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Exciting news! 

I completed my short story DRIZZLE and submitted it to a literary magazine and an anthology for consideration. I won’t know their decision for many weeks, but I am proud of myself for finishing a story and putting myself out there. 

Speaking of finishing a story, I learned a lot about my writing habits and creativity flow from the submission process. It took me almost a full two days of focus split into several sessions to write 4,500 words. Granted, I needed to flesh out character names and backstories along the way, but it still doesn’t feel like a lot of words. The story needed time to unfold and for me to become familiar with it. 

I had high hopes for getting UNFATED out in a week or two. It’s now around 10,000 words. It’s been a hard lesson that I can’t expect myself to have the creativity to tell a great story when efficiency and productivity are a dark cloud in the back of my head.

As far as keeping in touch with the community, Hearthcon was a wealth of well-grounded, great conversations around cozy fantasy. It was good to hear what others had to say about how they were showing up and what they were wanting to bring to the genre. 

Since completing DRIZZLE, I feel I need to focus more on getting developmental edits done for my dark fantasy novel, UNCHANGED, that are due by the end of November. We’ll see how the week goes haha. 

Thanks for catching up with me! 

Chat soon, 

Arquie