It’s A Kind of Magic

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic.
― Carl Sagan

This was a week, I tell you what.

First of all, I’m making myself crazy with Firestorm. Should I keep going as it is, should I create a plan of attack for it, or should I just start over? The whole mercenary thing seemed like a good idea at the time, seeing as it generated so many words for NaNo, but it needs to be cleaned up and expanded if I’m going to keep it, condensed if it’s just going to be a footnote in his life.

Now, if I keep it (which I’m leaning towards) I’ll need to make some major adjustments to my time lines. But I’ll also need to put a little more thought into it, and I’ve got other irons in my fire right now that need their fair share of attention.

For instance, I have about 10,000 words written on the book I’m taking to the writing retreat in the spring (unless it gets moved again). It would be kind of nice to at least double that, but I have only a vague idea of where it’s going. Might be nice to figure that out as well.

There’s also the edits on Blood Ties, which kind of ground to a halt during NaNo, and let’s not forget about An Elemental Spirit, which was NaNo 2019. So maybe I need to take a step back and get my priorities straight.

Meanwhile, I edited my story, tweaked it, took a deep breath, and sent it off into the wild. I should hear within three weeks whether it’s been accepted or not. I’m thinking in the new year I should be making a habit of sending stories out, maybe even some poetry. What good is a story or poem if no one else ever reads it?

I also spent a great deal of time picking out stories, then rejecting stories, for my book flood anthology. I thought I had a decent line up, but then realized they were all pretty dark. So I changed out a few, thought about it, changed a few more, and finally settled on my line-up. It’s got a little bit of everything – horror, humour, weird, and wonderful.

Then, of course, I spent a day arranging and re-arranging the order, formatting it for printing, and testing the print-run. My printer gives me the option of printing in booklet format which is a big time-saver, but there’s also the matter of getting the font size right and inserting a blank page where needed so each story starts on an odd page.

Then I realized I could add page numbers, and page numbers meant an index. Okay, so the index is in a separate document so I didn’t have to go to the trouble of suppressing the first couple of page numbers, but it was no big deal to print it out separately. And Staples very nicely cut all the pages for me, for free.

All in all, I’m pretty pleased with the results. And I can take pride in the fact I did it all myself. I guess that’s also a kind of magic.

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Wordage Report

I added a few words to Firestorm last week but I was so busy doing other things that that was it for the writing. My blog posts were up on time, so that was something. And then Thursday I spent considerable time on my post for Friday before realizing I was doing a superstitions post, not a fiction post. *sigh*

I signed up for the Writer's Digest prompt a day. It's supposed to be delivered to my inbox but I think I messed up my email when I signed up because I haven't received any yet. But I figure these prompts should be a quick and easy daily exercise and I can post the best two or three on Fridays.

Goals From Last Week

1. 500 words a day – only about one day’s worth.
2. Finish editing story and submit – I did!
3. Finalize stories for book flood anthology – another win
4. Learn to use coil binder – learning as you read

Goals For This Week

1. Prompt a day.
2. Find new story for submission
3. Start edits on Blood Ties
4. Make up my mind about going forward with Firestorm.