November was rough on the tidiness of my desk, and lo, of my whole office. I’ve lost track of how many little scraps of paper are here. Besides that I have a few pens, and a DVD about linguistics of sign language. That and a bunch of the usual clutter–xylitol, yerba mate, and chocolate mainly. I fear that the camera crew for Hoarders might show up unannounced.
I didn’t participate in NaNo this year but I did achieve goals. I finished main edits on what I was working on going into the month, including one beautiful editing session with a word count of negative 700. That story’s down to marination before one last look, and one final pass by beta reader(s). I also cranked out 15k of backstory for one of my novels. This was less than the “20-3ok” I had dreamed about, but it’s fine–word count wasn’t the goal. Incidentally, 5k seems to be my daily limit. Progress on a few other small pieces.
I also realized this month that my contest win earlier this year puts me formally into the qualification zone for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Accordingly, I updated my bibliography page. It’s still not beautiful, but it does the job of providing information. That page non-specifically mentions a pending acceptance I have with an audio market, but doesn’t mention at all another exciting acceptance I’ve gotten recently.
My novel submissions will all cross the six-month marker before the next MDR. Nary a response on any of them. 🙁 Idea for the next novel is well into outline stage.
I need to do more with self-publishing, even if just to try out the waters. The best marking tool for self-published stories is having more self-published stories available, so I’m weighing my options and trying to figure out when to bundle short story collections and when to split them out.