November is almost upon us, and with November comes National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I’ll be participating this year: I’ve got a story in mind and will attempt to bash out at least 50,000 words of it before the end of the month. However, writing has never been my problem. I have lots of stories. Heck, I have lots of novels (six, at the moment). My problem is getting them off my computer and out in the world where they might possibly be read by someone. Maybe even YOU. Hi!

So I set myself a challenge. For the next 20 consecutive days, I’m going to submit a work a day to some market, somewhere. I’m not limiting myself specifically to my writings (I’ve got some photography that should be making the rounds, too), but writing is what I’ll be focusing on specifically. Twenty days, twenty submissions. And I thought you might be interested in following along and seeing how things go — or even joining me yourself if you have a bunch of work that’s been gathering dust for whatever reason.

I’ll be giving periodic updates here on Distracted by the Shiny — what I’ve sent where, why I chose that market, what my hopes and dreams are — and in the comments you can let me know how things are going for you.

Anyway, for this first post, let me lay out the rules I’ve set for myself:

The Rules of 20 Days of Submissions

Rule 1) Something has to be submitted every day, by midnight, local time, for 20 consecutive days.

Rule 2) Said ‘something’ can be any artistic/creative endeavor — in my case: short stories, novels, flash fiction, or photography.

Rule 3) I can submit a work more than once, but only after it has been accepted/rejected during an earlier submission (ie: I’ve got to work with new stuff until I’ve gotten a response on something I’ve already sent); as a caveat, I CAN submit the same thing to multiple places at once, but that only counts as one submission.

Rule 4) The submission has to be a market or contest that at least offers token payment (even if that’s just a couple of copies of the magazine or whatever. Online or offline ‘exposure’ doesn’t count; neither does posting it here on my blog). Money is preferable.

Rule 5) I will not be depressed by rejections but immediately submit returned works to a new market.

Rule 6) If I run out of things to submit, then I just have to create more.

Sound good? Wanna join me? #amwriting #20DaysofSubmissions (<–which may be a hashtag for a dominatrix site or something; I don’t know).