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Results for Month 1 of the Publishing Gauntlet:

I (mostly) hit my hour goals for this month (4 hours a day of writing), but by two big issues of (a) jumping about from story to story and (b) overediting parts of the story that won't make it into the final draft anyway meant that progress was slower than expected, and I didn't hit the 12,000 word goal for this month.

With that said, I did manage...

Attending the Clarion Workshop in San Diego (for reasons both good and bad) wasn't anything like I imagined. But I'm glad I went. For the first time in my life, I had people who I seriously respect as writers (both teachers and fellow students) tell me, without bullshit, that I'm actually, maybe, good at what I do.

Before Clarion, I'd known too many writers with hyperinflated selfregard to take...

Wow. That was fast. Another month has passed, and now there's only 3 weeks until I hop on a plane and fly across the Pacific for the Clarion Writers' Workshop in San Diego.

For this month, my goals were to:

Not all of this happened. I kind of got lazy in some places and stopped tracking. But here's an overview of what I did get done:

Like last month, I averaged about 3.5 hours of writing a day,...

Here's a quick update on my Clarion prep. My goal for this first month was to:

Here's what I actually got done:

Writing:

Averaged about 4 hours of writing a day, 6 days a week. The time was split 50/50 between "serious" writing and more pulpy projects.

So yea, I wrote a lot. But I didn't achieve my goal of finishing two stories. Finishing is a big issue for me. The root cause isn't so much fear...

Holy buckets. I got into the Clarion UCSD writer's workshop!

To be honest, I had low expectations for my chances this year. When I first applied in 2024, I got a form rejection. Not even a "your stories were good but not quite good enough please try again next year." And I wasn't sure how much I'd improved over the past two years. Sure, I'd written a bundle of short stories and a 6+ indie novel...