Productivity

It's amazing what a "holy shit, it's due when?" deadline will do for ya. Last night I finished my first draft of my ghost story. 5400 words. The guideline is 4K-6K, so I feel downright prolific. I'll start the edits tomorrow to give it time to digest a bit.

This progress has made me decide that when I'm actively working on a project, I won't read. Basically, I'd like to try writing in big chunks and reading in slightly smaller chunks. Once fall T.V. starts I'll watch T.V. only on the weekends. We'll see how it goes.

Stormy Weather is still out with beta readers, so in the meantime I have a few deadlines for myself:
August 8: Submit Ghost Story (I really need a title.)
August 14: Blurb of SW completed
August 21: Synopsis and cover letter completed
August 28: List of 20 agents to query
September 15: Final draft of SW complete and queries out the door

After SW is done, I'd like to tear apart my trilogy and rebuild it as a stand-alone before tackling the AI/autism outline. Lots of research and reading to do for the AI business; my tentative goal is to have an outline by December 31st. We shall see.

Today I got a rejection for a story that said basically, "Hey, I liked this story all the way until the end." I wonder if I should query that editor with a "Hey, if I re-write the story, would you be interested in giving it another look?" My head says "no, too forward" while my gut says "you never know, give it a shot." I have a few more markets to send the story to before I give up on it, though, so I have some time to think about it. This editor send one of my other stories on to the big-wig editors, so she might go for it ... I dunno.