Chilling and Regrouping

I've actually gotten a lot done this weekend, but it's hard to point to any one thing. I've been repainting my flash drive casing (the silver coating had almost completely rubbed off the plastic, so I've been doing a Superman-type blue and red), but screwed it up this afternoon and have to redo one side. I washed my car today (which might not sound like a big deal, but trust me, it is). I've done laundry, I've done some computer maintenance stuff, and I got my T-shirt store set up.

Weird thing about that: I ordered the shirt Saturday, then slapped my head when I realized, it's a four-day weekend, so the order probably won't even get sent out until Friday. So imagine my surprise when I get an email on Sunday saying my order is on its way and giving me a UPS tracking number!

I haven't written a short story since March, and haven't really written anything since finishing the first draft of Hero Go Home in May. I've been reluctant to work on short stories until I finished the novel, and once I did, I was just too tired in my brain to work on one. I've got a few old ideas still floating around, plus a couple of new ones, but I don't know what I'm going to do first. I need to write some new short stories so I can enter Writers of the Future again, assuming my current entry is not a winner (I hear through the grapevine that the finalists have already been notified, so I'm not hopeful).

I've got four stories out right now, and all of them have been waiting on responses for a long time. "Double-Secret Weapon" has been at Baen's Universe since December (and won't get a decision until October at the earliest), "Frame by Frame" has been at "Paging Mr. Hitchcock" since late January, "Shell" at IGMS since February (where it has apparently been passed up from slush to the editor - he tells me it's in "the middle" of his stack), and my current WOTF entry since late March. The ironic thing here is that the latest submitted will probably get the first response.

It's weird. After a while, I get tired of waiting and hoping for acceptance and just start saying, "Reject me already." After a certain point, I'd rather have rejection and closure rather than a continuing vague promise of possible acceptance out there somewhere.

On the good side, I got some good feedback about Hero Go Home (not so much in the "this is great" sense as in the "this is what you need to fix" sense) that actually helped me sort out a lot of my own thoughts about what I want to accomplish with the rewrite, so I may be starting that really soon. I want to have a lot of progress made by Conestoga.

Speaking of which, more tomorrow...