Just letting everyone know the recovery is coming along nicely. And I've lost about six pounds. Uggh.

I am about as sick as I've ever been. There's something going around the city of Eugene that renders its victims helpless worshipers at the porcelain god for hours on end. I have it, my wife has it, my daughter has it, my parents both had it, my inlaws had it, and I keep hearing about more and more people unable to actually leave the bathroom once this thing sets in.

For the record, I'm writing this at 3:00 in the morning because lying down is... let's just say it's a Very Bad Idea.

I'm particularly bummed about this, because as of tomorrow, Tuesday the 29th, I was supposed to make my Grand Triumphant Return to the Wordos, for some story critting and such.

This isn't looking like a good idea anymore. I feel I owe it to my fellow writers to kick this crud before foisting myself on them again. And the same applies for work; I'm not about to get half the technicians there dashing off to the toilet every twenty minutes, hoping they make it and wondering which end The Horrors will emerge from this time.

(You'll have to forgive me... I haven't slept properly in about three days, so I'm a little loopy.)

Loreen and Beatrix got luckier, I guess. They can stay horizontal for longer stretches without difficulty. I am extraordinarily jealous of that fact right now. (Remember, "right now" means "3:00 in the morning," not exactly my usual up-and-about time.

The worst, the absolute worst, is trying to stay hydrated when your stomach wants to crawl out your esophagus and give you a swift kick in the shins. I finally figured out I have to stay upright and let gravity lend an assist. So... No more sleep for me.

Not like I was getting any sleep in a horizontal position anyway.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a prolific writer. I may not achieve Jay Lake levels of verbosity, but I can certainly pack in the words.

Which means it may come as a surprise to know I have a fear of finishing.

I didn't know this until I started trying to finish novels for real. Last year, at the WotF event, I swore I would have a novel written, edited, and submitted to agents by the time this year's WotF rolls around. But at the current rate I'm writing in either of the novels on my plate -- 0 words a day -- I just don't think that's a realistic expectation.

I'm afraid of novel completion. When a novel is finished, really finished, it represents perhaps a year of hard work. It's hard to imagine putting that much effort into a story that will probably never be read to completion by anyone but friends -- let's face it, most novels don't get published.

Soooo, I'm afraid. I admit it. A part of me rebels at the hard work of finishing the damn things, out of fear of rejection.

I can bang out a short story to completion in a day. Give me a target word count and a deadline, and I will meet both. But a novel chapter? I can barely bring myself to even open the document, let alone add more words to it.

So, what's your secret? How do you get past that?

If I get any slower, I 'll start un-writing entries I've already written. Egads, this is bad. It's been a full month since my last update.

It's not that there hasn't been a lot to talk about. On the contrary, the last month has been very exciting.

• I'm at the 3rd round at ASIM again (crosses fingers)
• I've started my new job, and I'm enjoying it
• I've written several flash stories - hey, that's an accomplishment, considering how little time I've had to write
• I had a birthday (I'm 7,642,022 and 2/3 times 3 + 4,778,252 divided by 865,760 years old)
• Beatrix had a birthday (She's 1¹⁰ years old)

But I am definitely running out of time each day, and I've gotten way too lazy online.

Should I just embrace this as a lull period? Maybe. I like to think that if I sold a story or got a novel contract or something I'd share here, but lately it's been difficult just to make myself read my friends page, and I want to read it. Maybe I'm suffering from internet burnout.

I'll keep you posted. (heh)

Why, hello there, internets. Long time no see. How've you been? Still full of lolcats? My sympathies.

OK, enough small talk. The subject for today is tracking stories and subs.

As of today, I am no longer using a limited and much-abused spreadsheet to track my stories and submissions. It can't spit out the data I want, It's become large and unwieldy, and entering new stories is a pain in the neck. It hasn't always been this way, but then I haven't always had so many tidbits of information to track.

For every story, I need to track...

• Title
• Primary genre
• Secondary genres (if applicable)
• Wordcount
• Level of completion
• Comments

In addition, every story that goes out to markets has a "cloud" of data associated with each submission.

• The market it went to
• The cost of the submission (for postal subs)
  
• The submission date
• The reply date
• The response
• The money earned if the story sells (Hah!)
• Comments

And furthermore, each market has quirks I like to know about in advance, such as whether it accepts submissions only on a particular schedule.

Spreadsheets just don't cut the mustard anymore. My other options include Sonar, a nice enough program that, unfortunately, is too limited for me, tracking submissions at Duotrope, which is also nice but limited, or spending a month off-line, avoiding everything and everyone that I can in order to learn PHP and SQL, and code my own database solution.

Guess which one I did.

The good news is, it's almost done. There are a few user interface elements I need to add, and a couple more back-end features I need to improve upon, but I expect it to be fully usable in a matter of days.

