Checking In

At the beginning of the year, I had a whole list of things I was hoping to accomplish in 2014. I’ve discussed these and my progress with some of my writing buddies, but since I posted that list here I thought maybe I should post an update here as well. You know, keep myself honest. 😉

My goal is to submit 6 new short stories by the end of the year. I am well on my way. So far I have submitted 5. Four of those were already drafted, some already critiqued by the Narwhals, but they went through editing and finalizing (as much as a story is ever final before publication) and made their first submissions only in 2014. One of the stories is the umpteenth attempting at writing a story that has been in my head for about two years now. The first version was lost when my old laptop crashed. Afterwards I tried approaching it from a very different angle (first person recounting of things well after the fact), didn’t like it and so I shelved the whole idea for several months. I came up with a new approach to the story, tried again, had it critiqued, edited and critiqued again. But I decided that the story wasn’t going in the direction that I wanted so I shelved it yet again. Then less than a month ago I came up with yet another idea on how to approach the story, wrote it, got a little feedback, and finally pressed the send button on this version. I sent it to Writers of the Future for their March 31 deadline so it won’t be until this summer that I hear back on that.

I’ve also started drafting a story for a South-East Asia steampunk anthology and have ideas percolating for a dieselpunk anthology. So I should surpass my 6 story goal. yay! I haven’t had a chance to work on the novel yet. Balancing storytelling (another rehearsal, a smaller one, for Iliad last Saturday, and wrapped up the Arthur show), slushing and writing has been enough of a challenge of late. But it is on the to-do list and I think especially in the later half of this year I should have more time to focus on that.

Oh, and one last thing. Happy 30th rejection to me! I just hit 30 last night with a rejection from On Spec. A little sad they didn’t take the story but I got some fantastic feedback on it. That story will have to wait for revisions before it goes out to market again. And I still have a second story awaiting a response from On Spec, so who knows? (knock on wood)

PS. No April Fools’ jokes here, the internet has enough of them. 😉