It’s been 2 yrs of writing this blog – and I still don’t have anything published

I’m still a queen of procrastination but not the queen, as I’ve found out other writers procrastinate also. https://annerallen.com/2019/04/good-news-about-procrastination/ I found this site while researching editing.

My research of editing techniques and more about how to write a memoir, which I’ve come to find out is the genera of my present work Breakfast Bar Confidential, have been going ok this month but I’ve not been doing it constantly like I was when I was typing up my notes.

I’m debating to rewrite the whole thing and make it into more of a story than a list of events. My notes that I typed up just seemed like a long list of facts of my life to me. They didn’t flow like a story. I could highlight the whole thing and add bullet points and turn it into a powerpoint easier than trying to read it as a story. Though my research I think I’ve found a way to not have to rewrite the whole thing and turn it into more of a story. I think I’ve come up with a way to make it flow and adjust the facts to not be so rigged and read easier and more flowingly. In January I’ll be back to working on it every night again.

I met another local author on Sunday, November 17th. I bought her book and got her to sign it. They mentioned that their publisher might be looking for more local authors and I should contact them and talk with them. Once I get a slight rewrite done and some more editing and maybe a beta reader or two, then I’ll contact them. 

My son challenged me to write a flash fiction story for this month’s Engen Kit Sora competition.

I ate at a new to me restaurant but there was no new to me food on the menu, I had liver and onions.

Friends took me 4wheeling after our first snowfall so to contradict what I had said in last month’s post about winter I had fun in the snow and cold. But on a realistic note, I still hate winter. The second snowfall brought slush and slippery roads, making work interesting but it’s annoying to get my sneakers soaked and feet cold while I’m cleaning the slobbing gobbs of slush off my car before and after work. Sure I could wear boots but that takes time to tie them up when I put them on and time to untie them when I take them off and then it’s also having to remember to take my sneakers to work, I’m not a morning person, I can barely remember to take my work keys with me every morning.

On the 17th when I was at the book store I bought another book titled Last of the Small Towns Hantsport (https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B077922QDR/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1). I started reading it and I’m about ½ way through at the end of the month. It’s a really good read. It’s a memoir of living in Hantsport, Nova Scotia in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s. I really like the way this guy writes. 

On the 23rd I attended a write-in at Peter Foots house again this year. (https://peterjfooteauthor.wordpress.com/) I’m not doing NANOWRIMO and neither were ½ the people there but it was good to get out and meet other writers. I spent only about an hour writing and an hour talking and eating carrot cake. I started revising my memoir. I enjoy writing, it takes me away and I miss it.

 

A little bit of everything

Writing Group

On October 1st, the online writing group that I was apart of disbanded. The leader of our group said that I was the only one who was participating, therefore, the only one achieving anything. She called me a Rockstar! She agreed to keep on helping me. So I still get to have a video call with her every two weeks and any time I have questions I’m free to contact her. 

Florida/Winter/Board

I still think of Florida. I’d love to become a snowbird. I have a place to stay in both countries. I have my own car. I just need to find a summer-only job in Canada and figure out how to be allowed to work in the USA for a few months over the winter. I’d like to know how hot it gets in the middle of summer in Florida before I decide to stay there all year long. 

Rural NS is getting boring. Like that song goes “You can only drive down Main Street so many times”. I think I’ve been on all the roads in NS too many times. I know where everything is, how long it takes to get someplace and what’s going to be there when I arrive. Change is slow around here. I just want to see new to me things, go places I’ve never been. I feel like I’m going out of mind with the monotonous of Nova Scotia and I know it’s only going to get worse.

Winter is coming and I’m going to be trapped inside once the snow starts. At least now I can go for a drive, even if it is to see the same places I’ve already seen a thousand times before, at least that is better than the same 4 walls inside my house. Without the snow and extreme cold, I can go for walks outside. I can sit around a campfire or lay in a hammock. All the things I can’t do in winter.

I bought some new books and that is how I will escape my boredom these coming winter days. Try a new video game once in a while over winter too, that helps break things up. In winter, if it’s sunny, it means it’s freezing outside so if I bundle up to keep warm it means that it’s difficult to move and exposed skin still gets frostbite. Raining means it’s warm but then the snow is slush so I can’t really do any outdoor activity in the slush. If it starts to snow, I don’t want to be stuck out in it in case it turns into a snowstorm. Winter Sucks!

