Crossroads [A RoW80 Post].

I absolutely adore my new apartment; it’s charming as hell, cozy as fuck, and I’m constantly surrounded by books. It’s on the corner of a nice street in a great neighborhood, and I can’t wait for the rows of trees out there to start budding to make the view even better. This last benefit, however, is also one of the very few things about the place that falls on the negative side: it’s right on the corner, which makes for a great view, but there’s a stoplight at this corner, and I swear, people around here are some impatient mother cluckers. Nothing quite disturbs a nice morning reading session or a scribbling sprint like impatient bastards outside laying on their horn all hours of the day. Good lord, people. Calm down.

Miraculously, I only heard two horns in the process of writing this. But it’s late at night, so people tend to be slightly more polite. Unlike, apparently, at six o’clock in the morning like I heard yesterday. It’s too damn early for that! Although I do enjoy all the music blaring from people’s open windows now that the weather’s nice. I’ve got “Fat Bottomed Girls” at the moment, and yesterday, there was even some Sound of Music. But if I hear that damn “Jumpman” song one…more…time…

But I’m not here to talk about the impatient, honking commuters and their radios outside my window. I’m here to talk about RoW80! Here’s how my goals have been working out since the last check in:

Monthly Goal: Finish Fearless by the end of April. I’ve hit a little bit of a slow point, because most of my energy has been going into those damn short story goals, but I know I can pump it out in a few days if it gets down to the line, though I hope that won’t be the case. I’m right on the cusp of all the endgame action kicking off, so there’s always that little pause before the roller coaster goes plummeting down, anyway. I’ve gotten at least a page before I focus on the short stories, so there’s still progress.

Weekly Goal: One short story a week, one book read a week, one non-RoW blog post a week. I finished up the “naked man with the green skin” story from last week, which surprised me, because I was ready to set it aside and work on my “lady finds her supposedly dead husband in the background of a selfie” story for this week, but it just started flowing out of me the other day and I’m pleased with with results. It might need a little more fleshing (HA!) out, but we’ll see when I type it up. This week’s story is on a good track right now, too.

I’ve decided to focus on The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King for my book this week. More than half way through, and almost to the point where I dropped out of it when I tried to read it a few years ago.

And I posted my interview with World Unknown Review contributor and friend Luther M. Siler to talk a little about his WUR story (and my current featured story) “Nanos Khund and the Traveler.” If you haven’t checked it out yet, please take some time to do so!

Daily(ish) Goal: Send a story somewhere for each non-work day. Three days off, so three stories need to go out. I usually get this done on Saturday, so I can plan what I’m sending and where. Obviously, I have “The Death of Therron Hawkseye” (that’s the naked man with the green skin one), and “Letters to Mao” just came back with a rejection. I can’t seem to find my notes to expand my rejected story from The First Line, so I haven’t been able to work on that one. And then I’m out of new stories, so I’ll have to pull a third one out of somewhere. If anyone knows any great magazines or journals that accepts reprints, I’d love to know about them.

So the wheels keep on turning on. It was definitely a good idea for me to return to RoW80; I’ve been getting so much done and I love the sense of structure it’s been giving me. What I wish I could do better with, though, is responding to comments and visiting my fellow RoWers (who you can find here!). With all the stuff I’ve been doing, it’s like there’s no time left. But I’ll get better, I hope!

How’s everyone else been doing? What’s going on it your worlds of happy writing (or reading)?