Five Weeks In
Tue 2012-02-07 21:50:59 (in context)
Hello, the blog. Long time no update. Which is silly, because I have been writing. I've just also been playing a lot too. That's the thing: You finish writing for the day, what do you do next? Do you A) write some more, or B) go play the computer game that best matches the current levels of exhaustion in your brain? I seem to be more of a B gal there.
By the way: Spiral Knights, Puzzle Pirates, or Plants Vs. Zombies (or maybe Glitch except Glitch has sort of turned into just clickety busywork for me these days) in order from "kinda tired but happy" to "totally pooped and don't wanna work that hard for my playtime." Also, roller derby practice is getting to be a weekly thing, and might go semiweekly very soon now. Neat trick, discovering new ultra-physical sports at age 35. My knees seem to be adjusting to the new demands, which is good, as I'm not smitten with the idea of getting new knees. I hear that's very expensive and painful and packs a long recovery time and has to be done all over again after ten years or so. So the longer my original knees will let me skate on 'em, the happier I'll be.
But today I find myself with a sufficient combination of energy and blogger's guilt to do a catch-up post. Look! Here it comes now.
I've written one very short story a week every week for the past five weeks, and yes, I am feeling bad-ass about it. This is thanks to a contest being run over at Codex, the "neo-pro" writing group I joined not very long ago. Fridays, the contest admin posts prompts. A 750-word (max) story is due by Monday morning at 2 AM Mountain Time. During the weekdays that follow, forum members vote on 'em. Only once you've voted do you get to see who wrote what -- but then you only get to see the pseudonym each contestant took on for the contest. Now that the Week 5 stories are being voted on, we get to guess who's behind each 'nym. Not that I'm going to be able to guess. I'm too new to the group to know other members' writing styles. Instead, I'll be getting an idea of people's styles from the stories once their authorship is revealed. Anyway, I successfully competed in each of the five weeks, so that's five brand new stories that I can start submitting to paying markets. Once I give them a bit of a revise, that is.
Now, this weekend we get to play a mega bonus round. Same timing, but the story has to be between 2000 and 7500 words. I predict that I will be very busy this weekend. In addition to other reasons I was already going to be busy this weekend. Yeesh!
So that's the happy productive news on the short fiction front. On the longer works front, I've finally decided which of my NaNoWriMo drafts will be the first to actually get circulated to agents etc., and therefore should be receiving my full attention for the coming months. Really decided, I mean. I pulled out a new notebook and put its title on the front and everything. But more about that tomorrow...
...which means I'd better update this blog tomorrow, right? Dailiness. One day's hardly over before the next one's begun. What's up with that?