I’ve been resting on my laurels long enough!

That’s a lie. I haven’t rested at all. In fact I’m more tired than I’ve been in a long long time. Moving really wiped me out and all the lead-up activities had me burning the candle at both ends. When I sit and work then sit and write, that’s one thing. But this getting up and hauling my ass around the house and packing, unpacking, cleaning, chopping down plants that look like they’re about to eat me (FEED ME SEYMOUR!), and dragging my favorite daughter from volleyball practice to volleyball camp to the store to her friend’s house to hell and back…. I’m pooped. I feel like there’s been little time for me.

I have seen a couple of movies here and there, but writing? pfft. Reading? Well, a little but not as much as I’d like. TV? I think two hours in the past month.

So I’ve really fallen off the horse and as of right now I’m 85,000 words behind schedule for the year. Am I afraid? Well, not really. I still think I can pull this one off. I’m not THAT far behind that a few really good days will get me caught up. I just need to wrangle some time and actually do it (like right now instead of writing this blog post.)

But I have something exciting to tell you! Really really exciting.

No, I didn’t get a short story published. I would like to tell you that, but it’s not true. Instead what I will tell you is that I got a rejection that blew my socks off. It was a pull-no-punches FEEDBACK rejection. The rejection boiled down to “Great start of the story, but it went off the rails and became a different story half-way through. Try again.”

There were about two paragraphs analyzing the story in a way that I’d never seen before. It took me two weeks until I had time to formulate a rational response. Which boiled down to “Thank you sir may I have another”. Wait, that’s not right. It was “Thank you for the feedback. Would you like this again if I perform the desired rewrites?” The answer: “Yes, but that’s not a promise of publication.”

Regardless, I’m excited that an editor would like to see this story again. I’ll be chopping it in the half-way point, before the story went in the wrong direction, and I’ll continue in the direction the story was already headed. I’m excited about this. I’m not in the least worried about trashing 3000-4000 words of the story. That’s 1-2 days of writing, plus editing, plus asking a couple friends to read it. This’ll be AWESOME! I’d already thought about how I would do that story differently and this will make it a much more powerful story. It’ll answer all the questions that are brought up.

There’s still a lot going on around the Murdock Family Household and I doubt things will slow down. Regardless, I’m about to sit and start typing like a mad man once again. Time to break free of this log jam. Time to flex my fingers, bite my tongue, hold on tight and see what happens next!

Until Next Time!

WOO WOO!