An update!
The project management contract that I started right around the time I posted the last entry is still going strong. I don’t see any changes in the near future, which is keen because for the first time in a long while I’ve been able to keep up with my writing while bringing home the smoked pork product. I’ve been getting up early to write before work, and that, too, has been going well. Shocking.
I’m not writing as much as I’d like to, of course, but I’ve been managing to average an hour a day for the last eight weeks. Five plus of those weeks have served a double purpose: I’ve been doing the Clarion West Write-a-thon. I’ve tried it twice before, but I’ve never actually finished. This year, however, I’ve set an easier-to-track goal. I’ve committed to writing an hour every day, or forty-two hours over the course of six weeks. With two days left I’ve got forty hours in and two to go.
So this year will be different. This year I will finish, dammit.
What all three years have had in common, though, is support from superexcellent sponsors, who have made with the cheering, or the cash, or both. I appreciate it all, and I know Clarion West does, too.
And by the way, this daily writing business doesn’t end with the Write-a-thon. This third-time charm has been like my first NaNoWriMo — it’s offered a big ol’ bushel of I Can Do This. Which means I’m setting a goal of thirty hours of writing a month minimum while I’m in my current job.
In other news, my reading of Kij Johnson’s haunting “The evolution of trickster stories among the dogs of North Park after the Change” is up on Podcastle.