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dr_phil_physicsI'm Writing Again
Actually, I never stopped. Not really. But at the end of August I did something which compressed a nerve and screwed up both walking, and the ability to sit-in-chair and write. Then at Thanksgiving I got an infection in my right thumb which screwed up typing -- the large bandage I had kept dragging on the trackpoint on the laptop and catching other keys. Annoying.
So between that and markets being saturated with stories of suitable length from my Invenstory, my production rate dropped in the fourth quarter of 2010. The new year started out slow, but necessity forced me to finally finish a story to read at ConFusion last weekend. I trimmed an already short short story by twenty percent to meet the 1000 word limit for the Grand Rapids Festival Literary Contest. I'm working on other projects.
And today I made notes for a new SF story inspired by the recent events in Tunisia and Egypt, and after we came up from the kitty room downstairs, typed them in and made some progress on that.
So despite this being a very busy semester with a new upper level class to teach, I am writing again.
Alas, The Ball Does Get Dropped From Time To Time
I've managed to get entries into Writers of the Future every quarter since June 2002. As a Published Finalist in WOTF XXIV for "A Man in the Moon", but not a prize winner, I still have some eligibility left. 35 entries and only 5 straight rejections -- everything else has been Honorable Mention or higher -- until now. Looks like my Q4 entry missed everything. Another straight rejection.
Naturally I looked at the story, which I thought was pretty good. Found three typos right away. And... a big continuity error that I thought I'd fixed. Yeah, back in September I was rushed and apparently didn't proofread the whole story all at once. Details, details, details. These things happen.
So I'm only mad at myself, not the fine people at WOTF. The story, no matter how good it could have been, wasn't finished right. End of story, so to speak. I'll fix the story. Make it better. Then either send it out to market, or throw it back to WOTF if I don't get a new story written by March 31st. (grin)
Dr. Phil
Actually, I never stopped. Not really. But at the end of August I did something which compressed a nerve and screwed up both walking, and the ability to sit-in-chair and write. Then at Thanksgiving I got an infection in my right thumb which screwed up typing -- the large bandage I had kept dragging on the trackpoint on the laptop and catching other keys. Annoying.
So between that and markets being saturated with stories of suitable length from my Invenstory, my production rate dropped in the fourth quarter of 2010. The new year started out slow, but necessity forced me to finally finish a story to read at ConFusion last weekend. I trimmed an already short short story by twenty percent to meet the 1000 word limit for the Grand Rapids Festival Literary Contest. I'm working on other projects.
And today I made notes for a new SF story inspired by the recent events in Tunisia and Egypt, and after we came up from the kitty room downstairs, typed them in and made some progress on that.
So despite this being a very busy semester with a new upper level class to teach, I am writing again.
Alas, The Ball Does Get Dropped From Time To Time
I've managed to get entries into Writers of the Future every quarter since June 2002. As a Published Finalist in WOTF XXIV for "A Man in the Moon", but not a prize winner, I still have some eligibility left. 35 entries and only 5 straight rejections -- everything else has been Honorable Mention or higher -- until now. Looks like my Q4 entry missed everything. Another straight rejection.
Naturally I looked at the story, which I thought was pretty good. Found three typos right away. And... a big continuity error that I thought I'd fixed. Yeah, back in September I was rushed and apparently didn't proofread the whole story all at once. Details, details, details. These things happen.
So I'm only mad at myself, not the fine people at WOTF. The story, no matter how good it could have been, wasn't finished right. End of story, so to speak. I'll fix the story. Make it better. Then either send it out to market, or throw it back to WOTF if I don't get a new story written by March 31st. (grin)
Dr. Phil
