2013 Writing Progress – Week 9

I’m a little late in updating for this week, but that’s ok.  I don’t hear any complaints.  🙂

Simply put, I crushed it.  Observe:

11,212 words, almost 50% above my 7,500 word goal for the week.  It helped that I was off on travel in Japan (Okinawa, to be precise).  And it helped that I lived Saturday twice; the beauty of flying west-to-east across the date line.  I actually landed in LA before I departed Tokyo, at least as far as the date and hour were concerned.  Plus it was a 9.5 hour plane ride, on that leg alone.  Another 3 hours from Okinawa to Tokyo, and a couple hours in various airports.  The flight from LA to San Diego was miniscule, and I didn’t write; it was low altitude and I love watching the landscape during low altitude flights.  Long story short, I was able to get a lot done on Saturday.  Obviously I did not write the entire time on the plane; I attempted to get some sleep.  And for obvious reasons I did not right Saturday night or Sunday – one must reunite with one’s family after all.  🙂

It was a good week.  I made a LOT of progress on The Pericles Conspiracy; it’s up to a bit over 72,000 words now, and I’m well past that difficult hump so I think I have clear sailing from here to the end, in another 30k or so, depending.  I also completed a short story, which I intended for this quarter’s Writers of the Future entry.  But now I’m wondering if I might submit it to Clarkesworld first, since they have a quick turnaround (just a few days).  I really dig the story and think it may do well.  If they like it, I still have time to write another story for WotF.  I don’t know.  I’m still pondering.

Complicating that calculus is the fact that I’ve lined up a cover artist for Pericles.  She’s penciled me in for the 28th of this month to work the cover, and since I’m getting both an ebook and print cover from her I need to have at least a reasonable guess as to the book’s final page count so she can get the cover dimensions correct for the print version (damn that spine width bit!).  So I really need to devote the majority of my attention to Pericles so as to get it done.  Pronto.

So I’ll probably just send that short story to WotF and worry about Clarkesworld et al after the quarter’s results are in.

Regardless, just because last week was a good one doesn’t mean I can rest on my laurels.  I didn’t write yesterday, and I’ve only done 459 words today, so I really need to get back to cranking this week.  Must meet the writing goal, and Sunday at least is going to be busy.  I’m running a triathlon, so I can’t count on a ton of free time that day to make up any slack I may leave this week.

Right.  So, back to it then.  Cheers!