Starting the New Year Running

I've tried to gear up before the New Year begins. For the past week I've managed a minimum of 500 words (edited) per day. The result was a 1,800 short story which went into the mail this afternoon. That's the first short story I've sent out in over two years. I've written quite a few over those two years, just never bothered to polish them enough to send out. In fact, targeting magazines is something I've never really pushed myelf on, so another goal I'm setting for the new year is to finish, polish and post a story each week. That's going to be tough; it means writing for markets, rather than finding markets for my favoured writing. It's also on top of work commitments, family commitments and writing novel #2 (15,000 words into that BTW). But what the hell, it'll be fun.

I'm making Saturday my deadline for getting something in the post. I actually posted two stories this week, but I'm counting it as one, as only one is new fiction.

It'll be interesting to see if a) I can keep to the plan and b) if this tactic of machine-gun submissions actually works. I'll post any successes as they happen.

One final point to add here. The story I've just sent out - I had no preconceptions of that before I set out writing. I had no idea where it was going. It was totally a case of sitting down, typing and seeing what came out.