Thursday 30 January 2025: Deadline days

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

It was our first deadline day of the year yesterday for 12 Stories in 12 Months on Deadlines for Writers. I’d finished a very rough draft of the 1,200-word story the day before and read it out loud to the poet, which picked up a couple of typos and a couple of clumsy sentences. I marked the printout and put it to cool overnight.

We were supposed to be having home-made ravioli for tea on Tuesday, but by the time he got home it was too late to start faffing with pasta. So we had chunky fish fingers out of the freezer, home-made oven chips, and peas, and we finished off the black and blue crumble. Yesterday’s tea was supposed to be a fish pie, so the fish went into the freezer with a view to having the ravioli yesterday instead, as he was working from home.

Yesterday morning I did another read-through of the short story, made a few changes, duplicated the file so I can use it again if I want to for the second submission this one might be suitable for, and sent it off. The deadline for the second submission is Saturday, and I don’t know yet if I’ll have time to put back the top, tail and bit in the middle I took out for it to fit the word-count for 12 Stories and still make it flow. 

The third submission this story might be suitable for is due on 1 March, so I have a bit longer to flesh it out for that. Market #1 doesn’t count as publication, because we’re just sharing it in a virtual class, I suppose. Market #2 doesn’t like simultaneous submissions, but they take 5 weeks to get back to contributors. So it might be worth me skipping and going straight to Market #3, which doesn’t mind simultaneous submissions. But I’ll see. I doubt I’ll have a lot of spare time between now and Saturday, so I may just skip #2 anyway.

I got ready to go to the hospital while the poet attended 2 or 3 online meetings and a phone meeting, then off we went. My hospital of choice is further than their hospital of choice, so we allowed extra time. I couldn’t remember the actual time of the appointment, though, so we aimed at the early time because it was better for us to do that and be wrong than go for the later time and be wrong.

And it was the later time that was correct.

They didn’t mind, though. Apparently one of the nurses had an unexpected thing going on, so the fact I was an hour early was great for her. By the time I’d finished the full assessment, it was still 15 minutes earlier than my actual appointment. I had to go and sit in phlebotomy then, though, so they could take several fingers of blood.

Wow, what a conveyor belt that was! They called 3 of us in at a time and I don’t think I was in the chair for a minute. 

But then it went a bit pear-shaped as there was a long queue at the car park payment machine. We were stood in that queue, in the cold, for half an hour. Something had gone wrong with the internet connection and it wasn’t recognising number plates. A few people got a bit mad, because it made the difference between a one-hour parking fee or a two-hour parking fee and they only had enough for the one hour, that kind of thing.

We were within touching distance of the machine when there was announcement. There would be no fines issued from a certain time and we could all go. Well, that was great for us, despite the wait. Less great for people who had waited before us and paid. We didn’t argue, though, and headed home.

By now it was getting too late for home-made pasta, so we stopped off at the supermarket and bought a ready made pasta bake each. I had mac and cheese, he had something with tomato. We still had garlic bread, but I hadn’t made a pudding. So we got ready made individual cheesecakes, I had toffee, he had strawberry, and a cinnamon bun each. Nom! What a treat.

When we got home, it was dark and he’d had a vinyl delivery (album, not fabric). So he went into the living room to listen to that while I stared at a blank screen for a couple of hours. I could bash out 5,000 words for Fallen Angel yesterday evening, and aim at 5,000 words today and 5,000 words tomorrow. Or I could give in and aim at between 7,500 and 10,000 words today and 5,000 words tomorrow. Because yes, Friday’s deadline day for this month’s great novella challenge.

Fortunately, the story had a detailed outline across 3 Acts. All I had to do was write.

So I wrote up today’s blog post instead…And then stared at the screen again for a bit longer. I updated my January wrap-up post with everything I’ve done this month, all the extras, and the few things I’ve missed. I did a quick blog tour, updated my 12-project spreadsheet with my word-counts, and then I did more staring.

I managed a whopping 401 words, and I need 15,000. This novelette wasn’t in the mood to be written. So I left it to percolate overnight.

 

2 thoughts on “Thursday 30 January 2025: Deadline days

Comments are closed.