This has been a week of nonsubstantive posting. But oftentimes, this blog ends up being my lowest priority.

Since I finished the novel around two months ago, I’ve gone through and made one revision pass on it and I’ve drafted eight new stories. That’s a really exciting level of productivity for me. But it’s also a little difficult for me to deal with.

At the beginning of this year I revised and submitted about 18 stories that were hanging over from last year, and have only done about 6 more revisions since then, meaning I have a huge backlog of things to revise. I am revising things here and there, but I’ve also been reading alot more, which means that I am getting more and more story ideas, and writing more stories. It’s all kind of a circus.

It’s hard to tell whether this sort of productivity is a happy thing. It can wreak havoc on the emotions. Every time I finish a story, I feel really good. Every time I get really into the groove on a story, I feel really good (that only lasts for about two days, per story, and then the damn thing’s finished). Every time I can’t make a story work, or sit down and write fifteen different openings and fool around for hours, I feel really good. Every time a story I’ve recently revised and submitted (i.e. one which has not been rejected too often) is held a long time somewhere (by now I have a pretty good idea, from response times, when a story is being passed up the editorial ladder for further consideration), I feel really good. And when it’s rejected, I feel not so good.

And that can all get to be a bit much at times. Sometimes the interplay of emotions means I just spend a few hours staring at my submissions spreadsheet, doing nothing. And that’s the time I would ordinarily use for blogging.

(Oh, and when I sell a story it feels pretty good too…but that doesn’t happen that often, I’m at 5 sales and 98 rejections for this year, and this is my best year ever.)