Slow-going work today, stress crescendoes

Slow-going work today, as stress crescendoes in from all sides (yes, crescendoes can be a verb, kiddies).

Shoveled snow off our roof this morning using a periscope-like-extendable shovel to avoid ice-damming that's happened every year the past few years. But instead of making it better, there is a waterfall coming through the frame above our bedroom window. Reliable handy-man already called, so there's that ....

I meant to be editing a short-story for the hirsute-man fairy tale anthology, trimming it down to 5,000 words from 7,000. However, when I opened the doc, none of my Track Changes remained; only the comments. So much hang-wringing until my partner compared this doc to the original (I always keep originals), restoring all edits.

And I have edits on my own hirsute-fairy tale to work through. So, some progress in the pandemic! Just an uphill fight, amid a maelstrom of stress on all fronts—house and editing work. Good thing I could announce some big publishing news last week about my short-fiction collection, because this week is a pot-boiler.

Also, as a lovely added side effect of my success last week, I stayed up just a little too late, and managed to work in just a little of those three “P”’s into the mix. But I am not giving on my new work routine and trying to shift my late hours back to earlier hours. A bit of annual correspondence with an acquaintance, some naughtiness expressed, and I am trying to comport myself well, but it’s hard.

Read an extremely inspirational essay from twisted Texan weird-fiction and horror writer, Joe R. Lansdale in Where The Nightmares Come From. Joe reminded me, just as Stephen King did in On Writing, that mornings are the times for writing fresh after dreaming, because the dreams linger.

But the way I often tilt my schedule with late nights, I crush my morning writer’s efforts with fatigue or derailment of focus. I can see that I gotta’ fight for my dreams. Writing my story (a modernized “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” set in a post-pandemic, celebratory nation’s capital, infused with whimsy and hints of magic), I realize that I can produce a new piece of fiction on (relatively) short notice, and that my style, diction, pace, ingredients are tighter than before.

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