I submit

Today's positives are small in number but pretty large in scope.

Smaller of the two: I finally got most of the kitchen cleaned, and all the dishes done. There is something undeniably soothing about cleaning stuff. It's simple, it's easy, you don't really have to engage your brain at all, you can clearly see the progress you've made, and when it's done it's done.

Practically the exact opposite of writing, then.

But today's bigger, better, happier thing is that I got Tick Tock edited and sent off. I fired the finished first draft at two of my NaNo chatroom group last night (Claire is one of these two, naturally), and they both did a superb quick turnaround and got back to me with a torrent of lovely happy praise and a bare handful of tweaks, which is always immensely gratifying and terrible for my ego.

I probably spent almost as long on the query/submission email as I did on fixing the story itself, and scraped in for the submission deadline... which isn't actually as hard-and-fast as I've been saying, to be honest. The submission call was actually for the next two volumes of Steampunk anthologies in the series, and March 15th was the cutoff date for stories to be considered for both, rather than just Volume Four. So even if my first draft hadn't been finished by yesterday, or had needed much more extensive edits, I could have submitted anyway. BUT, I made it my goal to submit in time for both, and with a lot of help from my wonderful, wonderful NaNo crowd and patient housemates, I have done so.

So, even if the story doesn't get accepted (I can only wait and see - I'm swinging wildly between confidence and cheerful pessimism) I did what I set out to do. I'd prefer to do it with a little more time in hand next time, but I can't quite seem to shake the habit of running things right up to the wire.

That being said, I did finish the actual story the day before the deadline, even knowing that I had a safety net of extra time waiting beyond it. And I was months ahead of schedule with Hanith. Perhaps I'm not doing as badly there as I think.

And now I can finally start on my Lavender and the Random Acolyte story.