Big Ed's Place

As I write this, I’m feeling like Charlie Brown landing on my back after the football got yanked. Earlier in this month, I saw a Call For Submissions that inspired my queue jumper Center Stage. Unfortunately, I spotted it mid-month and the due date was February 4–not a lot of time for me given how infrequently I can find time to write.

But Center Stage pulled at me, so I decided to give it a shot. This week I pushed especially hard, which was emotionally difficult because I’m still tender from the hard push in December. I managed 2,305 words, bringing it to 3,429 words. I’m close to the end and if I were to guess right now, I think it’d finish at a little under 5,000 words.

So when I realized that, the back of my mind nagged me because the call for submission said stories had to be under 4,000 words. I decided to doublecheck the call, and discovered it had been withdrawn.

So I ran hard for a deadline only to discover it gone. Aim to kick the football, then no football.

Now, to be fair, I still have what I think will be a good story. I’ll certainly finish it, but the resistance to pushing myself has been heightened even more.

Anyway, it’s also the end of January and those 3,429 words are all I managed for the month. Life just intervened, and I’m actually okay with it as a result. Hopefully February will be better.

It’s been crazy here, with various life stresses and unexpected busyness. We’re trying to teach the baby how to soothe herself to sleep. It is not going well, and so I’m getting very little sleep. It’s been very hard to focus, and my day job has required a great deal of focus.

Nonetheless, I finally managed to get Holiday Sights out (see the ebook page). I also added 699 words to Center Stage this past week, bringing it to 1,124. So clearly there have been some coherent moments in the week. Just not at this precise moment.

Hopefully I’ll have a better update when ingesting caffeine actually helps.

Last Thursday, we received a call about a death in the extended family. Friday, we put all four of us (two adults, two kids under four) on a plane for the funeral. Everything went fine and we were glad to make the trip, but it was a trip. It was exhausting, by the time we dealt with the last minute logistics, the emotional drain of the funeral, and then having to catch up with all the missed work, chores, and projects that didn’t get done while we were traveling. I’m still seriously wiped out.

Additionally, I’ve had to do some editing for other people. When it rains it pours, right? I had three writers, whom I promised to edit for, send me stories all last weekend. I’ve completed editing for two of them, but not gotten to the third. I hate leaving other writers hanging for a long time because I hate when it happens to me.

Between the editing and the catching up, I didn’t get much actual writing done. I had a queue jumper show up Friday (Center Stage) and knocked out 425 words on it. I like the premise and the characters, but am not sure how much time I’ll be able to get in on it in the next couple of weeks. We’ll see.

Anyway, that’s the curve balls so far in 2012. We’ll see how quickly I can get back into a writing routine.

No, not my funeral, despite being sick enough this past week to wonder if a funeral might be warranted. I’m out of town for a family funeral this weekend. I haven’t done much writing–mostly trying to get Holiday Sights out with all retailers. More when I return.

I wrote quite a bit in 2011; more than I expected actually. In twelve months, I managed about 76,000 words, scattered across a wide number of stories. That’s about 50% more (~26,000 words more) than 2010 and I’m impressed that I managed that, given the birth of my daughter and other major time consuming life events during the year.

I finished three Holiday Series stories (Unmasked, Giving Thanks, and Honeymoon), two of which were released here and the third is a ‘bonus’ story in the ebook to be released any day now. I completed two Summer Camp stories (Broken and FYI), the latter awaiting Nick’s approval. I released A Smile on My Face and Sights on the Night Shift as ebooks, along with four other short stories and Friends and Benefits, which were completed in earlier years. I also sold Take it to the Bank to Oysters & Chocolate. I also have four short stories submitted in various locales. One of these will probably appear under a different pen name later, but I’m not sure what I’ll do with the other three if they get rejected again. Additionally, I completed a few flash stories and will publish two of them here in the coming year.

That’s ten completed erotica short stories in 2011, not counting the flash stories. I’m pretty pleased with that.

Additionally, under my science fiction pen name, I completed five stories and sold one. Of the others, I’ll put three back into circulation in the new year and trunk the fourth. The last rejection identified a serious flaw in it and so I need to let it sit.

The story counts don’t include stories that aren’t completed, nor the blogging time here. So overall I’m pretty happy with the year. I certainly wish I could have done more, but given what time I had, I managed pretty well.

So what’s the plan for 2012?

Well, I’m still feeling that out. It’s been much harder to write since my daughter was born. This is partially related to the fatigue from never getting a complete night’s sleep. I’m just too exhausted by the time we get both kids to bed in the evening for that time to be useful for anything that requires brain cells.

I do know I want to clear some stories from my queue. I expect to tackle the next Devil story and I’m wondering whether it’s time to start the third Compassionate Courtesan novel, Boys of Summer. Of course, I also have a string of Chris Coulter stories I’d like to write, but those are likely to be limited by Nick’s speed. I can’t get too far ahead of him or it constrains him in ways he does not like. I also know there’s a bunch of queue jumpers hanging around the edges waiting to be written.

