I think a corollary to “Slow and steady wins the race” is “Sometimes, just slow the fuck down.” At least that’s what I told myself this past week.
Since my return to the office, I saw my workload increase by 30% and last week, I know I’ve got a pretty big project ahead of me next week. Those aren’t complaints. Just context that I need to remind myself about to stay off my own damn back about whatever “lack” of progress I’m making.
Look, if I'm okay with calling off sick to the dayjob once in a blue moon, I need to be okay with calling off a writing day when I need it, right…?
— Don Pizarro (@DonP) August 5, 2021
WRITING
- This week’s writing chain: 4 days
- Total writing days this week: 4 days
- Pieces out on submission: 2
This might not be the greatest start to a writing month ever, but still. I’ve got two pieces still out. One came back rejected–a personalized rejection from a major market, at that–but I turned around and sent it to another. I got a nice note about it, but I’m going to experiment with that Heinlein rule of not rewriting except to editorial demand and see how far that gets me.
I figure it’s better to focus on the progress I did make this week. Besides submitting, I did get to play around with some ideas. It’s good to play, artistically, even if the end result doesn’t get you anywhere.
In the case of something new I working on, the end result shouldn’t ever see the light of day! It started out as a satire but the more I wrote, the more it sounded like something that could be mistaken for some kind of neoreactionary screed, and nothing I could do in these early stages was going to make it any better. So in the trunk it goes. The trunk, but not the trash! One of the few writer truisms I believe in is, “Never throw anything away.” I mean, one day I might have the brainspace to shape it into what I meant it to be. Or, it’ll become part of an essay or a character in a story. Something. But only if I still have it and, gods willing and the creek don’t rise, it never gets seen in its incomplete form because… hoo, boy…
READING
It looks like that “Jia Tolentino” poem is gone. Good because whatever you might think of her or her family, that piece was just… like, what the fuck?
Came across “Not Just Frida: The Importance of Surrealist Women” and asking myself why Leonora Carrington’s story collections are still burning a hole in my TBR pile.
IN THE WILD
It’s gonna be some fun times going to work in a healthcare facility with this delta variant going around the way it is. Sure, I’m masked and everything (since OSHA’s COVID-19 ETS says we have to be), but I guess if I want to minimize the risk to me and mine, work is probably the only place I’ll be going for awhile. I mean, at least they’re regularly disinfecting the place as much as they can…
