Welcome back! I missed you all last weekend. Last weekend was the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday weekend. I was preoccupied for the weekend visiting relatives. So, this will be a two week report. Because I can.

In the first week, I literally had two time blocks the entire week to get anything done. Seriously, where does all the time go. How can there always be so much stuff that needs to get done at all hours of the waking day? Granted, work takes up roughly 9 of those hours every day. But still, it seems like time just vanishes if you are not paying minute attention to it. Like in a black hole. Regardless, in those two time blocks I had available to write in, I finished paper edits of my last three short stories.

I am now making progress into areas untrod. his is the absolute closest I’ve come at this point in time to finishing. I was quite happy and dismayed that I did not have more time to finish everything up. But I knew that next week, I’d manage to finish!

So now we move into the past week. Tuesday, I managed to knock down one short story through it’s digital edits. I got started on the second. Wednesday morning, I finished off the first story to what I can say is final. I was excited to finish the last two up in the evening. I even started telling people at work I’d be finished tonight. I got two sentences edited in the evening when life intervened and I had to take care of an emergency with a friend. No writing done. Thursday night, I was going to finish! I was up till 1 am finishing off the stories!

FINISHED.

I can say that word now. This is my first major writing project that I can say is officially finished. And I’ve been participating in National Novel Writing Month since 2003! It’s not a full book. It’s just a collection of short stories. But I started and finished it in a year.

MacSweeny’s Maniacal Material Market: Short Stories of Employee Mayhem.

26 random stories, a total of 34,523 words (okay, one of them was written a few years ago).

BUT STILL. This is a major accomplishment for me. I’m extremely thrilled with myself. Three years ago I decided I’d work towards being a published author. And the first thing (technically second) I get to publish.

Speaking of publishing. Now I need to figure out how to epublish. I need to look into that now. And learn how to do that. And probably set up an author page on facebook of some kind and probably 2 billion other things that authors seem to know about publishing. I suspect it’s like that book new parents get with their first child on how to be a parent. Hopefully it will be not so painful that I can get it done yet before November. Granted, if I get it published right before November, then I have no time to do anything then say ‘I did a thing, it’s online.’ And then ignore it until next year. As much as I’d like it to be perfect, it will not be perfect. Nothing is ever perfect. Also, I’m running out of time for October to get anything extra done this month.

A opportunity to move came to me in the middle of September, so I took it. I don’t see it as the most ideal move, but it allows me to be ready for plans that may appear either in 2018 or early 2019. That means, the rest of October I must put my efforts into getting ready to move and then move before November. It’s going to get busy very fast in the next week, and I’m so glad that the stories are finished and that’s one less thing for me to worry about in the coming weeks. As such, I am not setting any new writing goals for the rest of the month. I’m hoping putting ebooks for sale doesn’t take that much time and something I can work on when I get moments here and there. If I get a chance, I’ll prep an outline that I can throw out on November 1st.

In the meantime, do I update the shorts here on the blog, take them down so that people buy them or leave them up and hope people will also buy it? I’m leaning toward the latter.

Goals:

• E-publish MacSweeny’s Short stories before November.

MacSweeny’s Maniacal Material Market: Short Stories of Employee Mayhem.

• 26 / 26 edited
• 26/26 final
• Goals: None

Word Log (for two weeks):

• Story: 0
• Shorts: 0
• Other: 0
• Editing: 796
• Time: 9 hours, 58 minutes