My Writing Year: Place Your Bets

I’m counting. I am six months into 2026 and over halfway through My Writing Year.

“It’s a numbers game,” my brother once said. About what? I can’t remember, but I’ve always used the phrase to describe publishing.

We all know the game. Or at least, I’m fairly familiar with how to play in the literary magazine world. I scroll through the calls for submissions, choose my prompt, tweak the closest piece I have, and hit send. The poem I write on a napkin is picked up quickly. The essay I’ve tried to place over and over again is published, five years later, actually ten. Lather, rinse, repeat.

When it comes to book publishing, the odds are different. More similar to a job interview, they are network or relationship dependent. Success was about numbers, and I needed someone’s finger on the scale.

I submitted a young adult manuscript to a local, indie publisher last fall. It’s not my first manuscript. It’s somewhere in the middle of the stack I’ve completed. I was provided developmental edits in the winter and an invitation to resubmit. I received the response, a hybrid contract this past spring. Last week, I signed it. The hybrid publisher’s website described traditional and hybrid. Throughout the revision process, I told myself if I was offered a traditional contract then I would know the value of what I wrote, of writing, of being published. That would “feel” right. If I had to contribute to the publication process (hybrid), how could I know everything was alright?

I sat on my “yes” for two months. I didn’t celebrate it. I didn’t tell anyone about the opportunity, except for my beta-reader and a trusted mentor. Which aspects of the publishing contract tip the scale to “yes,” or “no”? Which numbers count? I had a series of conversations and dense question and answer e-mails around the contract. I participated in my local library’s book fest where a panel of authors from that very publisher shared their stories.

“Did they answer your questions?” an organizer asked.

They hadn’t, because they couldn’t. Only the novel can do that.

“You shouldn’t give up,” said my mentor.

This novel asks the reader, “What’s the value of holding on?”

“Go for it,” my friend said. “What’s the downside?”

This novel’s main character is uncertain of her own voice.

The section about publishing in The Business of Being a Writer by Jane Friedman is, to no one's surprise, the longest. Thirteen chapters. Count them. 138 pages. Counted. Multiple writing projects, voices, styles. Multiple publishing paths, ways to find your audience. There isn’t a right one. There is only the next one. And tomorrow. And the day after. Count them. It’s a numbers game, and as Friedman cautions a math problem—not a simple equation, but an algebraic one with unknowns, a story problem that includes people and their actions. Everything about the decision came down to everything around the numbers—dollar signs before, percentages after. Like a marriage, publishing is a contract; love is only the beginning.

I reflect on my choice to create the series My Writing Year, after my engagement with Abigail Pogrebin’s My Jewish Year. Her challenge, and strategy are the same as Friedman’s. Do. Act. Understanding comes after. Friedman’s version is a reflection on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ quote about the value of staying on your writing path and developing the needed skills. To open Part One: Mindset Matters, Friedman writes, “Many people want to stand on top of the mountain, but it’s the countless hours you spend on the mountainside that get you there."

We’re six months into 2026 and over halfway through My Writing Year, a fraction of the journey. So who’s counting?

By one count, I considered hybrid publishing a kind of giving up. By another, it could be the job (interview) of my dreams. I can be the editor I need. The literary agent that wants to be my champion. The investor who believes they will see a positive return. Anyone who feels in their heart, this story is the one. Quality. Credibility. Connections. One, two, three possible happy endings. The right editor and home where my book will live up to its potential. A partnership. Four. Maybe five? I lose count. It doesn’t matter, because Friedman reminds us that we never achieve each goal at the same time: artistic, monetary, readership. At most we get two. By one count, 66 percent is not a passing grade. By another it is success for anyone, in any moment. Even me. In this one. I’m betting on it.

This game has never had great odds, but they’re better than they’ve ever been before.