February Wrap-Up

So. February did not turn out like I’d hoped. Here’s what I said I would do:
• Submit four pieces to my flash fiction group.
• Edit four chapters of my novel.
• Submit four pieces to literary journals, including one deadline-driven, theme piece.

And here’s what I actually did:
• 1/4 pieces submitted to flash fiction group
• 1/4 novel chapters edited
• 4/4 pieces submitted to journals, including the deadline-driven piece

Now, I realize February was a short month, but I’m fairly certain it wasn’t a quarter the length of a normal month, even with vacation taken into account. I can’t even make the excuse that I did a lot of reading in February, because I only finished about five books, an average number for me. I honestly don’t know what happened. I lost days to prepping for vacation, days to travel, days to school holidays, and days to staring off into space wishing the words would write themselves.

I am proud, though, of what I did accomplish in February. I’m still in the honeymoon period with the new story I sent off this week, “The Matlin Women Can’t Resist.” It’s beyond the 1000-word cutoff for flash fiction, which has been one of my goals. I love flash fiction, but I want to work on writing longer pieces, with more opportunity for development. Three of my pending submissions are now longer than flash (and one of those is sim-subbed), so hopefully I’ll get good news about one or more them sooner rather than later.

Now, I’d like to imitate my cats and curl up to take a nap in the rare Seattle sunshine, but I think I’ll do some reading instead. I have a new approach to goal-setting for the month of March. That will be in the next entry.