Which is to say that during 2022’s final fortnight (you may remember I didn’t do a week-in-review last week because of the power outage) I got some good work done but not as much work as I’d hoped. Simply too many distractions.
This week, for example, we had to pick up our car Monday (it was just a dead battery so nothing overly pricey) and drop off the rental car. As I’d canceled my blood-donation appointment Friday due to car complications, I went in Tuesday morning. Then in the afternoon I braved the mall traffic (it’s easy to forget lots of people are still off the week after Christmas) to visit the Apple store and figure out the problem with my phone. It’s been randomly opening apps or switching from one app to the other which is ultra-frustrating; fortunately it turned out to be a simple fix. The replacement glass I got from a repair store had come loose (“If I can look at where it meets the screen and see through to the pixel cells, there’s a problem.”) — though whether they did a half-assed job or I jarred it loose with a couple of subsequent drops (TYG told me I didn’t need a phone cover; she underestimated me) I know not.
That, of course, took up most of Tuesday afternoon so I was irrevocably behind the eight-ball in making my hours this week; the blood donation didn’t help either but I place I high priority on donating regularly. Wednesday and Thursday we took the dogs for long lunch walks which threw off my afternoon planning, but again being a good dog-parent is a priority. Today it was just a matter of “well I’m not going to get everything done, am I?” undercutting my commitment. Plus I woke late which I almost never do. Plus we have Lily and Tito over for the day and they always require extra attention. 
There’s Tito, from an earlier visit. And here’s Lily.
But work still got done. I added several thousand words to the current draft of Impossible Takes a Little Longer. Much of it was reworked from an earlier draft but I moved on at the end into new stuff and it worked. However I reached one of those points where I simply don’t know what to do next and didn’t have the focus to tackle it, so I didn’t meet my quota (30,000 words) for December.
My rewrite of Paying the Ferryman was excruciatingly slow due to the distractions but the story improved considerably. I think it may have reached the point where I can show it to the writing group and benefit from feedback.
I finally drew up a list of my published books and short stories for TYG. While I doubt my intellectual property (e.g., Questionable Minds) will be hugely valuable for her if I pass first, I might be wrong.
I also redrafted Oh the Places You’ll Go! slightly based on editorial feedback and completed the revised draft of The Love That Moves the Sun. Both go out next month, assuming I can find markets.
There’s other stuff I’d hoped to get to but I think I can feel pleased with all that work. And I published several blog posts at Atomic Junkshop variously dealing with how to spend Christmas money, a great Teen Titans scene, the teenage crimefighter Tomboy and the disappointing end of a Silver Age story arc.
Happy New Year everyone! I wish all y’all a fabulous 2023.
#SFWApro. Book cover by Samantha Collins.
