Arrant Nonsense

Well, would you look at that.

I just stuck an END at the bottom of the short I want to submit to Lawless Lands. It's a weird western with werewolves, aliens, prehensile-tailed monkey clowns, and a circus. I am well pleased with it, though it's going to take a heavy polish before it's ready to go out the door. It's sitting at just under 4800 words. This will probably expand once I start digging into the meat of the thing. I write spare first drafts, yo.

Apparently I can still do this. Good to know. \o/

Sit down with the stories I haven't completed and figure out where they're going and why I haven't finished them. I have at least three on the front burner and Lord knows how many on the back burner. If I can finish most--or just some--of them this year, it'll be a very good year indeed. I need to stick them all in one folder and see just how many there are. I can think of six altogether off the top of my head that are relatively recent.

I should also at least stare at the novel sequel outline.

I actually finished today's project, a flash piece for a contest on a board I'm a member of. I'm pretty pleased with it, as it proves a couple of things to me:
1. I am not broken. I can still finish things.
2. I can whack words like nobody's business. It started at 915 words, and ended at 749. I may expand it later, but at this point I'm pretty happy with it. The limit for the contest was 750 words. Go, me!

However, right now my eyeballs are doing the sandpaper thing, which tells me it's bedtime.

I have just stuck an END at the bottom of the first draft of a new story, code-named "Vampire Romeo&Juliet." Three days at a NaNo pace, 5360 words, go, me.

I'm not quite on pace for what I wanted on the year, because the novels haven't been happening, but that's my second short in two months and it should be done by the end of February and out the door.

The story I'm writing for the Diabolical Plots call for subs has an END at the bottom! It comes in a little over 1500 words, which I may chop down so it also fits into Daily Science Fiction's guidelines, because there's no sense putting all my eggs in a single basket.

It makes me go "awww."

Now I just have to beat it into shape before the 31st.

YAY.

I sat down and banged out the rest of the Blurring the Line story today. I've got over 2600 words on my day, an END at the bottom of the page, and 3500 words to edit into a semblance of not sucking. This is a very rough first draft, but I am well pleased with it, and I have a whole month to bang it into shape before the deadline.

Yaaaaaaaay.

I stuck an END at the bottom of the Baen story today. It came in at not quite 8400 words, which means I will need to whack 5% of out it in post. I scribbled 3700 words on the day, which may be some kind of record for me, and I did all of it in the car on the drive home from Colorado.

I still need a name for my [demon] and also one for the [McGuffin]. I will probably do that tomorrow.

My inboxes are cleared. That was fun. But, hey, only one rejection over the weekend. I'll flip that one to F&SF.

Waiting to hear back from my RP partner for the Tattoo Story, and then I can edit that and ship it off. I'll run the Baen story through a couple of edits before letting anyone see it, because it's rough right now. Once it's been judged I'll have more to say about it, but I don't want to put any tells where Larry can see them because it's supposed to be Sekrit.

But. I am making progress. It looks like I'll hit both deadlines. Yaaay.

The story I've code-named "Mean Streets," which I'm banging out in hopes of getting in here, (finally) has an END at the bottom. The first draft comes in at about 3650 words.

Now I get to edit it into some semblance of not sucking.

At least I think I may have finally figured out what I want to say with it. Maybe.

Hell's Process Server has an END at the bottom of it! A hair under 5500 words, which is short for me. However, this thing will grow in re-writes, because it needs more description, but I still think it will stay under 6000, so I am well-pleased with it.

This marks my fourth story with angels in it. I'm sensing a trend in my writing of writing stories that no one will buy, ever, but I don't think it's a bad thing. Maybe I'll be That Werewolf and Angel Writer.

At the bottom of this Terribad Story.

Considering the fact that I just started it yesterday and this may be the first you've heard of it unless you follow me on Twitter, this is quite an accomplishment. It comes in at 830 words, doesn't have a title yet, and needs editing to make it actually bad.

I was going to tell y'all what it involves, but, you know what? You're better off not knowing. I'll just be over here, headdesking and ashamed of myself.

At the bottom of my fifth story in the June NaNo Project o'Doom. This one clocks in at 8958 and leaves me 161 short of the "1700 per day" goal.

And it's going to require a lot of fixing in post. I was 3600 words in when I realized it wouldn't work in first person, so it switches to third person. And I'm not real sure my protag is who it started out to be.

But. The first draft is done. At this point, that's all I care about.