Late Night Antics

Now Playing: OUT OF TIME by A Day to Remember
Just Read: THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES by Tom Wolfe--Great writing and fun dialogue, though I gotta say I didn't really like any of the main characters. I guess that was kind of the point; they were all vain douche bags.
Reading Now: MR. MERCEDES by Stephen King

I really hope these apartment walls are thick.

It's the middle of the night, which frequently finds me at my writing desk. I have some goals for these two nights in between shifts at the hospital (too few to bother trying to flip back to a day schedule). Among these goals are finishing a series of 100-word stories I'd like to submit, and working hard on a flash piece for June.

Also, I recently discovered two magazines I haven't submitted to before and I'm looking forward to some quick rereading/polishing to get some stories to them. June is also a deadline month for WotF contest, and I think this quarter I will be redoing a former submission, because I think it's a good fit and recently got some good feedback from an editor for how to make it better. If I keep my fingers crossed, maybe it will fair better this go-around.

I have some high hopes for the second half of this month--I received some really encouraging rejections lately (I know that sounds strange but if you're a young amateur fiction writer you probably understand) and I'm hoping with a little tweaking I can get a few stories over the hump and into acceptance quality. It's been a long time since I've had a story published, a drought that might be the longest since I had my first story accepted at seventeen years old. That's gotta change.

Despite the drought, I really believe my writing is getting better. I'm hoping a lot of the drought can be attributed to submitting to professional magazines almost exclusively, which is a very high bar to jump over, considering all the established writers also submit there and are my competitors.

Writing is a grind, man. Grind, grind, grind. Please, be like most things and pay off in the end. Here's to a payday in the near future.