I’ve been a little slow getting back into the habit of writing new words since I’ve been back from Clarion. Besides catching up on ye olde day job, I’ve been working on revisions and submissions, organizing my inventory list, and other life issues.

Most of the stories in my backlog are either trunked, needing rewrites, or massive revision. Unfortunate, but them’s the breaks. Not including the current work(s) in progress, there are:

• 35 stories
• 110,418 words
• 3,150 average words/story
• 3 sold
• 7 trunked
• 1 blogged
• 11 needing revision
• 11 needing a rewrite
• 2 on submission

I have two new stories in the works. One in the planning/research phase, for the 20spec anthology. The other is one I started at Clarion, scratched, and reworked a few nights ago. With a fresh outline, I started rewriting it tonight. I’ve been calling this my Tantric sex/magic story, now with more poly love, a plump dominatrix, and a Chicago swinger’s club.

You know, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to pull these kind of numbers on a regular basis. One thing that Clarion taught us was to write cleaner first drafts in a shorter period of time. I’m still a slow writer, but I managed 800 words longhand, plus transcription and some editorial notes, in under two hours of actual work. I need to remind myself, from time to time, that it’s not the writing that’s hard. It’s the turning off distraction and, putting butt in chair and doing.