Panic time
So, yeah. Things are a little busy. Busier even than I thought they were–for some reason I’ve been thinking I had a month until Taos Toolbox. I don’t. I have 16 days. Plus a wedding and two birthdays to plan. I haven’t even bought my plane ticket.
I finally finished a draft of that short story I was rewriting and sent that off to a beta reader today, who came back with some great comments. It really needs a solid weekend of grooming before it’ll be ready to send out. Maybe I’ll have time at Taos, maybe not. Depends on how far ahead of the game I can get before I go. Right now I’m more worried about just trying to not be so far behind. I have to write my synopsis from scratch, starting now, and I still have some more rewriting to do on the opening chapters of the novel, and then I need to send those out to my classmates, who will meanwhile be sending theirs for us to read. Plus a ton of Lightspeed stuff.
I am panicking.
A couple of cool things happened this week. First, we learned that Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 is out, and John immediately bought a copy. (I should get a contributor’s copy at some point, but I don’t know when.) Seriously, having a story included in something like that is something that seemed so impossible I never even bothered to daydream about it. And yet, there it is, sitting on the table, with my name in it. People are going to read that. (I hope they like it.)
So that was Monday. On Tuesday John and I went and spoke to the spec fic class at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. I was nervous and severely underslept, but it still seemed to go pretty well. I was pleased to see that most of the class is writing short fiction, and surprised to learn that most of them had never submitted their work to a magazine before. We took some Lightspeed print samplers with us and let them know how to find a market and write a cover letter, advised them not to pre-reject their own stories, and told them where they could continue their spec fic education after they leave the conference.
I’ve now attended SBWC as a student, a volunteer, a staff member, and a guest. All that remains is faculty. :) (Some day!) It was a little strange, being the person people were listening to for answers instead of being the one with a thousand questions. It was a strong and very positive reminder of just how much has happened in the past two years.
Back to the panic: I am probably going to largely disappear for the next couple of weeks, both from the blog and from Twitter. I need to seriously buckle down. I can’t believe the way time got away from me. I am going to have to work very hard to get caught up and make sure I’m ready for Taos. So if I’m slow replying to emails or not terribly chatty, please don’t take it personally!
Wish me luck.