Must Submit... Must Submit...

Due to last week's abundance of flash fiction, I'm going to try and keep things a little more real this week. Although as soon as I wrote that, a quote by Ray Bradbury shot into my head. "You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." I love that quote. It's on the wall in my office. Nevertheless, I feel it's important to change things up, keep it fresh.

It's been a rather tiring month so far. I've been keeping up with my challenge for Submit-O-Rama, although I'm a little behind. I'll have to submit twice today to be where I should be, and it'd be nice to submit more to be ahead for the week. Between housework, taking care of the dog, a full time job and trying to commit ample time to writing, editing and submitting, it's been a bit much. Not that I'm complaining. This is what I want. This is what I have to do if there's ever going to be a hope in hell of writing being my full time job. (Ah! How glorious that would be!)

And to be honest, I've really enjoyed the Submit-O-Rama challenge thus far. It's really forced me out of my shell. I've had to scour the depths of my writing for good material, had to bend, twist and cut it into presentable pieces and send it out into the world. I've had to research markets, read past issues of possible publications, write queries and pitches. All things I'm out of practice with. After all, the writing is the easy part. It's fun, imaginative and a great source of entertainment and soul searching. The editing, research, pitching and inevitable rejection, those are the hard parts. The parts we all want to avoid. The more I do them, the more practice I get, the easier it'll become. I'll get better at it and (hopefully) increase my chances of success.

I particularly like these challenges in the winter. The weather is already cold and it's just October. These challenges make the months fly by, give me a source of ambition and determination when I'd otherwise just stay curled up in bed, miserable and waiting for spring. I've even been thinking about competing in NaNoWriMo again in November, although in a different way. I've been slowly editing my book since the middle of August, but I was thinking I might use NaNoWriMo as an editing marathon rather than a writing one. I respond really well to deadlines and word counts, especially when they're online for all to see. It might just give me the kick in the pants I need to really give my book the attention it deserves.

But in the mean time, I'm all about submitting. And I plan to finish the month triumphant.