Less than a year had gone by since I started writing pretty much every day. I was really into flash fiction by then; virtually all the stuff I was cranking out was 500 words or less. Monocle is for M was 500, Surf Guitar was 100 and Spat was 350. With these publishing opportunities under my belt, I was sharing a new story to my writing group practically every week.

At the same time I was having issues tracking all of my submissions. I was keeping an Excel spreadsheet (which eventually became The Short List) and trying to log those few acceptances along with the many, many, many, many, many rejections. I vividly remember the “personal note” from an editor, telling me that I had duplicated a story submission and that he didn’t like it the first time he read it.

Ouch.

That’s when one of the writers in my group told me about Duotrope. Thank goodness. Since then it’s a cinch to track my stories and pull reports. The one I did this morning says I’ve made submissions to 492 journals. Oh look, there’s my rejection percentage.

Double ouch.