheet and document what outlets I’d submitted to (rejections as well as acceptance). That basically gave me a ratio of submissions to rejections to acceptances, and was mostly for my own sanity so I could tell myself I was actually doing something to move toward my dream of being a ~*writer*~.
About mid-year this year, I finally started keeping track of the dates of those submissions as well, to get an idea of just how long some publications take to respond. If I’m honest, patience is not my strong suit, so I’m less likely to submit to publications that take months and months to reply simply because I want to know if I’m in or not. (*cough* Even if those outlets are very high profile. *cough* )
(This is a me problem, of course — I can barely wait a week to hear back about my work most of the time, so months are excruciating.)
This is also the first year I’ve spent MOST of my time working on my writing. I’d estimate that I spent a minimum of 40 hours per week working on writing spread over all 7 days a week, and I think the days that I went completely overboard and wrote well into the night average out easily with the days I was dealing with writer’s block and decided to refinish a piece of furniture.
I used to worry that I’d run out of ideas, but I don’t actually think that ever happens. Even with all the time in the world I still haven’t been able to get to all of them, and in fact, my to do list has grown exponentially. Maybe one day I’ll summit Idea Mountain…but that day is not today.
So, without further ado: Let’s dive in to the numbers side of the words.
Substack
I didn’t miss a single weekly post this year! Some ran shorter when I was traveling or didn’t have as much time, some a bit longer. But by the end of the year that’ll be 52 posts, plus 8 Deep Dives (had a few difficult months there with moving and travel). That’s 60 total posts!
Every Friday’s post runs about 1200 words on average and takes me somewhere between 2 and 4 hours to write (everything takes longer if I get distracted by something, which is extremely common). The largest post I wrote this year was the NSYNC post which topped out at nearly 2800 words, with an estimated 13 minute read-time! (I’d guess this took somewhere around 16-20 hours to write — making gifs is time consuming, and I watched that video approximately 2.3 million times. Most of the Deep Dives are probably in the 6-8 hour range, time-wise.)
In January, someone with a large following shared the post I made the Friday I got laid off on Twitter. Plus, Google’s layoff was a trending topic, and things were heating up.
I got a massive uptick in views which was amazing, but less than .5% of the people who looked at the post that day actually subscribed.1 Plus, I was so out of it that day that I could barely write anything, much less an actual newsletter, so what a lot of people did see wasn’t my best work. I did get a few new peeps, though, so I’ll take it!
Overall, the Substack has grown this year, so I’m thrilled about that! I may not be a businessperson, but I do know that when the little line on the graph goes up and to the right, that’s good2.
(My first post was in April 2021, even though I signed up for Substack months earlier.)
TV Pilot
As part of my attack on ideas that I’ve been stewing on forever, I decided to write a pilot. I took a class at iO many years ago from Michael McCarthy (RIP), and still have the amazing notes to help walk through the process in about 6 weeks.
I went through it on my own and finished a draft of We’re IT, a half hour sitcom about working in IT (combining my time at Groupon and Yelp). It ended up taking me about 8 weeks to fully finish and be happy with, though it obviously still needs some tweaking.
I entered it into two contests via Coverfly - The Big Break and Screencraft. Unfortunately I didn’t advance in either competition, but the deadlines helped me push forward to finish my draft.
I’m sure I’ll still be rewriting/editing this thing again, but it’s really nice to have it out of my head and onto paper (read: computer screen).
Short Stories
This year I entered the NYC Midnight 150 and 250 word competitions, which are always fun. I really enjoy getting the wild prompts, although for some reason like 3 times in a row I got “ghost story” and tbh I’m a little tired of those so I’m taking a break from the contest for now.
I got through to the second round in one competition and didn’t place in the other. So I ended up writing 3 pieces of flash fiction which I’m really proud of — and should probably actually try to get published somewhere!
I also finished a short story I started drafting in 2016 called “The Globe of Gas” and submitted it to McSweeney’s Quarterly. It wasn’t selected for publishing, but I do intend to rewrite the piece again and resubmit elsewhere.
It’s nearly 6000 words and is the largest complete fiction story I’ve written to date, and I’m really proud of it. I look forward to honing my skills in this genre — I really like writing fiction but have the least amount of training/skill in it, so I think I tend to avoid it because it feels harder than just popping out a satire piece in a couple weeks and being done with it.
Packets
I wrote one TV packet this year for the reboot of at Midnight. I turned it in on the Friday before the writer’s strike started, so you can imagine how that felt.
