The Shadow Workshop [6]: Six weeks gone

Part of the 2015 Clarion West Write-a-thon series! IT IS NOT TOO LATE! Sponsor me, sponsor another writer, or learn more about the Write-a-thon

In my notebook observations , I wrote:

Six weeks is longer than it seems at first

It’s also shorter. And this year, once again, it’s already over. So, success at meeting goals! What did I set as my goals, anyway? Hmm, let’s see…

1. Write every day.

Okay, I managed that!

However, I didn’t get in much time per day. I also didn’t manage any really long writing sessions on the weekends — just about every day seemed to end up spoken for somehow. So, I met the goal but it didn’t get me as far ahead as I was hoping. I think I might have finished the revised outline for the second draft of the Waking sequel, though. So that’s definitely something.

2. Revise some short works and submit them.

I managed that too!

Well, I only submitted one, so I guess “them” isn’t, strictly speaking, correct. It took longer than I anticipated to sort through my trunk stories, identify the most recent versions, re-read them, and think about what I might do with them now.

Also, editing the pieces took longer than I thought it was going to. I ran into what I thought was the perfect market for one piece, and assumed I could get it ready to send out in a day — nope, it took a week. I ran into a market for novellas, and had one, and thought, great! Except the formatting on the file was completely jacked, so it took me a fair bit of editing even to get it to the point where I could read it and figure out that it needed a major rewrite, which I no longer had time for.

Anyway, I am trying to get a better handle on how to handle my short fiction, and I think I made a lot of progress, but I still didn’t get as far along as I wanted.

I believe a theme is developing.

3. Stop obsessively reading the comments on the File770 Hugo-related posts.

Mike Glyer, our host at File770, actually stopped posting the specifically Hugo-related roundups early in July, so I get this one on a technicality.

I did, however, continue to read my way through the Hugo packet, and if I wonder why I didn’t get farther on goals 1 and 2, I suppose that could be an answer — although I mostly read them in circumstances, like bus rides, where I wouldn’t have been writing anyway, they did occupy brain space.

July turned out to be a busy month, and the Sasquan is right around the corner. Stay tuned for my programming schedule and a final collection of Hugo-related thoughts!