The evenings have been getting down to the single-digit frigates, nothing below 0 yet by mid-month, but we have had frost warnings. The morning of Tuesday, October 29th was the first morning I had to scrape frost off the windows of my car. Soon I’ll be having to get up earlier to clean the snow off the car before I can drive to work. I now live so close to work that by the time I get to work my car won’t even be warm yet. UGH!

Here I am thinking about winter already. But that’s because I’m stuck behind a desk. The learning curve for the new job has ended and monotonicity has set in. Some days there is more to do then I can fit in one day at work and other days I’m a clock watcher. Altho there is hope to learn something new once in a while, on the 31st I answered the phone at work and 10min later when I was done on the phone a co-work said: “So now you’ve met so-and-so…”. It was like an initiation, to have to speak to certain people that are regular callers and want the same thing every time. It gives me hope that there are still new experiences to be had at this job.

Writing My WIP

I hit a snag at the beginning of the month. First it was a downer that the writing group got canceled, I tried to not be depressed over that, I continued to transcribe and then came across some notes I had left myself in my scribbler, 2 pages of 8pt printed notes to be exact, that I now had to type over and edit and expand upon to make fit into the story I’m trying to tell. When I do meet with Tish on the 15th we’ll both be disappointed that my page count didn’t reach my goal but I’m stuck working on these notes, which will result in more pages typed than pages handwritten. For my page count with Trish, we were counting the pages in the scribbler, not the pages I typed. I can see a compromise coming up because of this.

At work, they needed someone to watch over the place on a weekend when they hired cleaners to come in and strip and wax the floors. I volunteered to do that in exchange that I be allowed to use my work computer to work on my writing while I was there, the boss agreed. I was able to get within 6 pages of being finished typing up the 2nd rough draft! 

On the last Friday in the month I was finished typing up the 2nd draft. Time to open that pack of Marlboro Reds I thought but the opportunity to do so hasn’t hit yet. I’m glad and proud that I got this far but I still see a long road ahead before it is completely finished and published.

It is still a very rough piece of work but it is all on computer now and now I can start to edit and work on the intro and epilog that I want to put in. 

My short term WIP goals are now:

November – write in my red scribbler and make a word doc for what to look for when editing and how to edit and the various professional editor costs. 

December – continue with editing notes from November if needed. Look into some of the next steps of self-publishing, including, cover designer costs, audiobook recording costs, gorilla marketing and whatever else I might need to know if I end up self-publishing. And to also look into how to get an agent.

January – start seriously editing and rewriting. In my favorite writing metaphor, the sandbox, I am now where I have a box full of sand and I get to start forming it into something recognizable and hopefully enjoyable to read.

Books Read/Reading

On October 8th I finished reading Insomnia by Stephen King and started rereading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, again. I did pick up another Stephen King book at a thrift shop but felt that right now would be a good time to reread the book that inspired me to write the book I’m working on right now.

I needed to read an actual story, something that I could get lost in in the evenings before bed so I started reading the new to me Stephen King novel Leslies Story. The back cover makes it sound boring, maybe that’s why I never heard of it before, but I like his writing style, that is why I’m reading it and thinking about his characters and how they have been developed.

My other WIP’s

It’s the time of year when my WIP Liquid Paper takes place and I so want to work on it. I keep thinking about the characters and what they are about to do and go through. I might sneak in a bit of work on it while researching editing in general over the next two months. 

Devour

I think it was back in 2014 when Mr. Bourdain was a guest at the Devour Film Food Festival in Wolfville, Nova Scotia and this year is the first time I attended. I went to the food truck party and the chicken bbq dinner. Ate Veg Pad Thai with shrimp for the first time in my life and dumplings for the second time in my life. I got to make my own Beaver Tail and then eat it, I hadn’t had one since I was a kid. It was a great time and I couldn’t stop thinking about Tony while I was there. And it was good to see all the packaging and utensils were compostable.

September Came With a Hurricane

EDUCATION
Septemeber reminds me of going back to school and learning furiously. I decided to take some courses this month to fulfill the need for education at this time of year that has been ground into me from my 13yrs of public education and 4 yrs of post-secondary education.

I started 3 online courses at Futurelearn.com:

-> Accenture – Digital Skills: Social Media – 2 week course – ½ completed the 1st week
-> Accenture – Digital Skills: Digital Marketing – 2 week course – ½ completed (1st week completed)
-> The Open University – Start Writing Fiction – 48 days left

Took a 1-day course, in person, on Conflict Resolution and Management to help deal better at work and in life in general.

I Love Learning!

