Friday Update: Stories, Spiders, and Synopses

Some weeks are just down weeks, but THIS WAS NOT ONE OF THEM. Holy crap, folks. This was one of those weeks where the words just flowed. All told, I wrote over 10,400 words this week (WHA-?!), and made excellent progress on several fronts. I’ll be the first to say this does NOT happen every week, and I know a few writers out there who would probably even consider 10k a “normal” week for them, but with my time constraints? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Wow. I’ll take it. Probably means next week will be CRAPPITY-GARBAGEPANTS, but that’s okay. Because:

Accomplished This Week:

I hit my goal of adding about 4k to the novel-in-progress. It was a rough start to the week, because Goldbug did not nap on Monday, but I still got a little editing done and managed to accomplish thing #2: submitted my book synopsis to the Write Your Novel class I’m currently taking. That was a major weight off my shoulders, let me tell you. I was stressing out about it way more than I needed to, but it’s done and I can sit back now.

In addition to that, I wrote TWO (what, did she say Two? As in “2”? As in the number two, more than one less than three?) new stories this week. And not just this week. In the last TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. That’s two stories in twenty-four hours, whaaaaaa-?! Who am I? Anyway, one is a flash fiction story and one’s about 3k (and about spiders, ick ick ick ick!), so it’s not actually a crazy word count, but STILL. Quite pleased with myself. The flash story I’ll submit for Furious Fiction tomorrow, but the other one is going to need some TLC before it’s ready to meet the world at the end of the month. It’s about some messed up things, and most prominently features wolf spiders which I caaaaaaaaaannnnooooooooootttt stand, but forced myself to do the research anyway. But that would be TWO new submissions, which would finish out my annual goal of submitting FOUR new pieces in 2021. O_O <-Whut?

Also, got my first COVID shot, so there’s that.

Inspiring Me This Week:

Finished the collection of Shirley Jackson’s short stories, Dark Tales, which was excellent. “The Summer People” is a wonderful story to end on, though “Home” is also fantastic, and there are a slew of other great stories in there, too, if you like dark and weird.

Also just read “Remote” by Kaoru Sakasaki on Daily Science Fiction which was a wonderful way to wake up this morning and had a surprising amount of feels.

Oh! And I made a terrible mistake and re-downloaded TheSims4 last weekend, so HAHAHAHA, I’ll be doing that this weekend. A lot. XD

I’ve also made the commitment to read a LOT of classic SF and Space Opera over the coming months, because there are just too many classics I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t read. So there. No, I’m not going to tell you which ones. Yes, if you follow my Good

For Next Week:

Next week, same as last week: 3k on the novel, and write one new short story. It may be that one of these weeks (because I finished two this week) I may abdicate a new story in favor of polishing up the new one to submit, but we’ll see how it goes.

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How was your week? What are you reading currently? What do you wish you were doing?