My mid-week report to you that covers the three major commitments I’ve made: to write, to edit, and to read.
Writing
A thousand words or so on Sigils, bringing me to 89k. About 2500 words on “My My, Hey Hey”, the superhero story for the 5 Second Rule open call.
Friday was zero writing and a lot of anxiety. On Saturday, I talked it over with my wife and recognized where I was, mentally. In coding projects, I always hit a spot where I have learned enough that I need to decide if I'm going to go on and just finish along the current path, or if I am going to back up and fix the mistakes so I can create something solid.
The anxiety comes from the internal conflict of "... but I did all this work! How can I throw that away?" My solution in these cases is to put everything aside for 2-3 days. Then come back and decide what I'm going to do. Pretty much every time, I roll up my sleeves and do the right thing. It's more work, and it takes a lot of mental effort to hold a bunch of changing state in my head... but it's almost always worth it.
So over the weekend, I made time to visit my dad. Came home, took a nap, and did yard work. Cooked dinner. I gave myself permission to relax and enjoy myself over Easter. It was a really good weekend to focus outward, anyway - so I went ahead and did exactly that.
Monday I sat down and started banging out the superhero draft. Two days in, and it’s going well. I wish I could do a marathon and get a story out in a day, but at least I’m making progress.
Commitments for this week:
BICHOK. Want to go 6/7 this week.
Finish the first draft of “My My, Hey Hey”.
Return to Sigils and get 2-3 scenes wrapped up.
Editing
Not a lot this week. I failed to meet my commitment from last week pretty spectacularly. Now that I’ve got a big chunk of revisions done, I’m going to redo my editing schedule on Sigils in light of what I’ve learned about how I work over the past few months.
I’m also eyeing the Baen Fantasy Adventure Award. I have a few stories that I think would do well there. The problem is that two of them are out and being considered elsewhere, and the third is about twice the length the contest calls for. I love Baen, and it would be fantastic to enter there again, but honestly - I’d rather see these stories find a home elsewhere if I can. We’ll see. If I don’t hear back in the next few weeks, maybe I’ll send a gentle query about the state of the world.
So this week, I will:
Revise my editing schedule.
Keep to my established editing schedule
Finish off the TODO list for Sigils
Reading
Continuing reading/research on dreams. Quite a bit of professional reading for the Day Job (Lustre, agile development, etc.)
Haven’t cracked the historical books yet. I usually end up going to bed an hour or so before my wife. I think I’ll just designate that as “reading time” daily. I know, I know - why do I have to decide to read? Because of stupid smartphones. So I do read, quite a bit, but it’s short articles and social media posts on the phone. Popcorn, when I need something more substantial.
Commitments for this week:
Start reading history.
Do my duty re: writer’s group critiques
Other
Updated #TeamAndMore to include a couple of other folks to help keep an eye on things. We added links for a handful of new open calls there as well some other resources for authors looking to make a first sale. So if that’s you, head on over and check it out.
Substack has launched its Notes feature, which I will diligently abuse. Check it out. I’m luring people in with memes, then I’ll start to hit them with the weird stuff.
I did have a bit of flash fiction accepted for one of the upcoming Postcards anthologies from Raconteur Press. More on that as things develop. They have a really quick turnaround time on those, though, so hopefully I’ll have something for you in the next few weeks :)
Day Job has been very busy, with lots of learning. Which is to be expected, but hopefully, I’ll end up being productive soon. There’s something about making things work that gives me a happy, and it looks like I will be able to start doing that relatively quickly.
So that’s it. Once again: keep on me and help me with my BICHOK issues, will ya? I have the time, I just. Need. To. WRITE.
Hang in there, Sam. And congrats again for getting into the postcard anthology. I’m glad they saw how awesome your submission was. “Wifi?” *ROFL*