WORK
Had anxiety attack Sept. 11th at work. I hadn’t had one in months. It was the first one at this new job. At least I now know how the boss reacts to it and he is good. I hate being personally blamed for something I know I didn’t do. Within a few days, I got over it. Actually used the experience to come up with an idea for a short story for an anthology of short horror stories I am going to write at some point.

WRITING COMPETITION
Signed up for 1st round of the Wayrms Gauntlet writing competition again this year but didn’t finish it because I wasn’t feeling good on the weekend that I had planned on editing my final piece so I never submitted it.

READING
Reading Insomnia by Stephen King. Even his books have boring parts.

Plan to read A Cooks Tour, by Anthony Bourdain, as soon as I’m done Insomnia and the 2nd draft of my present WIP. I’m hoping it will inspire my next book, A to A.

WRITERS GROUP
I missed the 1st video conference with Tish on the 10th because I was in the city at appointments. (Top photos I took while in the city: A crane that blew down in the city because of hurricane Dorian & I ate Duck Confit for the first time that day, they were out of  Bone Marrow because of the hurricane.) We postponed our video conference to the 17th. We talked about author branding (which is the story of why I am doing what I am doing), logo, name, color, fonts, popular pallets, trending colors, having 1 author image that actually looks like me so people will recognize me when I show up in person, no selfies, how do I want the world to see me. We also discussed how we are both doing with our WIPs. I am ahead in my writing goals by 5pgs that we had set together.

WIP
Less than 40pages until I’m finished typing up my second draft!!!!!!!!!!

SLEEPING 
I like to stay up late on Friday and Saturday nights and sleep in on Saturday and Sunday mornings. This puts my sleeping pattern off for the rest of the week so I’m struggling to stay awake after work so I usually end up going to sleep around 3pm and waking up around 7pm or 8pm then I’m awake until 3am or 4am in the morning. Then I have to get up around 7am to get ready for work. So I am getting between 6 to 8 hrs of sleep a day, just not all at once and not all right before I have to get up and go to work. With winter coming I’m soon going to have to start getting up early so I have time to clean the snow off my car before I drive to work. So hopefully soon I’ll develop a more regular sleeping pattern.

August

Writers Group – I finished the 1st/rough draft of BBC in the first week of this month thanks to being challenged by my new mentor. We were supposed to meet on the 6th for a video conference, she postponed to the 13th. On the 13th we talked about many topics including author image, websites & blogs. She challenged me to type up 10 pages by the next time we talked on August 27th. I was able to do 4 pages by then. On the 27th she challenged me to do another 10 pages by the time we will speak again on Sept. 10th. By the time I posted this I already had 4 pages typed up. Yeah!

Hotel – I finally feel ok about leaving it behind, but it had so much potential. I must fill my mind with other thoughts so I don’t think about it so it fades farther and farther away. 

New Job – After starting part-time for 1.5 weeks I went to full-time hrs, just to help cover while people are on vacation. September I should be back to part-time hours. The new learning, new atmosphere (I may be in a cubby hole but I can see out into the lobby that has huge windows so I have lots of natural light) and  the great people I now work with, (plus the few extra hours I picked up this month), sure has made a difference in forgetting about the hotel. I have new “guests” to be concerned with and I work with mostly guys so there are no clicks, disliking, arguing, backbiting, backstabbing, personal relationships or people not doing their jobs. Everyone gets along, and it’s a bigger staff than the hotel had so it is amazing to see how a well-oiled machine really works. 

Sleep – Still sleeping in shifts despite having regular hrs. I’ll go home from work have some soup or a sandwich and then nap for a 2 to 4 hrs, then I’ll wake up for 3 or 4 hours, then I’ll go back to bed to sleep until I have to get up in the morning to go to work. Sometimes I’ll stay awake after work and go swimming in the evening or do housework and then go to bed at a normal time but that doesn’t usually happen because I’m too tired after work to push myself to stay awake that long. But I’m thinking that if I did push myself I believe I could get in a normal habit of sleeping! Wouldn’t that be great to be normal! HaHaHa! Me normal, what a thought! Never!

Boy Came Home! – So my son was away working for the summer and he came home with two weeks left in August. I tried to stick to the way that I have been doing things with my new job that I got while he was away. It will be interesting to see how we both adjust to me working in the mornings and all of us now being home in the evenings. He now also has his driver’s license so if I don’t want to take him someplace he can now drive himself. He’s already paid for the insurance out of his summer earnings; he’s also looking for a job so soon he’ll probably be working in the evenings so he won’t be around the house much anyway. 

