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Ah, Deadlines
Tuesday, 1 April 2014 00:10What's the quote? I love deadlines -- I love the sound they make whooshing by.
Nice of the Kindle Fire HD spellchecker to have "whooshing".
Midnight ET 31 March 2014 is/was the latest quarterly deadline for Writers of the Future. And yeah, no new pro sales -- no sales at all in 2013, but then I spent much of the year out of action -- so I still have some eligibility.
As usual I dithered. Started a great new story. Started another one. Was sure a third Was Going To Be It. Except I started a new story on 16 March. And didn't get back to it until the 30th. That would be yesterday, Sunday. The story grew by a factor of 2½ in two days.
Still didn't have an ending at 9pm. Plus other holes. Final push began at 23:19. Finally done. Reformat for submission. This is normally a boilerplate operation, but this is the first story I wrote completely in Word 2003 and not Word 95, so I had to dig through those rotten self-adjusting menus to find perfectly ordinary functions.
Anyway, final push. Go to WOTF homepage. It's loading SLOWLY. WOTF servers overloaded? Last minute Obamacare sign ups crashing the Internet? Who knows. Have my story, fill out the forms. Upload. Submit. Clock ticks over from 23:59 to 00:00. SCORE!
Except the clock on that little PC is off by a few minutes. It was 23:55. 11:55pm EDT.
Oh man, I coulda had five more minutes of editing. Or writing. (grin)
If this story loses, I'll know it was because I was cheated by a clock. (insane-grin)
Yeah, right.
Move on. Move on. Nothing to see here but the crazy man.
I should go play on Facebook for half an hour, then go to bed.
Dr. Phil
Nice of the Kindle Fire HD spellchecker to have "whooshing".
Midnight ET 31 March 2014 is/was the latest quarterly deadline for Writers of the Future. And yeah, no new pro sales -- no sales at all in 2013, but then I spent much of the year out of action -- so I still have some eligibility.
As usual I dithered. Started a great new story. Started another one. Was sure a third Was Going To Be It. Except I started a new story on 16 March. And didn't get back to it until the 30th. That would be yesterday, Sunday. The story grew by a factor of 2½ in two days.
Still didn't have an ending at 9pm. Plus other holes. Final push began at 23:19. Finally done. Reformat for submission. This is normally a boilerplate operation, but this is the first story I wrote completely in Word 2003 and not Word 95, so I had to dig through those rotten self-adjusting menus to find perfectly ordinary functions.
Anyway, final push. Go to WOTF homepage. It's loading SLOWLY. WOTF servers overloaded? Last minute Obamacare sign ups crashing the Internet? Who knows. Have my story, fill out the forms. Upload. Submit. Clock ticks over from 23:59 to 00:00. SCORE!
Except the clock on that little PC is off by a few minutes. It was 23:55. 11:55pm EDT.
Oh man, I coulda had five more minutes of editing. Or writing. (grin)
If this story loses, I'll know it was because I was cheated by a clock. (insane-grin)
Yeah, right.
Move on. Move on. Nothing to see here but the crazy man.
I should go play on Facebook for half an hour, then go to bed.
Dr. Phil
