Writing Excuses Retreat...

So, the Writing Excuses folks are having a writers' retreat next year, in June. I've registered for it (after madly refreshing the page from 10am my time on and talking the Hubby into a loan, since I only had half the money saved up for it, so I've worked out a payment plan with him). ...and it sold out in twenty minutes. WOW.

Also, if you're not listening to Writing Excuses every week, you totally should be.

Considering the fact that my writing is stalled like a big stalled thing at this point, I'm hoping that by the time this thing rolls around I'll actually be back in the groove. And, to that end, my RP partner and I have made a pact of "no RP until we've each written 500 words of original fiction."

So, I'm staring at the steampunk werewolf story, and also at the new Alex Jarret story, in no small consternation right now. The steampunk story is failing because (a) it seems to be ending too soon, and (b) there doesn't seem to be a point to it at all. The Alex Jarrett story hasn't even got off the ground because I have no idea exactly how the Law of Unintended Consequences has bitten a mad genius pharmaceutical researcher on the ass yet.

OH GOD SEND BOOZE.

It also occurs to me...

That I'm not paying attention to the Business Side of the writing business as much as I ought. This was borne out when (rather than writing), I had a look at my spreadsheet and realized that I entered a story in a contest back in May and hadn't heard back from them. Turns out that the winners were announced at the end of May. So that story's been sitting fallow for nearly five months. And I've got several others that I haven't flipped. And possibly a couple that I ought to query on or at least check the status of the website.

Sometimes it feels like I'm just banging my head on a wall, you know? I've been at this for years and had a bare handful of stories published. The quality of rejections has been getting better, even on my older stuff, but it's wearing.

This is part of the reason RP is so seductive, especially the way my main partner and I do it when we're on AIM together--there's the insta-grat "OMG THAT IS AWESOME" feeling. BUT, while we're using our own characters in our improvisational collaborative storytelling, I can't help but feel that it's really just a bare step up from writing fanfic, in that there's no way we're going to get paid for this no matter how awesome it is.

But, hell, I'm not getting paid for my writing anyway. Right?

Welp. Five hundred words. RP tag. Fiction subs. Nose to grindstone.