Writing Habit – In the evenings, a couple of hours before I plan to go to sleep I get out the laptop and scribbler to type up my WIP. The summers are warm and my “office” that is in my walk-in closet (that has no windows and is too small to put a fan in) got really warm in the summer so this summer I’ve been working from either my sofa or sitting up on my bed. Each location has a fan so is slightly cooler than my closet to work in. I put the TV on Stingray ch 911 and listen to some classic rock and roll. As I type I also add and edit little bits as I go along. 

The two mentoring video conferences that I had this month took place in the closet-office and my butt fell asleep both times.  The first time I only had 2 old pillows, the second time I had 4 extra old pillows and my butt still fell asleep. I’m using a wooden kitchen chair because it’s all I have to start with. Now that I’m working I think I will invest in an office chair. I sit at work (but do move around quite a bit) and my butt does not go to sleep, ever, at work.

WIP Progress – Once I get all the handwritten words typed up on the computer then I will call that my second draft. (handwritten being the first draft) I bought 2 packs of smokes (Marlboro Reds) while I was in Florida earlier this year. They are the kind Mr. Bourdain used to smoke. I like a good smoke every now and again so when I bought these my plan was to have one pack as a reward for finishing each story, BBC and A to A. But that goal wasn’t well defined. At what point do I call it completed? 1st draft is done but the complete story is nowhere near being finished. I do want to try and get it traditionally published. But if I can’t find an agent then I will self publish. I think that at the point that it is polished enough to send my query letters to agents and have beta readers read it then that will be the point that I say it is done. Then I will celebrate with something bigger. Once I get the 2nd draft finished I will celebrate with smokes to help get through the rest of the editing process, I have a feeling I’ll need them at that point.

Florida – For some reason, I can’t stop thinking of Florida. Maybe I miss my sister? Maybe the weather here hasn’t been all that warm but yet the government has a campfire ban on for most of the summer so I haven’t been able to go outside and enjoy nature in the evenings with a fire. It was a rainy, wet start and end to this summer with maybe a half dozen days of enough warmth that I actually went swimming outside in a lake. Maybe I miss the heat of Florida? Maybe I just don’t like looking at my future of being in the rut of life – work during the week to have the weekends to play and to save enough dough to vacation again someday. Who likes that way of life? I want to travel and explore the world all the time for the rest of my life and then take little breaks to write about it. I feel like I’m going to burst if I don’t get to go someplace else very soon. I’m putting together the pictures from my last trip to Florida for a future book, A to A,  I see all the places that I’ve been and I just want to go to more places. I was freaking out the other night because I knew that I had seen Central Park in one of my pictures and I wanted to look at it again, but I couldn’t find it. It was actually in a video that I took, so I have it saved in a special place now. When I look at my pictures and read about places that I’ve been I get this feeling in my chest and gut that draws me back into those places and times. Not just reliving what I’ve done but wanting to see what’s around the corner of that building in the background of my photo, a place I know I’ve never been but I want to go explore because it’s new to me. There is a travel/exploring bug and I’ve been bitten by it, just like 20yrs ago I was bitten by the theater bug. Both have given me experiences and friendships I’ll never forget and the longing for that learning experience again.

Hotel No More

Hotel – Started back at the hotel at the beginning of the month. It’s the same old stuff happening at the hotel. I missed the physical building and the old staff. New staff is for the birds, they are very slow at learning and common sense is lacking, which it shouldn’t be because these people are far from being teenagers, they are way older and have life experiences. They also seem to be lacking empathy for the guests, they can’t see that what they are doing is not making for a great guest experience, they aren’t putting the guest first, it’s all about themselves not the guests or the hotel as a whole or business. It’s very frustrating to work with those kinds of people so by the end of the month I stopped working there again.

Another New Job – In June when the new job went south and I went back to the hotel and they only gave me 1 or 2 shifts a week I had applied to a bunch of other jobs. One of those responded and I started working there. Excellent location, hours, work requirements and pay. It’s in an industry I’ve never really worked before so, as always, I love the learning curve. It’s perfect. I’ve only been there a week so I know I need to give it some time but I really want to leave the hotel and just have one job, so I can give my all to this new job. 

