Shortly after I made last week's post, it occurred to me it was time for me to do my typical "plans for next month" post. Oops. Before I jump into that, though, I want to take a minute to explain a few things.
If you've been following this website for a while, you know that sometimes I set goals and deadlines that I don't always meet. Last year, I was really hard on myself about this. This year, for a lot of reasons, I'm keeping a more positive outlook on that. OK, so I didn't post about my plans for May by May 1st. My bad. I forgot. I had other stuff to deal with. But no one died, and nothing caught on fire, so really, it's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.
Sometimes when I've gone in to write a post about why I haven't put something together in time, or why I'm delaying a project, it has come off as apologetic or making excuses, when really all I need to be doing is giving my readers an explanation. Last year, I didn't get a lot of writing work done, because for the majority of the year I was spending most of my time away from work looking for a new job.
This year, fortunately, I have a new job with fun and supportive people that doesn't leave me drained at the end of the day. So, yay, I should have time to write, right? Well, yes, in theory. But then life happens. I got engaged last month - yay! But that also means that now I'm spending a substantial amount of time working on wedding stuff, especially since we've decided on a short engagement. I started going to a new writing group, which is good for me because it gives me a chance to get feedback, grow as a writer, and offer my own contributions to others' work or positivity. But that's also time that takes me away from any big projects I could be working on at home, and it could also potentially have me working on more than one project at once.
Life happens: we meet up with people for Easter, Mother's Day, and engagement dinners; work gets crazy during the week of finals and graduation; people get hurt; home improvement projects that were supposed to be a 1-person, 20-minute quick fix become a 2-person, 3-hour, worried dog ordeal.
And remember those 3 partial novels I was supposed to finish reading and decide which one to work on by the middle of April? Yeah, guess who still isn't finished reading the third one...
Life happens. Life always happens. Yes, it's good to have goals, but I also need to learn to chill out a little bit when things happen that keep me from finishing those goals. It has occurred to me that this is going to be the norm rather than the exception. But, with that said, it also occurred to me that while I'm playing catch up, I have an easier project that I can work on. Maybe what I should do, at least until I get more of the wedding details nailed down, is work on getting "Ashes"* published.
Putting the final touches on and submitting a story might be the ideal project right now. The story is done. It is solid and good. It's about 5 1/2 pages, double spaced, so even doing a couple final read-throughs and edits is going to be a quick task. Formatting a story that short for submission is easy. Submitting is even more-so, now that a lot of websites use the same software to upload a piece for their consideration. I can have Ashes ready to submit within the next week or two, assuming I can find an hour or two (not even together) to read, edit, and format (but that is also going to depend on if we go to Tennessee sometime soon to meet with vendors).
Submissions? Pfff. Most submissions take less than 5 minutes, unless they need special formatting or have a different software. I can reasonably submit Ashes to 5 literary magazines before the end of May.
I will finish rereading Brinyor first, though, because I'm almost done, and because that will help me determine my next big project, which, at this point, I will not make a guess as to when I can reasonably start working on it.
I will update you all around the end of May to let you know how I've done on the above.
*A little bit more about "Ashes" can be found in my previous post, here:
https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2017/4/30/my-theatre-major-comes-in-handy