Renee puts the mantra of 2.0 perfectly in her post:  “I’m tired of being a fan. I’m tired of being a wannabe writer. And I’m ready to do something about it.”

9 months until Balticon 2010.  Perfect amount of time to allow our ideas to gestate.

Okay, I apologize for that joke.

I’ve also discovered, through his letters and other non-fiction writing, that a certain character of mine who shall remain nameless was a racist, xenophobic luddite.  And another character of mine is a Slavic inventor.  Which I’ve also got to take care of this draft.  And a certain horrific otherworldly realm of horrors and nightmares that shall remain nameless is presented as, if anything, silly in the first draft.  I always knew that was the problem, and was kind of hoping that would be the focuse of my second draft, reworking those sections, but with the need to potentially change the whole interpersonal dynamic between two characters…this is going to be a hell of an edit.

But really, I’ve gotten almost nowhere, and for that I blame the fact that I’m running off to get married in two weeks (my god, is it only two weeks?) and just haven’t had my mind in the game.  Hopefully when I get back, I’ll be more focused, and more ready to really tackle CVS 2.0 and the big editing pass on Conqueror Worm.

Oh, finally got my Writers of the Future rejection for Belmeth, a few weeks later than usual and after the submission deadline, but I didn’t have anything else ready to go anyway.  What with focusing on Conqueror Worm, my short story career right now will probably be to just cycle Belmeth, Sleep, and Div0 to a few different markets, possibly to include Escape and Pseudopod, which someone got me hooked on (though good timing, since my favorite radio station just got taken away, screw you very much CBS Radio).  The same someone that really needs to make a blog post about her vision for CVS 2.0, since she’s one of the ones who started it, dagnabbit.

Look out world, the Cat Vacuumers are coming.

Where’s this attitude coming from?  A recent trip that two of our members took to Balticon, where they saw the power of motivated groups, realized they actually had the ears of more than a few people there, and came to one conclusion: it was time to attend cons not as fans, but as writers.  So then who are we?  We are the Cat Vacuuming Society of Northern Virginia, a group of rather motivated writers who have been meeting for nearly a decade with most of the core group having been together for about 4-5 years now.  Most of us are ready to break out.  Several of us have short story sales, and we’ve all got longer projects that we’ve been working on.  I’ve got novels, and with my fiancee we’ve got the pilot.  She’s got another pilot and several novel concepts that she’s starting to take through to completion.  Our founder has a novel she’s been working on for years, and a new attitude on life towards getting writing done.

This is a powerful organization.

This is a group that can get things done.

We just didn’t really realize it until now.

So here it goes, refocusing.  Two projects.  Right now I only have two projects, everything else goes on the back burner.  Conqueror Worm needs to have a serious editing pass.  Arkham is getting closer and closer.  That’s it for me right now, through probably November.  Cause if we’re going to be serious, I need to have things to be serious about.