But there is something about the hotel. Is it about the amount of my life, sweat and tears, I’ve invested in it so far? Or will I continue to miss some of the old staff? Do I care any longer what happens to it from a business perspective? Yes, but I alone can’t make any changes to make it better and management isn’t easy to deal with. Is it the building or location or the great view? Will I miss helping and chatting with the guests? Will I miss the pool or the purple wall in the back office or the roomy desk to write at during my lunch break? After working here for 2 yrs this place has become like a second home. Or is it just the audit shift I will miss? I just feel good here but only on audit shifts, when I’m alone in the middle of the night when it is quiet and have freedom to get things done and not having to babysit a co-worker. I know I have to leave. Better opportunities are waiting for me and I can’t accomplish anything new if I keep trying to live in the past and be treated like crap. I have a feeling this newest job will be just fine and I won’t be writing about my work life interfering with my writing any more.

Writing group – We’ve decided that weekly, group, video conferences weren’t working so we’ve decided every two weeks we’ll do one on one video conferences with our group leader/mentor. So on Tuesday, July 23rd I had a video conference that went very well. I was challenged to finish the final chapter of Breakfast Bar Confidential before our next video conference on Tuesday,  August 6th and to stop work on typing up the rough draft until the final chapter is finished. She referred to it like a finichael advisor would advise someone to pay off the smaller debts first. The final chapter is way smaller than the whole story so it makes sense to finish it before typing up any more. (A sign that I’m on the right path: as I was typing this up the song “Passenger” started playing. It’s a song that truly reminds me of Anthony Bourdain, lyrics that make me think.)

Flash Fiction – My (250 word) story that I  sent to Engen Publications in NewFoundland for the Kit Sora competition didn’t win but I great feedback saying I was in their top 10 of favorites. I will continue to keep an eye on this competition and when a picture catches my eye I will write about it.

Breakfast Bar Confidential / Breakfast Bar Rollercoaster – The other week at the hotel stuff was going down and it was laughable, at this point there was nothing else I could do but laugh at what was going on, the “I’m going insane because I can’t believe this just happened” kind of laugh. I was chatting with the maintenance man and he said it would make a great chapter in my book but I liked the ending I had already planned but just hadn’t written yet. He suggested I start a new book then because people have to know about this. I was on my way to go swimming. In the pool I was floating, not something I’ve ever done in the work pool before, I was trying to clear my head of this new event that was bothering me. What the maintenance man said sunk in at that point and I got the idea for a new book. I went home and wrote the outline. It may or may not ever get written but at least I have an outline now. The working title is Breakfast Bar Rollercoaster but that will change because it doesn’t have anything to do with a Breakfast Bar.

#BourdainDay / First Flash Fiction

Bourdain – June 25th was #BourdainDay. I ate from a food truck that day. Deep fried fish and hubby made mashed potatoes to go with it. Two of Mr. Bourdain’s favorite kinds of foods, I think he would have been pleased. I even ate the batter on the fish, which I normally don’t do because most deep fried foods don’t agree with me. I wanted to experience the flavor and textures and see what I’ve been missing by always picking the batter off and only eating the fish. It was so delicious, all the textures and flavors mixed together with a bit of tartar sauce thrown in! But, later that night my stomach was like “Hey, why’d you eat that? I don’t like that, here you can have it back.”. When I was in Florida earlier this year I had no trouble eating deep fried food. A friend I visited there said he thinks it’s because he cooks with peanut oil and nobody in Canada cooks with peanut oil because so many people here have allergies. Kids in Canada aren’t even allowed to take food to school that has peanuts listed as an ingredient. It’s crazy!

BBC – Started typing it up, 3,331 words typed so far. Stills needs an ending written, I have ideas, just need to get them on paper.

Flash Fiction  – Wrote a (250 words) story and sent it in for the Kit Sora competition through Engen Publications in Newfoundland.

Started participating in a beta writers group – it is run by another Maritimer (Trish McWebber out of New Brunswick) who has already published a book and says she is going to help us get our books written. My big problem is still procrastination. She wants us to write at least 5mins each day. It’s such an easy task! But I’m too lazy to do it every day. I can’t get on a schedule, my work shifts are never the same, I’m not a morning person so getting up early to write sounds awesome but it doesn’t work for me. Nothing in my life happens on the same day every day, or every week, or every month. Nothing for me is regulated like that so I’m having a hard time doing that with my writing when nothing else in my life is run that way.

New Job – Didn’t last, hurt back so I returned to the hotel at the end of the month. I’m on front desk mostly now, with a few audit shifts thrown in here and there. No regular schedule, no guaranteed hours.

Worked more on creating low content books – I need a side gig I can do from home (when I’m not working at the hotel) to make a little extra money just to make ends meet financially. 

Artist – I met the new girl at work at the hotel and she’s an awesome artist and wants to work with me making books!

