Writing is Hard, Writing is Easy

Things I've learned the last few months, in TL;DR version:

• Writing is hard.
• Writing is easy.
• Writing conferences are expensive.
• Writing conferences are helpful.

This summer I attended When Words Collide in Calgary and the Writers of the Future mini-workshop in Los Angeles. Completely different experiences, both immensely helpful in their own way. I met a lot of great people in LA, and was able to sit and chat with some folks in Calgary who I have "met" over email but never in person.

Part of what I learned at WotF is I should be keeping my social media up to date. Guess what? You're getting shorter but more frequent blog posts now.

What I'd like to do is set goals once a month, and then provide updates on those. Lots of writers do it. It's the cool thing, right? Write? (See what I did there ...)

Summer 2015 Successes

I missed goal-setting this summer, so I want to share some of what went well!

• I sold 2 more stories to On Spec: The Canadian Magazine of the Fantastic. They're a pretty awesome Canadian magazine, and if you don't subscribe to them then you should. Not sure when these stories will be published yet.
• My sister Christine Moleski used her art skillz and painted me a picture from one of the above stories for my birthday. It's amazing. I love her.

October 2015 Goals

• Get at least 6 of my stories out on submission. Right now I have 5 out and I'd like to end the month with 6 sent out somewhere.
• Revise "Darkship" and send it out. Done!
• Rewrite "Mandala" so it's ready to send back on re-write request when the publisher opens again.
• Draft up the idea for a story for Tesseracts 20.

I'm really excited about the topic for Tesseracts 20 because it's what I love to read. I have written a couple hard SF stories and am stoked about trying my hand at it again, after learning so much this summer.

I'd like to add "write a story" to that list, for T20 or otherwise, but I know the "Mandala" re-write is going to take some time, and I'd like to dedicate my attention to it for the time being. The story world is a cool one and I'd like to try and make the plot work to do it justice.

How about everyone else? What goals are you setting for October?

~ Janet