Reviews, Recipes, and Random Slices of Life

05/10/2009 - Sunday, no work
* Posted writing log.
* penthius freewriting about marketing temporary death.
* Saved freewritings from this week to the master document. I used to save after every one, but of late, I've been doing these during downtime at work, so I need to save them en masse.
* Updated market list from Duotrope.
* Submitted "The Radiator Burped" to Strange, Weird, and Wonderful--I'm a little confused about their submission periods as they say they have a submission period that starts in July, but the note at the top says they're taking submissions for Fall and Winter issues (I'm aiming for Fall.). Confusion abounds, but I submitted anyway.
* Submitted "Charity From a Thief" to Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, a pretty badass new market.
* Worked on editing Vicesteed ch. 17.
* Submitted "Road of Dreams" to Withersin.
* Queried Escape Clause Anthology about the status of "The Haunts of Hill Crossing." I read that they were expecting to send out all responses by 04/10/2009, but I haven't heard anything yet.

02/17/2009 - Tuesday, half work
* Processed Brad's crit of Vicesteed chs. 9-10 and sent him the next couple
* Penthius freewriting, "Aging Immortal: Science Fiction"
* Posted writing logs
* Edited Vicesteed
* Processed Writers of the Future non-win for "The Miracle Material"
* Processed Medicine Show's form rejection of "The Haunts of Hill Crossing"
* Processed Triangulations' personal "started too slow" rejection of "These Things Take Time"
* Read Writer's Digest newsletter
- 10 Disciplines for Fiction Writers (http://writersdigest.com/article/10_Disciplines_for_Fiction_Writers) - I think that particularly the making lists of rewards and goals would be a good thing for me.


It's so good to be back to a 1/2 day schedule. I feel like I can actually get stuff done. I work in the morning to make enough money for bills. Then I come home and clean a bit and work on writing stuff. In the evening, I cook dinner or go to martial arts class. People ask how I'm doing and I answer, "Good!" Hell, I'm downright chipper.

I know it's not a permanent schedule--soon enough I'll be fretting over not enough hours at work or too little time to write--but it feels really good.

This whole "dedicating the weekend to writing maintenance tasks" idea is going well. I'm actually making headway into the huge backlog of written-but-not-marked-up, marked-up-but-not-edited, and edited-but-not-submitted manuscripts. Go me. Now I just need to get the PR machine work in there too.

Sunday, no work
* penthius freewriting - low potential "killing a slaver" idea.
* Checked Critters newsletter for new markets.
* Submitted "The Miracle Material" to Strange Horizons
* Edited "The Haunts of Hill Crossing" down to under 5,000 words.
* Submitted "The Haunts of Hill Crossing" to the Misfits Writing Contest.
* Submitted "The Radiator Burped" to Fictitious Force.
* Also did some side-project work.

Saturday, no work
* Processed Heliotrope rejection of "The Miracle Material"
* Read FFWSmallMarkets, FundsforWriters newsletters
* Penthius freewriting - "Gifted Offspring: Science Fiction"
* Prepared "Writ in Snowflakes and Sunshine" AKA "Ice Mother" for redmarking. Am *so very pissed* at self because I lost the marked-up copy and now I will have to do this all over again!
* Made editing changes to "A Haunted Kiss," which I'm now thinking of calling "The Haunts of Hill Crossing". Gives away less, and doesn't sound like a trashy romance. This was entirely time-consuming, as there were swathes of plot changes where I had merely made little notes in the margin about how they should be rewritten. The actual mechanics I'd left to Future Me. I hate it when I do that, yet I fear I will continue to. (Also, newsflash, dangling preposition not actually grammatically incorrect despite the common belief that it is. So there.)

Wednesday, 10/11/2006 - full day of work from home for NightOwl
* penthius freewriting - Silenced Sirens, a medium-potential science fiction take on the mythological Sirens.
* Finished marking up "A Haunted Kiss" for editing, using Critters critiques. Urf. Thinking of renaming it to "Hometown Haunts." Of course, am constantly thinking of renaming my stories. The critiques were unusually unanimous in what needed to be fixed--all of it stuff that made me go, "Ack! How could I ever have thought I could do that!" Why did I think I could kill off a ton of kids and not have anyone in the town care? How did I think it made it better to write half the story (the action scenes) in a weird flashback format? Why did I just leave out the beginning of a chase scene? Le sigh. This is why the first readers are brave and noble folk.