I might be trying to hard.  CVS 2.0 has got me excited, but perhaps it’s gotten me a little too excited, and has me pushing myself beyond comfort limits.  That’s why I’m hoping the vacation will help, just get completely out of my head.  The laptop will go along, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to get anything written.  At the same time, I don’t want to leave it behind just to have inspiration hit one evening after dinner while just lounging in a hotel room.

I’ve been listening to the Drabblecast lately, enjoying its slight (or sometimes extreme) quirkiness, and it’s got me itching to try some drabbles, which might be good for me.  Get me writing and working on something with such a short distance between starting and payoff.  I’ve always been dismissive of drabbles in the past, perhaps because my only previous association with them was at various fan fiction sites a decade ago when I would actually visit fan fiction sites, usually trolling for the worst of the worst.  I suppose if I shouldn’t judge short stories by fan fic, I shouldn’t judge drabbles by fan fic drabbles.  I’ve actually been rather impressed at how people can set a tone, mood, characters, and get a resolution, all in fewer words than are likely to end up in this paragraph.  Several of my thing-a-week concepts I never really liked cause they ended up all broody and naval-gazing probably because I was trying to take a 100-word concept and turn it into a 3000-word story.

I’m also strongly considering sending Sleep to them.  I don’t know if it’ll work in audio format, but I do feel it’s a stylistic fit, and it’s not my job to reject stories for them.

If I like them, I’ll post some here.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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.

No name on the work except the cover.  Check.

Page numbers.  Check.

Manuscript format.  Check

SASE.  Check.

Printing has completed.  Now it’s just working up the nerves to head down to the car and get me to the Post Office.  After this one heads off, the next project will probably be a big edit of The Dorman, a story that I think has a lot of good potential, but also needs a really strong editing pass.

For now, a Nanowrimo post mortem.  I backed out.  Look, here’s the thing.  I was working on the thing-a-week project, which was keeping me busy, keeping me away from other projects.  And the very first thing I did was start a new project which would further keep me away from other project.  I like the plot, but it requires a lot of world building, and it deserves a lot more thought that Nanowrimo was going to let me put into it.

So here’s where I am.  I’ve got some short stories from either my aborted thing-a-week or earlier that I think can be worked into shape to submit to publications.  The list, to keep myself honest:

• Sleep (previous purchased, not published)
• Div0
• The Rustler of Drybone Gulch
• Carbon Offsets
• The Doorman
• The Queen of Belmeth
• Looking Over

Quite a list.  I’m hoping to go back into something like thing-a-week, but editing these stories over the next two months with an eye of sending them out.  Plan one is to submit something to the next Writers of the Future contest while I’m still eligible.   Then, it’ll probably be Queen of Belmeth sent off to Weird Tales.

In my novels, I need to give Conqueror Worm a big editing pass.  That’ll hopefully start no later than March, but if I can get started in February, that’ll rock.

The television pilot project, Arkham, still remains firmly on a front burner, gotta get back to work on that ASAP.

I’d like to write a spec script.

I’d like to do a massive rewrite of Halley’s Tail.

Dear lord that’s a lot of stuff.