I’ve been writing my ass off but haven’t finished any new stories to send out since the very end of May. This is how it seems to go with me. I’m not working under any deadlines, unless I occasionally stumble onto some contest or enter some kind of workshop or group, so while I keep working steadily, my finished output is uneven. I have a couple of short pieces that are nearly finished (including “Secret Skin” which I mentioned a couple of posts back), and I’d like to get those wrapped up and sent out the door in the next week or so.

Last week Lena (my wife, for those of you just tuning in) spent eight days visiting family in Indiana and I figured the time would pass more quickly if I kept busy. I spent a fair amount of time trying to push these two “almost there” pieces closer to the finish line, but I also set myself the challenge of creating a completely new story from scratch during that week.

As it turned out, I worked on “Secret Skin” less than I expected I would, and didn’t have to do too much on the other nearly-done piece, but spent lots of time on the brand new piece, plus completing another partially-complete rough draft.

So now, I’m reasonably hopeful of getting these next two finalized and submitted this week, and the rest of this month I’ll work on whacking extraneous words off these two gruesomely overwritten rough drafts. It’s entirely possible I’ll have two stories sent off into the cruel world in August, and two or even three more in September.