Success!

Wee! I made one of my goals for the year! I currently have six stories out, six ships sailing the seas. One story made it through the first round of cuts, and so I’m a step closer there. And I re-launched one today, after it came back yesterday after a 120-day voyage that ultimately ended in a rejection. But this I consider good, too. It didn’t just languish 120 days, I’m sure. It must’ve been close…or so I like to think. (Work with me here; I’m avoiding writerly angst.)

Two I’ve been working on, slowly but steadily, and today seemed the day to launch them. Two others have been out, so that’s six. Yippee!

Not the end of the goal, of course — I have to keep on writing to fill in the holes left when these lovely creations are finally accepted (as of course at least some will be, right?), or when I sigh and retire one or another to the ‘trunk’ for a rest. Yes, those days happen, too. But another writer I know recently sold a piece that he’d trunked many years ago. He pulled it out, edited the snot out of it (I can only imagine what a 10-year old story must look like to the author!) and sent it out. Poof-accepted.

This  fills me with great hope, since I’ve got some trunked stories that I know have potential — I just don’t have the ability to carve the story out of the dross the way Michelangelo carved ‘David’ out the marble (by cutting away everything that wasn’t ‘David’). But some day, if I keep at my craft, I’ll have those chops. And then those stories will fly. I mean sail.

On the personal side of things, the sale-that-seems-to-never-want-to-be appears to be approaching the finale of the signing. I can’t wait. Cross your fingers with me, please (just don’t hold your breath!), and ask the cosmos to think kind thoughts into being on my behalf. Knock on wood. Beseech the ancestors. Pray. However you will, I can use goodwill of any kind to carry this thing through.

Or this blog may turn into a whole lot of sobbing and not much writing.