A Self-Imposed Deadline: The Writing Show

I've been lazy. Sort of.

I have plenty of excuses here...I have a four year old. I ride a stationary bike for an hour a night. I don't often get home until 5:00.

We have a comfortable schedule where usually I expect to get home around five, get things put away and sit for a moment, take time to pay bills or catch up on mail, dinner is usually anywhere from six to seven thirty, ride bike for an hour after changing clothes, come up and then I have some "free" time. I sometimes fill in some of that with reading. I also spend time on the blog, of course, and we as a family run errands and get shopping done usually around the dinner time, shoving everything further up so it feels like there's not much time or energy to accomplish more. Go to bed at around ten or eleven, alarm goes off near six in the morning, repeat...the truth is that because of my need for routine, this "comfy" routine is difficult for me to break out of; my routine becomes my excuse to use as "I'm too busy to do XYZ."

Since the surgery I was promising myself to try one of two things to dedicate some time to. One is creating a program (I have a couple ideas of the type of application I want in mind) and in the process start studying a programming language. The other is writing a novel.

I spent many hours agonizing over the pros and cons of each and decided on working on the program. I have been trying to spend an hour here and there working on it, and it's slow going since I have to Google for information in order to get different bits of functionality to work. But so far I'm hitting several milestones for myself. It's taken forever, but hey, chipping away at it still counts as progress.

But I saw that contest that Paula B on The Writing Show is holding wherein you can submit a story with a Halloween theme and possibly win $75. It must be less than 5,000 words and just tell a good Halloween story. Well, actually, I heard of the contest as an announcement on her podcast. If you're a wanna-be author, check out the link above for information on the podcast, the contest, and various mentorship packages Paula offers.

I heard her talk of the contest and thought to myself that I should try entering. I even wrote a blog posting about it. Then Paula herself found the entry and left a comment on the blog, saying that so far entries have been slow to come in! Well...if they're not getting a huge turnout just yet...maybe that means I could have a better chance of scoring that $75!

So I'm pledging here to try getting an entry in by Monday. I'll even update the blog with progress on the story to try keeping it honest. I'm taking a big step here for me...I've had one item published in a local anthology from the EMWP Project, and that's it. It's probably enough to technically say I've been published but it's not something I've made money with.

Mur Lafferty, host of I Should Be Writing, has given some of the best advice for wanna-be fiction writers. "You're allowed to suck." This is a huge hurdle for me to even sit in the chair and type...fear. Fear of sucking. I have to keep telling myself that it's okay to suck. If it's rejected then it's rejected. At least I wrote something and tried, and maybe writing something will help improve my skills.

So that's what I'll do. A 5000 word story (well, less) by Monday for submitting to The Writing Show, not the suck part. Well the story may suck but I'm not aiming to make it suck. The story submissions are due by August 31st, and people may enter up to 2 stories, so I could theoretically write another one and try; especially if people are slow to enter the contest...it'll boost my chances of winning! So don't you people get any ideas!!