200 days

Tomorrow it'll be 200 days since I gave up smoking!!!

Yay me.

There were some difficult days. Like moving house. And exam time. And various other occasions that I always associate with smoking. But I'm glad I quit....will just have to see if I manage to stay off them long term.

According to the facebook app I've added 17 days to my life as well, by not smoking for 200. Well, you know - as long as I don't get hit by a bus or whatever.

There are nearly 5000 cigarettes I haven't smoked too. That's a pretty scary amount for a little over 6 months. Funny how it's that figure rather than the life saved or money saved which tends to hit home for me. 

Busy week so I haven't done any writing, got a few rejections but haven't sent pieces out again...I'll get to it. Will catch up on everyone's blogs as well, haven't been reading or commenting much this week. Hope all is well with everyone & everyone's writing :-)

What I'm working on...

Friday again, and this time I'm writing the update while sitting with a load of purple hairdye on my hair, waiting for it to take. Much as I'd like to be, I'm not @purplehairedJo naturally. I have to top up the colour occasionally. And at the moment, have to be extra careful with it as it really shouldn't touch my scalp, because of the pregnancy. Hence why I can't bleach it, and I'm only doing the fringe. Still. As long as there's some purple in there, it's ok.

So, back to the update. I finished the erotic horror story! Just need to leave it a few days and then edit it a little. Will definitely be sending it in under a pen name though, so even if it gets accepted, this'll be the last you'll hear of it!

I'm also getting through the story about the little hillbilly town where something strange is going on. I'd intended for it to be a flash fiction, but it's over 1200 words now, it just sort of took off, so I'm going with it. At the editing stage it might get cut down again, but that's what the editing stage is for.

No acceptances this week, and a few rejections, but they've all been resubbed straight away. Now I've had a few acceptances my confidence has gone way up, and I can handle the rejections much better.

Not done much work on any other stories, or poems for that matter, but I did have several vague ideas last night before bed, so they've been scribbled down in my barely legible handwriting in the bedside notebook, and may one day actually become real stories.

Thanks for following and commenting :-) I really appreciate it.

What I'm working on...

Friday update!

Well I managed the 24 part of the 24/7 writing challenge - writing a piece every day for the first 24 days of August. The final part involves working on editing/revising a piece every day for the final seven days of the month. So far, so good! I tend to edit the twitter fics as I go, but the flash fiction pieces and the poems do need work, so there's plenty to keep me busy there.

Also, I'm working on an erotic horror story. It's for an anthology but I don't know if I'd use my own name if it got accepted...still, cross that bridge when I come to it I suppose! Got to finish the story, edit the story and submit the story then hope it gets selected before I really need to worry about the blush factor!

Also working on a story about a strange little hillbilly town. Inspired by a village near where I live - the radio always goes funny when I drive near it, and it gave me an idea for a story. Only got a few hundred words so far though, got a lot of work to do so far on that one.

No work on any of the other pieces I'm supposed to be working on. Got a couple of rejections this week as well as the acceptance so I need to go hunt through duotrope for some more markets to send them too. One is a sadistic serial killer story, the other a flash fiction piece detailing one woman's reaction to the end of the world.

So yeah, some nice lighthearted pieces there, as always! Heehee. Got quite a bit done this week considering I've had a lot of other stuff happening, so a good week overall!

Thanks for congrats and other comments by the way, they're all very much appreciated! I really like knowing that I'm not just talking to myself on here!

Tempting fate???

I don't believe in fate, or destiny, or superstition or any of it.

However, after saying yesterday that I end up close to a panic attack if anything goes wrong with my laptop, guess what happened? Yup. Cord-power adapter thingy went. New one ordered but it'll take a while to come and I spent ages yesterday evening trying to rig up a really poor quality 'universal' one. which falls out of the back of the laptop if I sneeze. Or, you know, breathe. Any movement at all really.

While on ebay trying to get the new one ordered, my email notifier went off twice too, letting me know of two more stories that were rejected. (One, the spec fiction that I only submitted about a week ago; the other a ghost story that I'm actually really proud of but has been rejected several times now.)

Stress, hormones, whatever. I was not in the right kind of shape to deal with rejection (like there's ever a good time...but there are worse times. And this was one of them). So I pretty much had a stress meltdown. I wasn't far away from curling up into a teary-eyed little ball of misery.

Oh well. After a long walk with the dogs today I'll send the stories out again.

Meanwhile, even though I'm cynical, I'm tempted to 'tempt fate'...So I hereby state that I shall definitely not win the lotto this week. Absolutely no chance at all.

Willing to be proved wrong on that one!!!

Sigh. Rejection

So the zombie erotica story was rejected. Boo.

Where the hell else am I supposed to send that? It isn't exactly a common theme...

Oh well. There is bound to be somewhere else.

Rejections always wreck my day though.

Boo.

Ah yes, rejection

Inevitable, I know. Also, it isn't like I haven't seen a thousand of them before. The standard form rejection email.

Thank you for submitting your work to blahblah magazine. Unfortunately we will not be selecting your story for publication. We wish you the best of luck in the future. Yours, blahblah editor.

Still, it's never nice to get a rejection. There's that nervous feeling when the "new email" thingy pops up. That hope. It's similar to how I feel when watching the lottery draw, ticket in hand. Could it be me? I'd like to think I have a better chance of getting more pieces of writing published than winning the lotto though (not that I've given up buying tickets or anything of course; a chance is a chance).

This one was another rejection. Made me miserable for a bit but fellow writers and friends helped cheer me up :-)

So, onwards, submit the story elsewhere, and keep hoping (and checking those lotto numbers...) - maybe the next one will be an acceptance.