After that, I’m not really sure. Mostly, I’m tired. My baby girl is almost six months old, which means six months without a solid night’s sleep. We’ll just have to take it one day at a time.

Merry Christmas!

I’d love to have something special to say today, or maybe a picture of a beautiful woman in a stocking cap here, but it’s crazy, as it always is at Christmas. My wife and I actually had a conversation yesterday about how much I hate this holiday. It saddens her to here that, but it feels better knowing I can actually express that.

Why do I hate it? All the additional work and stress for little emotional payoff. Yeah, my kid will be happy when he awakes and have a good day. But he’d be happy with a couple of presents and a trip to the bouncy castle place. Meanwhile it’s been non-stop, dawn to late at night, for several weeks. Four weeks of stress for a few hours of pleasure. Right now, that’s not a good trade to me.

Anyway, the first draft of Honeymoon is done, at 9,291 words. That’s 1,367 words in the past week. Now it’s editing and formatting for release, which will be difficult to do this coming week with the holiday craziness.

We’re hitting the silly season of December where “running around like chickens with their heads cut off” really seems to fit (aside: how many people have actually seen this with real chickens? I have. It was a bit disturbing). Christmas is in a week, we’re nowhere close to done decorating and buying presents, work deadlines loom, and, oh yeah, I have a writing deadline.

I managed to get some words snuck in on Honeymoon. It’s at 7,924, which means I wrote 1,547 words this past week. I’m within 1-2kwords from being done, so there’s a good chance I’ll pull it off. But with the crunch, it’s still going to be tight. Even after I finish it, there’s a lot of production steps before it’s ready to release.

Anyway–back to dancing around crazily in the barnyard.

I’ve previously ranted about December here. It’s probably my least favorite month of the year because of all the additional stress brought on by the holidays. This year, my son is old enough to ‘get it’ and is already doing things like asking when we’re going to decorate (answer: after we get the house picked up, so put away your toys, please). This year, there’s less margin and available time to do with having the baby to take care of as well. We’re jettisoning several Christmas traditions as a result–no Holiday open house this year, no Christmas letter (just a photo card of the kids). Unfortunately, because of a commitment I made, I can’t push all the writing aside. I have to finish Honeymoon by the end of the month.

This is not easy. It’s going slower than I like do to the lack of time. My day job still hasn’t gotten the concept that shoving a full month’s worth of work into the first 20 days (so people can take off the holidays) is not a good idea. So they’re shoving. As regular readers know, my prime writing time is my lunch hour and this past week I had three working lunches and one compressed lunch (had to dash out, get food, get back). It was quite frustrating.

Nonetheless, I managed to do a fair amount of writing, given the time. I wrote 1,298 on Honeymoon, bringing it to 6,387, mostly in the late evenings and in ‘a sentence here, a sentence there’ fashion. I estimate I have between 2-4kwords left to go and I need to allow two weeks at the end for my team to read it and for me to format it. That gives me about a week to finish the writing. Uh… did I mention December is stressful?

Anyway–back to it. We’ll see how the week goes.

So it’s been two weeks since I did a status update, due to limited internet access. That’s not to say limited computer access, for I did find time to write.

It was a productive two weeks. I finished the first draft of my science fiction story. It clocked in at 8,652 words, which means I managed 3,449 words on it in the two weeks. I also worked on Honeymoon. It’s at 5,089 words now, which means I added 1,459 words to it in the same time frame. This was mostly a function of the holiday weekend. The kids were taken care of and I had some uninterrupted blocks of time. Still, ~4,900 words for two weeks is pretty good.

So given this, where am I at for the year, now that I’m going into the home stretch?

Well, I had ~57kwords written for the year as of the end of September. Add the 8,652 for the science fiction story, 4,383 on Honeymoon, and 4,273 on FYI, and I’ve written quite a bit. I also added 1,653 words to Christening and 118 to the Florida Story. That makes 14,716 words in two months, bringing me to ~72kwords for the year. Not bad, especially considering I released six short stories and a novel as ebooks as well, plus maintained this site and regular postings therein.

So… one more month, one story to complete, and then it’ll be time to re-examine my queue.

This past week, I had a business trip that promised some free evenings in the hotel. I hoped to write. I mostly worked on formatting the Friends and Benefits ebook. That’s done, and I think it looks good. However, it didn’t leave me much time for writing.

I managed 613 on Honeymoon, bringing it to 3,630, and 1037 on my science fiction story, bringing it to 5,203. A 1600 word week is better, but I still have a long way to go. It’s a bit frustrating to have not managed more, but real life didn’t allow me much more.

We’ll see how the holiday week goes. I’ll be traveling for family, which means no usual lunch hours and lots of ‘dad’ responsibilities. However, there may be chances anyway. We’ll see.