Ug. So.
February ended and March began with a blizzard that knocked my power out for three days. All has been well since then, just busy and harried and I didn’t really have time until this moment to sit down and catch up with myself on this.
WHAT WORKED
The short of it really is that February and March were not the most successful writing-y-the-numbers months I’ve had. Is that okay? Sure. Mostly because what I did do was significant. I put the finishing touches on a few stories and submitted them. I re-wrote the beginning of the new novel I’m working on and reworked the outline to cut a projected 20k out of the book (always a good thing for overwriters like me!). And I sold a reprint! More news there when I get the countersigned contract!
Possibly as important as writing time these months were the hours spent with friends, colleagues, and family. I had plenty of dips and dives (see below), but they were all tempered by getting to return to my extrovert ways here and there. If I can cobble together a year that is both productive and filled with people, it’ll be a good year indeed.
A CAREER BINGO LANDMARK: 100th Rejection
I got my 100th short fiction rejection recently and had a little self-care party in its honor. I think it important to celebrate landmarks like this for lots of reasons. First, it’s a sign that I’ve been submitting, that I’m actively doing the work it takes to be published. But I also think our society could use a little normalizing of struggle. Social media casts a rosy light on so much of our lives that any one of us in a rut might end up feeling like we’re the only one not “living our best life.” I know that kind of living isn’t without hard work, mistakes, ad outright failure, and I think there’s no shame in being honest about the ups and the down of the process. So yeah. One hundred rejections.
WHERE I STRUGGLED
I have a kid in daycare and that means we get every bug that breezes through. A whole week in February to the flu and the intermittent colds have slowed everything down. Oh and the snowstorm and resulting snow days. And February vacation week (no, not “we went on vacation,” just “no school.” And migraines. And needing to adult. I resented a lot of the stops and starts for a while, but really, there was nothing to be done about them besides work through them and after them. And I did. Life’s never going to give me the all-clear-to-write-without-interruptions, so I’ll just keep making the most of what I get. And I’ll be glad for it later!
BY THE NUMBERS
- Words written: 29.805/200,000 (chugging along)
- New works (goal: 12 new shorter works submitted in 2018):
- Started: 7
- Drafted: 6
- Revised: 3
- Submitted: 3
- Books read: 12/30 (see above)
Victoria Sandbrook 