I’m a little more adjusted to being back from Canada, I guess, although no less nostalgic for my time there and kind of wishing I could go back. I’d like to, at some point, and hopefully it won’t take another three years like it did last time, but for now I’m sort of getting the hang again of being in New York.
Of course, I’ll be traveling to Texas in a couple of weeks for work. I’ve booked my plane tickets and rental car and everything.
It’s taken me a little while to get back into the swing of things, writing-wise, to recapture whatever momentum I was hopefully learning to build (if some days not actively building) in Banff. Part of that was my writing group getting canceled last weekend, and part of that was just the weirdness of returning after two weeks. But I’m back on the horse, and if not writing a lot yet, at least writing, and moreover finishing things.
I finished a story this evening, a flash piece I think I still need to trim about a hundred words from before sending it out. Meanwhile, I’ve got a couple of other stories — one written before, then other at, Banff — out for consideration elsewhere. The waiting to hear isn’t fun, nor are the rejection letters, but those rare moments when a story actually clicks, then falls together? That’s worth it.
My writing group wasn’t canceled this week, and I actually like what I wrote there too, but I think I’ve decided to stop posting those works in progress here. Partly because they sometimes do become actual works in progress, something I might want to expand and adapt and, eventually, submit. I don’t know that a short selection from a rough first draft posted here precludes me from doing so, or that it could reasonably be considered a reprint — which most places won’t buy — but I think I’ve decided to stop taking that risk.
Hopefully that will just give me added incentive to finish stories and sell them if I want anybody but my writing group to see what I’m working on.