 

May – Bourdain on the Brain

Work

Beginning of May – Last month (April) when I got back from vacation when I went to work I read the schedule and found that I had been taken off my back shift (audit) position and put on working the 4pm to midnight front desk shift without being consulted first. Those shift hours don’t work for me because I still need to take my son to his activities in the evenings and my husband works evenings. I was told by a lower level of management that if I work these evening shifts for the next 2 months I will get the new day time position that they are creating that will start in July. I mentioned this to a recently hired employee and she said she was told the same thing in her interview before they hired her. Feeling something wasn’t quite right I had a private meeting with GM. There were other issues happening at work I was looking for straight answers for too. Long story short, come to find out, there is no new position being created and I got my same old shifts back for the next schedule and hopefully the rest of my time here. A little stressful but it got worked out, for now. I foresee more changes coming to my workplace, I just don’t know what or when.

Middle of May – Not going to know what’s up with the hotel in the future as I started a new job in mid May. New job is only 5 mins from home, 8-5, Mon to Fri. I’m basically a runner in this business where I can get my hands into many projects to help out. I can foresee the issue of running out of things to do. But I am excited to be back to the daily grind like normal people, evenings and weekends free and all holidays off.  I think it was in Stephen King’s book On Writing that he mentioned sitting down to write every morning before work for 2 hrs just to write, I want to get to that point with this new job.

End of May – After my last day at the hotel I felt like I wanted to go back. I felt bad for leaving them even more short staffed. I did work my last two weeks at my regular shift hours as a night auditor. The new job is interesting and I don’t know enough to take initiative and do things without asking or being asked yet but hopefully I’ll get there.

Computer

Beginning of May – My dryer stopped working in the first week and I blew the power cord to my laptop in the second week. The hinges are also going in my laptop, been that way for over a year now. I’m just happy it starts up every time I open it and turn it on. Undecided if I should buy a whole new laptop or just a $50 power cord. If I buy just the cord I could go home and have the laptop not turn on because a wire broke in the hinges. Or I could buy a new laptop and the power cord not be compatible with my old laptop and I’d still need to get everything off my old laptop so I’d still need to buy a new power cord.

Middle of May – I bought just the power cord for now. A co-worker at the hotel gave me an old laptop he was going to recycle. It only has XP and no Wifi so I have it in my “closet/office”. I plan to start to type out my second draft of BBC in Notepad. I need a dryer so I bought one. It rains almost every day so I can’t hang my clothes out to dry every time I need to. It was a hard decision. I also need summer tires and new glasses. I’m going to run my winter tires for as long as I can since I don’t have far to go for work now it should be less wear and tear on them this summer and they should still be good for this coming winter. I’m hoping my glasses and old laptop will hang on until I can save up some more money them.

End of May – A laptop came on sale at the local computer store (we don’t have any big name stores around here that sell computers except for Staples and Walmart and they mostly have just Chromebooks in my price range) so I bought it, only to get it home and find out that it’s a notebook and not a laptop. So no cd drive and no number pad on the side. It will take some getting used to but the battery holds a charge for over 6 hrs and it has wifi. It didn’t come with any MS Office so I’m now also getting used to using LibreOffice because it is free and does everything I need it to for writing and spreadsheets.

Writing

I was thinking about starting to type up BBC on the computer as a 2nd draft but I’m still working on writing the ending of the 1st draft by hand so I think I’ll just finish the 1st draft first. It’s a tale about working at the hotel and I once again got inspired by the hotel for an idea I was struggling with. During my 4th to last day of work at the hotel there was a flood 2hrs before my shift ended. It went through 3 rooms and 3 hallways on 3 floors. Title heading for the last chapter: The Final Flood. I needed something to inspire the ending and I got what I wished for. I just really want to finish it next month and start hitting up some agents asap as June is both the month of one year anniversary of the passing of Anthony Bourdain and the month of his birthday. Eric Ripert and José André are celebrating June 25th as “Bourdain Day” and I’d love to send my query letters out before that day.

As for my short story that I submitted for the first time, it got rejected. But it was a good rejection. The editor said it “…has a lot going for it. I think it is publishable…” & “It has a lot of strengths. Good description. Credible dialogue. I think the shifts in viewpoint are handled well…” but what I thought was a distraught ending he said wasn’t frightening enough for him to publish. It’s a “niche-specific” piece that there is a market for but just not in his magazine – which is awesome! Well of course it sucks that it didn’t get published on my first try but the feedback was so encouraging. I’ve started researching other magazines but time just never seems to be on my side to nail anything down and submit again.