The better news is that it's a platform-independent system, unlike Sonar, and I can take it with me, unlike Duotrope. It works on any machine you can install the MySQL database server on, which is most of them.

The even better news is that if you set it up on a machine with an internet address, you can access it remotely through any web browser.

And the best news is that I'm going to release it for free, as an open-source application (using the GPL), which I'll post all the source-code to online, as well as instructions on how to set it up.

***

So why did I do this? Honestly, it's been an exercise in vacuuming the cat. I've been avoiding some rather messy stories (and don't even get me started on the novels) this month. Now that I'm almost done, I have to start thinking about writing again.

Ooo, maybe I could redo the front-end in AJAX, and I'm sure the stylesheets could use some cleaning up...

Hoo, I feel like I've just run a marathon. Writing with a baby? Hard. Writing a story a week with a baby? Damn near impossible.

Over the last eight weeks, I've drastically reduced both the length and the number of posts while I juggled child care, job responsibilities, and this other undertaking. I mentioned here that I'd gotten myself into another challenging writing exercise, and I'm pleased to report several things, now that I've reached the end:

• I'm still alive.
• My brains have not drooled out my ear in an oatmeal-like slurry.
• I have 7 new short stories written from beginning to end.

So, I'm calling this a resounding success. I even have an eighth story that's near completion that I abandoned at the last minute because I couldn't quite finish it in time, which I replaced with another story I was suddenly inspired to complete. When I get my word reservoirs back up to regular levels, I'll have that eighth story finished in short order.

I'm finding I tend to work best under pressure like this. When I don't have an ongoing challenge to make myself write, I get lazy. Worse, I don't finish anything. The pressure makes me power through the parts where my natural inclination is to go, "oh, gee, I'm just not feeling this right now, maybe I will later" and watch some television.

Which reminds me of something. The need for challenge has landed me a new job at my place of employment. New product, new training, new team... I'm really looking forward to it, because I've felt like I'm stagnating in my current position.

***

Now it's time for a meta moment. I like blogging, and I like reading my friends' blogs, but this has been an extraordinary year for me, and I just haven't had as much time for it. I know I've missed a lot of news I'd really rather have gotten. I'm just going to have to suck it up and admit I'm in a low-blogging and low-reading phase right now.

The reasons are many, and entirely good, I assure you. There's Beatrix, of course (can you believe she's going to be a year old in less than a month? Egads... Go look here for pictures). There's also been a serious up-tic in both my fiction writing and my pleasure reading. I've been writing for so long, I'd almost forgotten how to immerse myself in other people's worlds and just enjoy myself there. And the projects just keep coming.

So I guess what I'm saying is, I'm having a blast. But I do miss blogging, and I do miss my friends and their words of wisdom/hilarity/whatever. I'll squeeze what time in I can for both. But I make no promises on quantity... The stories in my head never stop demanding the freedom to run wild on blank pieces of paper, cavorting with each other in most unseemly manner. And unlike, say, Jay Lake, I need to sleep sometimes.

OK, meta moment out of the way...

***

In other news, I figured out how to record reasonably high quality video on my webcam, so expect video blogging and shameless showing off of my beautiful daughter any day now.

My mother-in-law is a real-estate agent here in sunnysnowy Eugene, Oregon. Just recently, she started a blog about life in Eugene with an eye towards both realty and the fun stuff she likes to do around here, such as tango (here on LiveJournal she's tangojean). If you're thinking about moving to Eugene, or just want an insider's perspective on my home town, you could certainly do worse than checking out http://www.movingtoeugene.net. She's just getting started, so go on... Show her some love...

I've just been given an offer for "The Leaf Gatherer," a slightly gritty urban fantasy piece. Electric Velocipede is a wonderful magazine that I've been enjoying immensely, so it gives me great pleasure to be included in it.

Hmmm. Looking at my sales so far, I appear to be an urban fantasist who dabbles in science fiction and satire. I can live with that.

I don't think I've mentioned that I'm currently involved in a story-a-week challenge with a secretive cabal of writers*, in which we each write a complete (more or less) story and critique three complete (more or less) stories every week. With everything else I'm doing in a week (working, baby care, and other real-life stuff), I've decided I can only sleep between the hours of 3:00 AM and 5:00 AM, Mondays and Thursdays, with a ten minute nap every other Saturday.

Normally, I don't find writing a story a week difficult, but I haven't been able to find much time for it. The problem is an unusual one: I've got a glut of stories I want to edit for once, and I'm still inspired to work on the novel. Both have taken up my writing time, leaving me scrambling to finish stories near the end of the week. The mental exercise is good for me, I'm sure, but exhausting. I'm on a story that, by all rights, I should be able to finish in plenty of time, but as is it looks like I'm going to slip in just barely under the deadline.

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*You know who you are. And if you don't, I'm not going to tell you.**

**Klaatu barada nikto