ONC Journal 2022

Introduction (1/10/22)

2022 rolls around, and it is yet again time for Open Novella. Yet again, like in previous years, I start with my ONC journal to cover my writing experience and offer up some tips because I want everyone to be successful.

I think this year I'm going to start with what it means not to pass a round and how I've seen this misconstrued over the years to suggest one doesn't have a good story, particularly when we get into the second and third years. However, this might trickle down a bit into the first round as more and more entries are submitted every year, though this may also not change for reasons I will note below. In reality, what it means isn't that you don't have a good story, but more of that competition is steep.

As for round one—the number eliminated in previous years is actually a tiny portion of the number of stories submitted. While there were one or two people who felt the number went up compared to other years. Were there more stories nixed compared to previous years? Yes, I did see a higher number, yet is it a higher number than other years. No, because the number of stories increased similarly, the ratio of stories nixed was relatively the same. However, I would argue that it might be slightly higher in comparison because there is one type of story that got nixed a lot sooner than it would have in previous years—more on when I get to that point.