Tick…Tick…..Tick……..

I’ve been quiet a while.  School’s been busy and stuff, but mostly Ive been waiting for some sort of responses to report.  Sunmission news has been vacuous of late.  I got a form rejection from DSF on a flash, but that’s it.  I keep waiting.  And waiting.

Full disclosure, I only have one sub that’s been out n inordinately long time and that’s to a market I knew was slow.  A couple have been out for over a month.  Two more around three weeks.  The rest are under a week.  So I’m fidgety for nothing.  Maybe it’s just having nine stories out that has me itching like a shaved dog in a fiberglass sweater.  I don’t think I’ve ever had so many, but I can’t recall.  I have more I need to push out the door, too.  For instance, I’m holding one story for Pedestal which has been closed to subs this week.  Sending it tomorrow.  And my zombie culture story should be ready to sub soon.

So what to do when the waiting gets painful?  The obvious answer — write!  That is in addition to checking email every five minutes, scouting responses on Duotrope every hour, and giving the mailman dirty looks as he drives off without returning your SASE to you.

I’m in a weird place with a few projects — in the middle of a contest for Codex, trying to turn a novelette into a novel — and my production feels incredibly low compared to time spent writing.  Maybe that’s the problem.  Or maybe it’s Brad’s fault with all his success and accolades.  🙂  Or that other writer with her top secret make-me-jealous news.  🙂  Or all these creepy smileys hanging out everywhere.  🙂

Let’s face it, I’ve followed up my WotF win (announced over a year ago) with bupkis. The issue is jealousy, but I’m actually jealous of me…me a year ago.  Where did that all go?  It’s time for me to step back and remind myself that writing is a (cliche) marathon, not a sprint.  It took a long time to get to where I am (or was last year) and it may take time to move to the next level.  Things happen lowly in this business.  I know this.  I just don’t like it.

So I return to my projects at hand.  FS goes to Pedestal tomorrow — ooh, clock says today! — and I need to get CMZ ready to fly out the door soon.  Refreshing to have a new story to start collecting rejections.  And I need to finish my Codex contest story (whether it moves to the next round or not) and get my novelization project in gear.  And pretty much in that order.  Plenty to be done; no time to continually refresh my email.

You too.  Why are you reading blog posts with so much to be done?  Get to it!