Writerly Progress Report

                      

So, anything new on the writing front? Not much. Finally finished that troublesome short story after I decided to just write an hour a day until it was done. The problem was that I knew the beginning and the ending, but the middle? No idea. Now I've got something, don't know if it's any good or not. Hopefully I'll get some feedback soon from my Critter pals.

I've got two new stories in English that I'm submitting, but no takers so far. The other one's too much of a romance to work as a sci-fi adventure, and not explicit enough to submit to romance anthologies. Romance is probably better as a side plot, not the main one, for the speculative fiction markets. I also submitted four Finnish pieces to the Nova competition, and I'm waiting to hear about one English story.

May is a super busy month for me this year: I've got plans for every weekend, and a deadline coming up for the Finnish hard science fiction story I'm trying to write. It's a double deadline, for my critique group and a day-long writing course I signed up for. The deadline for the anthology is in November, so I'll have plenty of time to work on the piece, but the critiques are vital in terms of making the story work. I don't usually write hard science fiction, so that makes critiques even more important. June 3rd is the deadline for Specklit, but I'm afraid I'll have to skip this quarter, unless somebody has a time machine I can borrow. (I'll try, though.)

My editing pile is also growing. There's one story that I wrote for a circus-themed anthology, but guess what, the deadline for that is also May 31st. So that one might not make it, unless I just submit it as is, which I don't want to do. Another two stories have been through Critters, but both need major rewrites, so I haven't gotten around to them yet.

Adding to that the critiques for Critters and my Finnish critique group, I've got my hands full.  The book projects are on the back burner for now. I'm actually wondering if I should stick to short stories until I feel my writing is up to snuff, and then get on with the books, because I don't want to waste my time on a longer project if I'm not ready. But on the other hand, a book is a very different animal from a short story or even a novella, so I'll probably need to do a few practice ones anyway before I can write something worth reading (if ever).

On top of that, the day job is demanding its share of attention, so much that I rarely have energy for writing in the evenings. Thank the gods summer vacation is coming up soon.

With all this going on, I might need to skip a few blog posts to make this work.

See you on the other side.