Photo by Amy Tharp
Progress Report for April/May, 2024. May 20th ‘24, from Jeff Baker.
Yup! Did more reading than writing this month, too!
Did the usual monthly and weekly flash fiction stories, piddled around and wrote on a few other things and plotted out a few others. And submitted some things. (Glad I keep notes!)
Wrote a few paragraphs on “One Dark Night In the Middle Of the Day,” which is starting to come together.
Surprised myself and wrote a poem in the Library about an hour before closing, running around grabbing books from various sections so I could quote their Dewey Decimal numbers! Actually sent it off!
Wrote another poem the other day, the first line of which was a throwaway line from a Facebook post I made late one night.
Re-read my old story “Original Sin” and tweaked it a little. Submitted.
Worked on a fantasy story I’d started last year and had forgotten about! Sat down to write a paragraph and wrote about a page!
Worked on a NSFW story I’d been piddling on and made surprising progress!
Did the usual weekly Friday Flash Fiction stories and the Flash Fiction Draw Challenge story for May.
The next Friday story will mark my eighth year of doing these near-weekly stories. My Anniversary story looks pretty good, if I do say so myself!
Got one story started in a notebook; it may fit one of the Friday Flash prompts later.
AND I actually did some writing on “Love’s Not Time’s Fool,” as well as taking notes for it. This is the full-length story that I feel I’m meant to finish before I tackle another long project. (Earlier this year I twice typed up a note for two different stories and accidentally typed them at first onto the MS of “Love’s Not Time’s Fool.” I took it as an omen that I was meant to finish this before I did anything else. I don’t believe in omens, but it is a motivator!) I have a lot of the story in semi-connected chunks. I just need to formulate it into a coherent narrative.
I’m trying to imagine the unmotivated, undisciplined College Kid I was back in 1982 saying that!
I’ve got at least a couple of Queer Sci-Fi columns written this month and in the pipe, as well as notes for another one I ought to work on.
I’m going out-of-town and slowing down the writing for a couple of weeks in a couple of weeks. We’ll see how that goes.
And my story “The Ghannidor-Ra” was published in “Schlock! Webzine” in their May 2024 issue! Now that’s progress! The editors liked it and I’ll be doing a sequel!
That’s about it for now!
—-jeff baker, May 20th, 2024
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