One of the attractive perks of being a writer is that for the most part you get to set your own hours and create your own working environment.  When you are not under contract you also decide when your deadlines are.  The only deadlines I have are the ones that I have imposed upon myself and missing them usually only means a loss of productivity.

Currently I have a deadline to submit a fiction piece to an anthology.  They close the submission window at the end of the month and will accept nothing outside of that window. The piece I’m working on is a thirty page fantasy that I’ve submitted before without success.   When I reread the story for this anthology I realized that it had several fundamental weaknesses that had to be fixed.

The problem is, when I revise something and am not careful I will end up rewriting the whole thing.  This not only takes huge amounts of time but it also requires more editing passes to correct any new passages that I end up writing.  I had hoped to have the revisions done by today so that I could have a friend give it a test read, but I still have 18 pages to go.

This might have been easier had I not gone on a family camping trip this weekend. I had envisioned sitting back with my tablet as the kids played around the campsite whittling away at this story and having plenty of time to get it finished, but that wasn’t the case. Every time I sat down a family member would come join me that wanted to talk. In the spirit of niceness I obliged.

Now I’m starting to sweat a little.  I’d love to have this piece published and to have some real writing credentials under my belt, but I can’t submit something that’s not ready either.

With luck I’ll find a few large chunks of extra time today to finish it!

photo credit: Stuck in Customs via photopin cc