The 139th day of 2023 — 38 percent of the year — isn’t any sort of benchmark, but I did spend a morning this week reviewing my year goals and how they’re progressing. I had a couple of nights of really bad sleep this week so by mid-week I needed to work on something that didn’t require any creativity.
(Here’s another photo of Wylan the kitten, with one of his favorite toys.)
The year is going well in many ways. I’ve already finished the six shorts I wanted to get done this year. I’ve written 150,000 words of fiction when I’d planned on 100,000 by this point. Work on 19-Infinity is progressing well (I’m debating using the word Infinity rather than the symbol). So is the work on Let No Man Put Asunder and Impossible Takes a Little Longer. I wanted to make 10 story submissions by the end of May; I’ve submitted 18. My blood pressure has improved from late last year (next week my doctor will tell me if it’s improved enough) and I had a fun birthday.
This month, however, I’ve felt the energy slacken. Part of that is that instead of focusing on one or two short stories at a time, I’m now working on multiple stories so none of the get anywhere. Partly that’s because they’re still raw enough I don’t know which one of them will finish first. Even so, I think I need to start concentrating on one or two at a time. I also need to prioritize in other ways. 19-Infinity, Oh the Places You’ll Go and Let No Man Put Asunder come higher than first or second draft stories.
My writing income is still flat since Leaf and my other client stopped soliciting my services last year. Fortunately I have Social Security but it’s still a lot tighter — and lord knows what will happen with the looming debt crisis. And of course it would be really nice to sell something now and again.
As for this week’s performance, it was underwhelming. Even with a writer’s work day last Sunday, I just barely made my hours for the week. Maybe it’s that working six days is pushing it, or some other reason but today and yesterday I really slumped. It felt like the days before TYG worked from home, when the dogs would scrunch up with me and erode my personal space to the point my brain fried. As I haven’t had more dog-care than usual this week, I don’t know why that would be. But it was.
That said, I did get some of those 18 submissions out and I met my monthly quota for Let No Man Put Asunder. I read part of Chapter Two to the group and got a big thumbs up (some criticism but more enthusiasm). Big enough I feel slightly nervous living up to it with Chapter Three. But that’s far from the worst problem to have.
Hopefully next week I’ll be fully focused. Wish me luck …
#SFWApro.
That doesn’t mean “
No real deep insights, I know, but I still find Camestros’ comment interesting.
I wound up spending a lot of time on my Savage Adventures book about Doc Savage because polishing and expanding 
I got some more work done on my Doc Savage nonfiction book, including rereading The Red Skull; despite the relatively low stakes (land containing valuable deposits) it’s a dynamic, action-packed adventure and a pleasure to reread. There are no scenes as cool as the James Bama cover though.
Over at Atomic Junkshop I look at 
#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders, Millie cover by Stan Goldberg, Undead Sexist Cliches cover by Kemp Ward.
(As TYG and I stayed in Pittsburgh for a Mensa event some years back, my photos might be useful too, even though they’re not period).
— they’ve prompted my mind to start thinking of other locations. Rather than the big old church, it’s now a small church in a working-class neighborhood; when Paul and Mandy run they hop a chain link fence into a warehouse parking lot, then sneak under the nearest road via a drainage culvert. That’s much more what I’m shooting for.
But as I’ve said before, that’s the nature of “average” — some days just by blind chance will come out below average. I recovered today, applying for a writing gig and submitting a couple of shorts, but I wound up short of my hours for the week. I’ve been over in other weeks, though, so that averages out too.
#SFWApro
First, thank you to whoever checked out Atlas Shagged on 
For once it was TYG and not me who woke up because I’d knocked myself out with my ambien prescription and slept through it. I did take Trixie to the vet the next day which threw me off my game I spent Tuesday mostly doing blogging rather than the fiction I’d had scheduled.
Over at Atomic Junkshop I channeled my past writing on political paranoia in 
#SFWApro.
It’s grown a couple more blooms since then.
While I didn’t get any Atomic Junk Shop posts up this week, my Con-Tinual panel dealing with mythological tropes is 
To my surprise, I’m not feeling the usual sense of “where did the time go?” I guess when I’m doing fiction and personal nonfiction full-time, rather than the usual business and finance articles, I feel I’ve filled the unforgiving minutes with 60 seconds worth of distance run (as Kipling puts it). Even if the last week of March hasn’t been so satisfying.
Oh, and I posted at Atomic Junk Shop about DC comics 
Others, as you can see at the link, were painful attempts to talk to kids in their own hip language.
I was quite exhausted the rest of the week. Coupled with the cats spending time in the morning, I wound up not getting any exercise done; my diet was none too healthy too. Work, though, went pretty well
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