In an effort to examine and be fully accountable for lost time, let’s take a look at the last few weeks.

May 4 – In a phenomenal burst of energy and confidence, I sent out two short stories and a poem to various publishers.  This was just a beginning and I was determined to send out at least five more the following week.

May 7 – I received my very first rejection letter.  It was a small disappointment, but a larger accomplishment.  I honestly didn’t think “Pollen Count” was a good fit for ClarksWorld anyway, but trying is better than sitting on the story.  Here’s hoping the chupacabra story and the poem fair better in their quests.

May 10 – Joined the Critters online writers workshop.  This means I’ll need to do at least one critique a week for another writer.  Worried?  Of course not.  That’s a deadline.  I’m on it.

May 8 – Not exactly an accomplishment or a failure, the Magical Purple Laptop of Destiny arrived from my best friends at Dell.  This means I’m now mobile.  Maybe leaving the house sometimes will give me inspiration.  Also, I might get dressed during the day.

May 12 – Embarked on the first of a Wednesday night ritual, Coffee House Writing Night.  I almost stayed off the free wifi for the entire evening, wrote about 1000 words on the alien story “Honey and Daffodils” and got stuck.  Then I switched over to “Wolf Bait” and rewrote the ending, tweaked a few bad spots, and drank coffee.  Our coffee house choices are limited here and parking was bad, so we ended up at Borders.  The cheese filled pretzel was not only a poor dinner choice, it wasn’t cooked all the way through.  Got a lot of work done though.

May 13 – Got my first critique sent off for Critters.  I need to send “Wolf Bait” to them soon so I can get some opinions on it before sending it to the anthology chick looking for shapechanger stories.

May 15/16 – Time to start the second new ritual, Weekend Writing at the Park Day.  It was, of course, raining.  That’s okay, we have that worked into the plan.  If the weather is bad, we’ll hit a coffee shop.  Too bad the follow through wasn’t there.  No writing.

May 19 – Coffee House Writing Night again.  We drove to another city and had yummy sandwiches and coffee at a real coffee house.  Much better food and atmosphere.  It was still raining hard, I was running a fever and did nothing useful.  I played with little villagers on a Facebook game.

May 20 – Absolutely disgusted by my slide back into inactivity, I created this blog.

And here we are on May 21st, sorting through an enormous pile of leaves, trying to figure out which ones need to be turned over first.