A good, if somewhat tiring week

I’m very pleased with myself. Despite multiple distractions—a really bad night of sleep and having to run TYG to work and back a couple of times while her car was in the shop—I managed to make my eHow quota for the week, and get my fiction-writing quota completed too.
The only thing I’m not getting done is article queries to other markets. I only have a fininte amount of time and if anything’s going to go, that’s it. I’d like to be writing for bigger markets, and I’ve done it in the past (several in Boys’ Life, one column in Newsweek, plus Air & Space, Backpacker and a few others) but never consistently enough to make a major effect on my bottom line. And if my queries get rejected (which happens quite a lot), there’s nothing I can show off to people; at least with short stories I can share them even if they don’t sell.
As to the fiction, I worked on Leave the World To Darkness, Tale Spinners and And He Bought a Crooked Cat and they’re looking very good; they may be ready to submit by the end of March. I’ve cleared up the story problem in Crooked Cat by cutting most of the humorous finish and focusing almost entirely on my protagonist’s personal torment.
I finished a first draft of my Wandering Jew story, Death Lends a Helping Hand (totally a working title). It’s poor—as I’ve said before, my first drafts always are—but the pieces to build the plot are in place (i.e., villain, villain’s agenda, how the evil magic works). Which is not to say they won’t change next time of course.
Oh, and The Beachcomber, a magazine back in my old neighborhood, ran an article about my book here.
A good week, but after eight eHows today, I’m ready for a weekend of inertia.