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I'm not a fan of the public commit, but...



Here’s something I’m appalled by. As you don’t know because I haven’t mentioned it, my New Year’s resolution is to get 50 rejections on worthy stories honorably sent out. So last night I pulled out a short story that I had a note on that said “tighten the language and send away.” I went through the printout especially looking for some of my tics, like “maybe” and “there were”, looked at the beginning a bit, thought about how to connect it better to the end. And then I went to the computer and pulled up the folder for this story. 

The most recent draft was dated March 2, 2012. 

I checked all my USB drives. I compared the files. Indeed, that was the last time I worked on this story, ten months ago to the day. 

I know I’ve been busy. I did NaNoWriMo. I did two drafts of the zombie novel. I finished the bucklepunk thing. But still! It’s an almost-finished story that I just left in a pile, meaning to get back to it in a day or two, for ten months! 

This New Year’s resolution, if kept, can’t help but be good for me.

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