I recently saw the announcement that Taylor Tomlinson will be hosting the show, which means two things — they’re still doing the show, and I didn’t get picked to write for it. Haha.
Honestly I’m excited to see it — I really liked the original and I adore Taylor Tomlinson, so hopefully it turns out great!
I also submitted a packet of headlines to Reductress (for the 5th time)! I still haven’t been accepted as a contributor there, but I feel like every time I write one of these I get better.
All the practice led to me eventually getting accepted as a Hard Times contributor, so I definitely think there’s a benefit. And now, pitching regularly there is giving me even more reps — so — maybe next time!
Satire
We’ll break this down into two parts: Satirical pieces and fake news.
Satirical pieces
Here’s a list of my published satire pieces from this year:
Weekly Humorist
The Belladonna Comedy
Slackjaw
Ye Olde Time News
Greener Pastures
Also, and I won’t name names — I had a pitch accepted by a satire publication, wrote the piece and submitted it, and it was never actually published. I’m not sure why or what happened, as they have not responded to any of my follow-ups, and don’t seem to be posting on the site any longer, either. After nearly 3 and a half months, I’ve made the difficult decision to pull the piece in hopes it can find a new home somewhere else.
Fake news
Hard Times
Hard Drive
I’m pretty consistently pitching something to these sites either every day or every other day, and I’m loving it. It’s such a great feeling to be able to simply pitch a headline and wait for acceptance rather than doing the whole piece beforehand.
These are a bit different since they’re through these publications, but these pieces have over 20,000 likes on Instagram and Twitter (combined) and their social media posts been seen over 150k times. Wild.
(I also have two more pieces in the pipeline with these outlets, but I’m guessing they probably won’t come out until after the new year so they’re not included here!)
Rejection
So — that’s all the fun part, the part where the pieces get written up and/or accepted and published. Now for the less fun bit: Between those 7 published satirical pieces, I had 10 rejections (meaning I submitted them 17 total times).
I had another piece that I absolutely adore (and fully rewrote this year) that I submitted 3 times (after two submissions last year) that couldn’t seem to find a home. I’m just holding it for the time being, hoping I’ll eventually figure out what it needs to make it click or that it’ll become more relevant.
I also applied to the Diverse as Fuck Onion Workshop, pitched Cake Zine, submitted to Taco Bell Quarterly (still waiting to hear back but considering they’re taking 8 prose pieces out of 1300 applicants…🤷🏼♀️), and wrote a fantastic piece with my writing group about Drew Barrymore and the writer’s strike (which she inadvertently invalidated by making a different announcement over the weekend before we could get the piece accepted).
As I mentioned above, I entered my pilot into 2 competitions, submitted the packets, and the short stories without any luck.
And I pitched headlines to get accepted into Hard Times, which I’ve done previously without any response (5 times between Hard Drive and Hard Times over the past couple years), but the headline that got me in wasn’t selected for publishing. (It took 23 pitches to get to my first headline acceptance there.)
Overall, looking at my rejection:acceptance ratio, I’m riding right at about a 33% acceptance rate, pretty close to last year. It’s less than my first couple of years (which were closer to 50%), but I think I can comfortably say it’s not because my work is worse, but because I’m stretching myself a lot further outside of my comfort zone with my submissions (and submitting more).
Money, Honey
Okay, so here’s the BIG QUESTION, right? I know what you want to hear: How much did I get paid for all this hard work? Well, here ya go:
Weekly Humorist: $60
Hard Drive/Hard Times: $30
Medium (Belladonna, Slackjaw, GP, plus Pixelated Space Girl crosspost): $68.03
(Pretty easy to see which one of those did the best — the Layoff Announcement piece was boosted by the editors of The Belladonna (love them forever) and Medium helped distribute it further outside of both of our networks. It’s my most successful Medium piece to date and I’m really proud of it — not just because it did well, but because I was able to channel some of the anger and frustration I was feeling around being laid off into something positive.)
TOTAL: $158.03
I’m rich, bitch!
Honestly, though, this is the most I’ve ever made from writing in a single year (just ask my taxes), and is pretty exciting for me. Last year I made right around $50, so this is a pretty big increase.
Things that went well
I actually tried pitching, which I’d never done before (to Cake Zine). (And I got a really kind, thoughtful rejection letter that made me want to try again!)
I channeled my personal frustrations about my layoff into one of my best pieces of the year.
My headline writing practice paid off when I got accepted as a Hard Times/Drive contributor.
