So hey, thanks to A I finally got my hands on the October/November issue of Asimov’s, which just happens to have my story “Where the Time Goes” in it. Very exciting!

In other news, I didn’t hit my writing goal for August — only 12.5 hours instead of 30. Yipes. September was headed the same way, but I’ve gotten back to work in the mornings, and given that I have a few handy deadlines this month (the kind that involve another people) I’ll probably make it. Or at least get closer than August.

I’m making the transition from Go! Go! Write-a-thon! back to regular old writing-in-the-morning, and I have to admit I’ve been a bit of a slacker — adding up the 20- and 30-minute scraps, I’ve got 2 hours in for August so far, mostly because the Snooze button and I have gotten reacquainted. This morning was better than yesterday, and I expect tomorrow will be better still.

By every measure but one I hit my Write-a-thon goals. I wrote for 42 hours (and 15 minutes). And since I didn’t realize the Write-a-thon spanned only 41 days, I had a bonus hour from the beginning. I revised and submitted a short story, and while I didn’t do a complete draft of a new story, I wrote 3,000 words split evenly across two new outlines. One already has the final scene (knowing the final scene and being able to write toward it is always a huge help). The other is a sequel to the story I’ve got coming out in Asimov’s soon.

Of course, the goal I didn’t meet was the biggie: I didn’t finish the novel revision, alas. I did, however, outline all the new scenes and add 4,000 new words, and thus discovered that doing the revision properly was a bigger job than I’d estimated. But I spent a fair amount of time making sure the new stuff didn’t feel extraneous to what I had originally, and I’m happy with the new structure.

I also discovered an embarrassing factual glitch at the very beginning of the novel, in the bit I excerpted on my Write-a-thon page:

The books whisper to me. They want to know who I am.

Goddess of Shelving, I say, or Goddess of Barcodes. Goddess of Taxonomy. Goddess of the Library of Congress — even this run-down county library uses their system.

B for Philosophy, Psychology, Religion. BL for Religions, Mythology, Rationalism. And the numbers, one after another, dripping a pattern on a map. BL290: the Soul. BL300-325: the Myth. BL500-547: the End of the World.

The books aren’t satisfied. They want more. Books like their stories.

Goddess of Alphabetical Order.

They’d lean forward if they could. They sense the truth hanging in the air with the dust motes.

Order, they echo, and suspect I had some relationship with chaos.

I slip the books back on their shelves, quietly counting each one as I push it into its place.

Anyone?

Why, yes, it is true that a county library would be far more likely to use the Dewey Decimal classification system, while the Library of Congress method would probably be found in an academic library. And since Dewey doesn’t offer the eschatological resonances I’m looking for, I’ve moved the opening scene to an “underfunded community college library”.

So, new target: finish the revision, really truly, this month.

An update!

The project management contract that I started right around the time I posted the last entry is still going strong. I don’t see any changes in the near future, which is keen because for the first time in a long while I’ve been able to keep up with my writing while bringing home the smoked pork product. I’ve been getting up early to write before work, and that, too, has been going well. Shocking.

I’m not writing as much as I’d like to, of course, but I’ve been managing to average an hour a day for the last eight weeks. Five plus of those weeks have served a double purpose: I’ve been doing the Clarion West Write-a-thon. I’ve tried it twice before, but I’ve never actually finished. This year, however, I’ve set an easier-to-track goal. I’ve committed to writing an hour every day, or forty-two hours over the course of six weeks. With two days left I’ve got forty hours in and two to go.

So this year will be different. This year I will finish, dammit.

What all three years have had in common, though, is support from superexcellent sponsors, who have made with the cheering, or the cash, or both. I appreciate it all, and I know Clarion West does, too.

And by the way, this daily writing business doesn’t end with the Write-a-thon. This third-time charm has been like my first NaNoWriMo — it’s offered a big ol’ bushel of I Can Do This. Which means I’m setting a goal of thirty hours of writing a month minimum while I’m in my current job.

In other news, my reading of Kij Johnson’s haunting “The evolution of trickster stories among the dogs of North Park after the Change” is up on Podcastle.

Back on December 31st I declared not resolutions but my big to-do list for the first part of 2009. In my head that was by March 31st, so by that measure practice is, as usual, running behind ambition. But if we take “the first part of 2009″ to mean “before June 30th”, then I’m ahead of schedule. So let’s do that.

Here is the list, in order of completion:

Find a new flat
Found the flat in January, moved at the beginning of February. Well settled in now. And my flatmate rocks.

Finish the 78-page application to extend my UK visa
Done in March, and approved in April for three more years under Tier 1 of the points-based system, meaning I’m not reliant on a UK employer for residency under a work permit. And speaking of UK employers…

Find a new job
Done, as of yesterday, and in the whirlwind fashion that still surprises me even though my last few jobs turned up like this. Maybe it’s the profession — maybe “Quick, someone call a project manager!” isn’t just for wacky comic strips. (For the record, I do not wear a cape to work, and I hate taking anything but computer-related activities “offline”. I have, however, been known to use heat vision to break bottlenecks.)

Which leaves only one thing to do…

Finish the revision of the novel
So I’d better get to work.

Well, I was under the impression I was updating here, but it turns out it was just Twitter and Facebook. Yipes. A few quick highlights:

• I spent last weekend in Bradford at Eastercon. It was delightful and a good kick in the “write more!” pants, as cons usually are. Norwescon took place the same weekend in Seattle, and I did imagine it would be supernifty if they could be magically combined into one giant event. Yes, Nor’eastercon. Yellow slicker and Maine accent optional.
  

• I turned in my application to extend my UK visa, and am now waiting for the outcome. Should be any day now…
  

• I had a birthday! It was swell.
  

• Also swell: I sold two stories, “The Prettiest Crayon in the Box” to GUD, and “Where the Time Goes” to Asimov’s. I submitted the first (unfinished) draft of “Where the Time Goes” during week six at Clarion West 2005, but just came up with an ending during revisions this fall.

  “Prettiest Crayon” started out as part of a mainstream novel, and the science in it isn’t speculative, so I’m very pleased GUD is giving it a home. If you happened to have attended the Broad Universe Rapidfire Reading at World Fantasy in Calgary last year, it was the one with the beets…

Tonight I made a lamb and mixed vegetable curry using the leftover leg of lamb A roasted for dinner on Sunday (the roast was fabulous, and the lamb a lovely housewarming gift from A’s mother). I also threw in:

• the remaining carrots and onion he roasted with it
• the leftover peas we had on the side
• whatever broccoli I didn’t use satisfying the broccoli-and-cheese baked potato craving I had earlier this week
• a sweet pepper I didn’t use in Friday’s pico de gallo
• the Turkish pepperoncini that didn’t make it into same
• ditto some of the fresh cilantro
• carrot sticks that survived my snacking
• celery not destined for tuna salad
• and the rest of the mushrooms from the giant pack I bought for the chicken, mushroom, and asparagus risotto I made last night.

Also an onion, four cloves of garlic, and two cans of chopped tomatoes.

Oh, and I worked that spice drawer, baby.