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End of Summer

August has never been my favorite month. While I don't expect many tears to be shed for me as a poor teacher trudging back to school after two months of vacation, resuming my professional duties does represent an adjustment. Suddenly I don't have the time I had to exhaustively research and write my stories, I've got squeeze in an hour or two in the evening. I have resumed my double existence as a literary fugitive. While I wasn't able to finish all of my projects, two months of basically uninterrupted writing bore a lot of fruit. To shift my writing into a lower gear (even by a step or two) hurts.

I was able to get drafts done for five stories and get two to a state fit for submission. One thing I tried this time around was not bogging myself down on one story. I wrote a draft for one story and then put it aside in favor of another. Eventually I got back to the previous versions and slowly worked up each, improving it each time. 

I tend to obsess over my stories, a fault that leads to a sometimes labored style. By the end of this summer I felt as though I was getting to a place where the words were simply appearing on the page, rather than surrendering after being dragged kicking and screaming into place.

In other respects, this was a memorable summer. I saw my brother who was visiting from Australia. I went to Readercon 2013. I braved the crowds at the rescheduled Comicon and basked in the unbelievable weather and scenery of New Mexico. 

Hopefully as 2013 rolls on I'll have a few more things to report but for the moment I'm just going to express gratitude for the time I did have. It wasn't wasted.
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