I mentioned I’ve submitted to Reductress 5 times now, and the practice has been great. But what I didn’t mention is that I took a two-line joke writing class last year that helped me learn to be a bit more succinct, and have also spent countless hours writing jokes about the day’s news into a Google doc — tons of work that will never see the light of day. Very proud of my efforts here.I finished two huge projects.
The TV Pilot took an insane amount of work, that included me watching a show I felt was similar (I chose Abbott Elementary) while following along with the pilot script and pacing out the jokes, acts, and scenes. Plus, the short story has been mulling around in my brain for, like I mentioned, SEVEN YEARS, so it felt nice to force myself through finishing a draft. I read 3 different books on story and plot, and they helped me get through it. Both will still be edited again, but they exist now, which feels amazing.
Things I wish I’d done differently
I wish I had remained focused on some of my larger projects.
It’s tough to focus on a big project when smaller things like satire pieces and headlines can get me feedback and some of that sweet, sweet serotonin more quickly. I have 100k words done in a book that probably needs 2-3 months of solid work to finish, but UGH, delayed gratification! Gross.I paid to submit to the two contests I entered my pilot in. I’m not opposed to paying to enter competitions, though I generally avoid it. BUT. While I don’t regret paying to enter — what I wish I’d done is gone ahead and spent extra money to receive feedback from the judges.
I avoided it because I didn’t know if it would be worthwhile, but now I do wish I’d gotten a little more information about not only why it wasn’t chosen, but what I could do to punch it up. Getting people to read your scripts for free is not easy, so if you’re paying for someone to do it the least you could do is get a response other than “you were not chosen at this time.”
Goals for next year
Finish my damn book!
Keep writing satire. I have a billion ideas plus at least 20 more partial pieces that either need feedback, edits, rewrites, or for me to accept the inevitable and trash them (absolutely not). I’d love to get through all of them but I have so many ideas I can never keep my head above water. ALSO I’ll definitely be doing tons more headline pitches, no question.
Rewrite/edit my short stories and submit again. Hopefully finish another couple shorties — they’re good practice.
I’d love to try pitching to some bigger outlets and writing some more in-depth researched pieces outside of these Deep Dives. (Mostly so I can be proactive about bringing in more income and getting a wider audience. Plus, it’s really nice (I’ve learned over the past couple of months) to pitch an idea and have it be accepted before you spend lots of time perfecting a piece only to have it rejected 300 times.)
I also have an idea for a new Substack that I really want to start, but could someone please stop me before I completely overload myself forever??
Also Substack related — I plan to keep up my every Friday posts here along with 2 monthly deep dives. I’d love to reach 100 subscribers, maybe double our numbers, or even hit 300 (major stretch goal!).
Speaking of which: I have now turned on the ability for you to support me as I continue to write this Substack with real, actual money! (If you saw the “Upgrade to Paid” button in the last few weeks, that’s why!)
***NOTE: My Substack is free and will remain free. I see absolutely no advantage to creating a barrier to entry for reading my work. I want you to read my work, and you will continue to be able to do so, whether you choose to pay or not.***
Let me reiterate: nothing here is going behind a paywall.
Literally. If anything here ever gets put behind a paywall it’s because I pressed the wrong button when I was hitting “publish3.”
However! If you would like to toss a coin to your Witcher (who spends many hours per month working on the posts you read here), you now have an option to do that by becoming a ~*Paid Subscriber*~.
The subscription is $5/month or $50/year.
Of course there’s no pressure to give me your hard-earned dollars, but if you do, I will love you forever and ever. Plus, you’ll be part of next year’s stats, and I’ll give you a lil shoutout in the newsletter!
Okay, that’s it! So — I showed you mine, now you show me yours!
How did your writing (or other creative/personal projects) go this year? And what goals are you setting for next year? Also, are you nuts about statistics too? Is there a better way I could be keeping track of all this instead of a Google Sheet? Is this too neurotic? Don’t answer that one.
Also, it’s meant that that piece stays pinned to the top of my main newsletter page because it’s my most read post. Which is…fine, I guess — but I’d rather that be something I’m proud of rather than what amounted to one of the most stressful days of my year. At least the NSYNC post is #2!
Hilariously I had like 71 before I was writing this post, and for some reason lost 2 people (you can see that little dip down). I have no idea why 🤷🏼♀️ but that’s okay! 2 steps forward, 1 step back.
Extremely possible because I already almost did it like 3 times.
Go Kelley!!! 🥳
We LOVE a stats post! Well done, Kelley. 33% acceptance rate is pretty amazing. And congrats on going to paid!