Back in the swing...

So, yeah.  It's been about six months since my last post.  I wish I had a good reason for that, but I don't.

I hope everyone has been happy and healthy for the past half year.  For me, school has been hectic, as has life in general.  However, one thing I've been trying to do is stay positive and to keep writing.

To update you all on what happened since my last writing explosion here on the blog, I submitted my story "Chasing Lightning" at the beginning of 2012 to be published in an anthology.  It was rejected.  Yeah, that hurt, but I kept at it.  Since the return email said that there would be a second edition of the anthology, I should rewrite the story and submit it for that edition, with a submission deadline of September 1st.

I wrote and edited and rewrote and re-edited, constantly watching the publishers webpage to make sure the deadline didn't change and that the anthology was still open.  Three days before the deadline, I submitted a completely revised story under the same time.  I got an email back from the publisher, saying that edition 2 of the anthology was full and there was a line for edition 3.  And "Also I believe I already rejected this story once."  So, that tells me that the person doing the reading at that particular publisher didn't even read the story.  I have submitted the story to another publisher and I'm waiting to hear back from them.

In the meantime, I've been looking at various publishers that accept different styles and lengths of work.  Honestly, my skill set does not lend itself to writing novels, so I've been looking at publishers accepting short stories and even a few that accept flash fiction.  'Flash fiction' is extremely short stories.  Most publishers I've looked at that accept flash fiction set the limit between 750 and 1,000 words.  A couple have set the limit at about 300 words.  Honestly, I'm not sure how good of a story you can tell in 300 words, so I've generally been aiming for about 1,000.

The problem I'm running into it school.  I'm taking Microbiology and Physical Anthropology this semester and both are tougher than I was expecting, so my brain has been running on empty.  I think that next semester I'm going to take something more creative like an art class, since I've been taking science of some kind for the past seven or eight semesters, with a combination of Biology and Psychology being mainly what I took.

I figure this way, I will have to be more creative at school, which will allow me to be more creative at home.  I think taking a break from all of the "right-brain" activity will do me some good and kick my left-brain into high gear.  I've already got a story idea for another anthology that I'm looking at, but I don't have the time or the energy to write it right now.

Plus, there are numerous things I want to be doing for AdventureaWeek.com, like writing a full adventure, completing the Silent Forest section of our campaign world, working on The Vast Swamp, which was given to me by the completely awesome Cory Vickruck, as school became too much for him and he had to back away for a while.  There are also a couple of class archetypes that I want to work on, which were also Cory's ideas.

Creativity is where I'm coming from these days.  Abbye, my acupuncturist, says that now that Carrie has her PhD (finally), it's time for me to do something for myself.  I think once this semester is over (six more weeks), it's time to really cut loose with the creativity.  Almost makes me wish National Novel Writing Month was earlier in the year.

So, that's what's going on with me.  Hopefully I'll get back into this whole blogging thing with more regularity and hopefully you will come back and keep on reading.

Until next time, take care and be awesome to each other.

Will.