First, the good stuff:

Small Beer Press will soon release A Life In Paper, a collection of short stories by the French fabulist Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, translated by Edward Gauvin. Edward was my classmate at Clarion, and is a gifted literary SFF writer as well as a skilled translator. Putting Châteaureynaud into English has been his pet project for five years, the fruits of which can be seen in such places as F&SF, LCRW, Postscripts, The Harvard Review, AGNI Online, Epiphany and Conjunctions.  People who think that good SFF is written only in English, This Is For You.

Now, my monthly tally for January:

• 1,700 new words of fiction written this month. ¹
   
• 21 first drafts currently in progress. ²
   
• 2 first drafts currently "ripening" before second draft. ³
   
• 4 second drafts currently in progress
   
• 1 second draft currently in the hands of "trusted readers."
   
• 3 third drafts currently in progress.
   
• 0 third drafts currently awaiting polishing.
   
• 1 fourth draft in currently in progress.
   
• 2 rewrite in progress of stories previously sent out, based on comments from friends.
   
• 2 rewrites (at request of editors) currently in progress.
   
• 10 stories currently submitted to markets
   
• 1,000 words in shortest story currently submitted.
   
• 8,700 words in longest story currently submitted.
   
• 1 offer of publication received this month. ⁴
   
• Longest current wait without response: 158 days.
   

¹ Yuck. The worst ever. My attention was distracted by a revision, the Analog acceptance (which resulted in many squee-mails instead of fiction writing), joining SFWA, preparing for Boskone and plugging for the Campbells, not to mention the new course prep I’m working on. Altogether too much time spent on the business of writing instead of writing itself.
² I always have a lot of first drafts "in progress," until one of them really grabs me and I work on it obsessively.
³ I employ a six-week "ripening" period for first drafts. The one in the incubator now is the aforementioned fantasy-horror story.
⁴The sale of "The Whole Truth Witness" to Analog.

Ah, well. Things usually pick up in February, after a weekend day near my birthday spent doing nothing but writing. But we’ll see.

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Tagged as: clarion drafts edward gauvin fantasy Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud markets monthly tally new books revision submissions translation

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