The long-awaited forty-seventh chapter of my novel is complete.

I feel like it’s not all that cohesive; it’s more like a collection of scenes that I needed for various plot reasons.

Let me explain a bit about the arcane field of rejectomancy. A rejection from a writing market is not just a simple “no.” There are shades of nuance that even John Kerry would have a hard time deciphering.

There are various hierachies of rejections, and they vary from market to market.

At the bottom is the photocopied form rejection. This is usually a sheet explaining in generic terms things that are common reasons for manuscript rejection. Some of these forms achieve a certain notoriety – Realms of Fantasy, for example, has a rejection affectionately (or not) known as the Blue Form of Death. Within this class, there are various levels of rejection, ranging from forms which imply that you don’t know how to write a story to forms which invite you to submit again.

The next level up is the form letter rejection. Somebody actually took the time to type your name into a word-processor template. (Sometimes they even type in the title!) There is nothing else specific to your story, though. A market may have a few different templates, allowing the editor to pick one that gives you some encouragement. The slush reader at the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has one that says “There’s some nice writing here, but…” Authors are thrilled to get that rejection instead of one that doesn’t mention nice writing.

The Holy Grail of new writers is the Personal Rejection. Actually, the Holy Grail is an acceptance, so the Personal Rejection is more like the Temple of Doom, in that is is something that presumably comes before the Holy Grail. Seriously, though, isn’t Harrison Ford getting a little old to play Indiana Jones? I’m not too sure about the whole idea of a fourth movie, even with Spielberg . . . Umm, where was I? Oh, yes, the Personal Rejection.

Anyway, I got a Personal Rejection today from Analog. But unlike my previous rejections (and that one acceptance), this one begins “Dear Eric” instead of “Dear Mr. Stone.”

You see? It’s like the generic tag for sequels: This time, it’s personal.

Well, last year I made some writing resolutions, so it’s time to take stock and set some goals for this year.

What were last year’s goals?

1. Double the number of words written for my novel.
Achieved.

2. Write six new short stories.
Achieved.

3. Write at least 13 lines of fiction every day, even if it’s not part of a short story or the novel.
Not achieved. I kept it up from January through March, and then came pretty close to that from the end of August through October. So that’s about five months out of twelve. (Of course, on some days I wrote a whole lot more than 13 lines.)

So, what are my goals for this year?

1. Write at least 250 words of fiction per day.
2. Finish the novel (first draft) by the end of March.
2a. Have it revised and submitted somewhere by the end of June.
2b. Write 50,000 words of a second novel by the end of the year.
3. Write eight new short stories.

Those who are following my progress on my novel will be please to know that I added a tad over 300 words today, which is more than I’ve written since October.