Hello, dreamers. After a week of hell, I’ve largely recovered from whatever virus I contracted early last week. It feels good to be back.

Unfortunately, I also have a busy week ahead of me. While I did keep working through my “disruption pass” through The Ursa Frontier, I did little else writing-wise. It’s hard not to look at last week as a lost week. And it’s all the more frustrating as it rained most of last week. Rainy days are great for writing. Especially during the warmer months, when sunny days have me itching to go out and run.

However, this week I’m back at it. I have a lot on my plate, a lot of time to make up. But I’m ready. That said, here’s what I’ll be working on this week:

Querying The Ursa Frontier

As of today, it’s been seven weeks since I sent out my first round of queries, and I have received exactly one response. At present I’m planning to wait until at least ten weeks have passed before trying to nudge any agents who haven’t responded. These are very busy people, and I hate to be a pest.

Regardless, as I’ve said, I had very low expectations for this first round, for many reasons. First and foremost, the fact is few first-time authors get a full request, much less an offer of representation, from their first round of queries. Thus, the work continues.

This week I’ll be finishing my “disruption pass” through The Ursa Frontier. After that, I’ll be doing something I didn’t think I’d be doing again: writing new chapters. At present, I believe I have enough real estate for at least three additional chapters. I already have clear ideas for at least two, and have flagged several other areas where it would be beneficial to expand the story further. I’m both nervous and excited. It will be the first long tracts of new material I’ve written for this book in years.

However, at this point time is becoming a factor. At the moment, my goal with this project is to send out my next round of queries before the end of the month. That means finishing the additional chapters, followed by a full editing pass (crucial given the amount of new material) in which among other things I’ll be checking for continuity. Then I’ll need to complete rewrite my synopsis and query letter. And we’re now entering the first full week of May.

So I have my work cut out for me. But I feel great about what I’m doing. And I fully believe I’ll have an even better product to query in the next round.

Short Fiction

As I work my way back into writing this week, I’m planning to adopt a system I’ve been considering for a while now. In order to work my writing around my job and home life, I’m planning to write each day in four sessions.

The morning session will become part of my customary morning routine, in which I like to get my mind going with brain puzzles from New York Times. Thus, I’ll be resuming my daily sketches, which will hopefully help to expand my work and shake some things loose. My afternoon session will primarily involve research and editing. My evening session, after dinner, will be the point at which I write new material on my primary project, while my late night session (optional) will primarily involve researching writing itself; I have a lengthy backlog of things to research, from publishing to market trends.

My hope is that, among other things, this will lead to me producing new short fiction material, even during periods of the year when I’m neck-deep in a novel project. Years ago when I first started writing, I intentionally avoided letting myself be consumed by a single project. I kept writing sketches even while working on a novel. I forced myself to take at least one day away from my novel project and work on other things. I’ve started to wonder if, by abandoning that, I’ve lost something. If I’ve been unintentionally pigeonholing my writing, and that’s partly why it took until late last year to take my latest, great leap forward.

So I’m going to go back to basics. And hopefully this will yield some new material that may, eventually, grace this site.

New Content

This week, I’ll be adopting my new weekly posting regimen. My new schedule is intended to increase readership, by providing most of my new material on the weekends when readers have more time to sit down and consume media.

While my “Writer’s Desk” and “Pioneer Sessions” posts will continue to drop on Monday and Wednesday respectively, my “Thursday Features” will become “Saturday Features”, and all future “Dear Sir or Madam” posts will fall on Sundays.

As for new fiction content, given the recent revelations about literature being stolen for AI purposes, I’m still deciding whether or not I feel comfortable posting new short fiction here on this site. If you’re a longtime reader, or even a casual reader who’s come across this post, let me know if you’d like to see more free short fiction content. My contact info is right here on the site, and my proverbial door is always open. Until then, as always, dare to dream. – MK