And today I mailed three more stories, early this morning, thus managing to post six submissions in roughly 24 hours. Should all six stories sell (unlikely), at the rate proposed by the respective publishers, it would mean six months of mortgage covered. It would be good.
It will not happen, but it would be good.

And I am writing on – not only my new novel (about which, more in a future post) but a story for another submission. I started it this morning, and hopefully I’ll have the first draft ready before midnight. The target word-count is 4000, of which I have already about 1600.
Then I will let it rest – the call opens officially in two weeks, and it’s good to let the new stories sediment for a while before revising and mailing them off.

Finding out yesterday that I have been slacking in my writing and submitting this year made me feel bad. Not only working for an abusive client has caused me health problems and a devastating amount of stress, but it has really come close to damaging my ability to earn a living.

This, more than anything else, has caused me a sort of frenzy.
Something that was supposed to help me has massively damaged me, and as a result, for a change, the future is bleak.
In such circumstances, all I can do is (like good old Ike Asimov said) write faster.