Work to rule

We’re now into festival season and I’m finding the prospect of a month of four day working weeks curiously liberating. The timing helps – I wouldn’t be so sanguine about being prised out of my garret if I had a book delivery date looming. But now I’m into the post-delivery wait it’s actually good to have non-writing stuff to distract me from fretting.

Not that I won’t be working at all: I’ve got a review to write, loads of notes for future Hidden Empire plotlines that need rationalising, and a whole bunch of short stories requiring either rewriting, sending out, or both. With a short story rejection from an American ‘zine last week (yes, I still get rejections) I found myself entering a state I’ve not known this century: that of having no short stories out on editors’ desks. This needs to be rectified.

In addition, I’m now lucky enough to occasionally be asked for short stories, and I’ve got one such request to fulfill before September. In fact I suspect that my long summer weekends might not be entirely work free, as I go back to my old habit of writing short story first drafts out in longhand, in this case whilst sitting on a folding chair in a muddy field listening to amplified music.

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