Just a short update and a bit of art today.

Lately I am taking strength from Anne Lamott’s wonderful book on writing and life, Bird by Bird. Perfectionism is the enemy and we make it through by putting word after word on the page. Or, lately, editing sentence by sentence.

I continue to incorporate edits. My main focus this week has been Secret Project #2, which has 24 pages of requested edits to incorporate over its 100 pages. Available time after that goes to incorporating Thule edits. And I’m stealing a tiny smidge of time to brainstorm a novella.

That will reverse over the weekend when Steve takes over Secret Project #2’s and I focus in on Thule, which I expect to finish this weekend. I’ve reviewed Mia’s edits and agree with most of them. The few I don’t, I need to think through why she saw things that way and fix the prose to remove the opportunity for misunderstandings.

I have a novella assignment from Dean’s How to Write a Novella Pop-Up course. Right now I plan to write a cozy mystery set aboard a space station. I’m looking forward to the lightness of the project. I still have a variety of other projects to complete.

I’m behind on my submissions but I did manage to submit to Writers of the Future. This makes my seventh consecutive entry to the Writers of the Future contest. Of those seven entries, I’m waiting on last quarter’s results and, of course, this quarter’s. I received an Honorable mention for four of the stories. And one was simply rejected. I’m pretty proud that I have an unbroken record of submitting to Writers of the Future. I hope the next story will reach a bit higher in the rankings. But even if it doesn’t, there is a terrific value in writing and submitting regularly.

Here’s a bit of art I made, in honor of my mother who this image reminds me of, not so much for the exact clothing or facial features, but because of her vivacity in dolling herself up and dating.

Be well friends!