Fairly uneventful week, filled with hope and rejection and victories and defeats, so, you know, a normal day in the life. Goldbug has returned to napping, though his nighttimes have been thrashy and disrupted (thanks molars!), but at least I get my bit of writing time each day (except Tuesday: nothing got done Tuesday).
I’ve been hunching a lot lately. My back is not thanking me for it. It’s been cold and blustery and rainy but also very spring-ish, and the shin splints had faded enough for me to start running again, which feels FANTASTIC.
Got a form rejection Wednesday, which stinks, but it is what it is. It was always going to be a bit of a long shot, so I can’t say I’m entirely surprised. More surprised by the little sting it brought with it–like getting a new car and finding its first scratch, you know?
But I’ll hopefully be getting that story back out this coming Monday when a certain reading period reopens.
Accomplished this Week:
Added 3k to the book and finally (finally!) wrote my revised synopsis. Man, was that hard. But I found a great resource for writing a one-page synopsis. Only time will tell if this is a good method for me, but I found it a great deal easier than some of the other approaches I researched and actually managed to nail a one page synopsis for an incredibly complicated fantasy novel. Is it good that I reduced it to a page? Eeeeemm…I don’t know. The two page version has a lot more detail, but I do want to practice the short-form, since from what I’ve seen of agent requests, short synopses are the norm. I guess we’ll see?
No short story work this week–no time with the synopsis, but that’s ok. May will be my new start on the Chekhov month, in the hopes of nailing four new drafts by the end of it.
Inspiring Me this Week:
Finished reading Banker and The Planetbreaker’s Son this week, which means I DID finish four books this month (woohoo!). Of the two, The Planetbreaker’s Son was my favorite, and the included essay, “The Term Paper Artist,” is almost worth the cost of the book on its own.
Also just opened Pandora’s Box and bought Minecraft. I used to play on our Xbox before it died ages and ages ago, but when B-Bug developed a horror of creepers, that came to a swift end for the foreseeable future. But B-Bug is now almost seven, and his friends all play Minecraft and he got curious about it (on creative-mode only, thanks), and he’s fallen head-over-heels for it.
So we’ve been playing a lot of Minecraft. And I’ve been building The Labyrinth, because of course I am.
Goals for Next Week:
Next week kicks off May, and with a new month comes a new Chekhov plan! Four short stories in four weeks. So next week, I’ll be focusing on adding 3.5k to the novel (hoping to meet a personal word count deadline and get a bit ahead of the class requirement so I have more time to edit before submission, because BOY AM I GOING TO NEED IT), and writing a new story.
Also, I’ll be submitting that story again.
That said, I’m also up for my first COVID vaccine on Monday, and will probably get the second one sometime in May, too, which means I’ll probably be down and out for one of those story weeks. So we’ll just play it by ear, shall we?
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How was your week? Anything exciting on the docket? Getting as excited as I am for the summer months? What’s one of your goals for May?
Maggie Slater 