This week's progress update comes to you a day late not because I don't have my shit together, but because yesterday was Labor Day and I've sort of gotten into the habit of doing these updates from my computer at work.
Reading
In One Salt Sea, the sixth October Daye book, which I just finished re-reading, the Liudhaeg responds to a question about whether she took a class on making no damn sense by saying that it was "More of a graduate course." and that she finished it at the top of her class. This created for me the mental image of the whole Pantheon of Wizards Who Don't Explain Things: Gandalf, Dumbledore, Moiraine, Harry Dresden, Sarkan and the Liudhaeg, to name only those I can readily recall from things I've read relatively recently, actually taking a class together on not explaining what you want, or why, or what's going on. Previously, I'd assumed this was just something they had panels about in the Wizard track at the fantasy character's conference. I have no desire to write the fanfiction that obviously needs to exist about this, and I can't draw, but if anyone else wants to do it I'd be interested to see the results.
In other news I left my copy of The Gathering Storm at someone's house on Sunday, so I while I got a solid chunk of it read in the past week, I won't be making any new progress on it until it's returned to me. I'm not reading the second Greywalker book instead, and enjoying trying to figure out which cafes, bars, and bookstores are real places I just never visited, and which ones are places I have been with the serial numbers filed off.
Very little in the way of progress reading through On Writing. I keep getting irritated by things where I agree with the intent but not with some of the actual assertions he makes.
Writing
Apparently I spent 2 hours and 27 minutes writing last week, but to be perfectly honest I couldn't tell you what any of it was on, except for some work on Let Me Expand on That Part 2, which should go up sometime this week.
That brings the total since the start of this blog, and the 20,000 Hours Project, to 11 hours and 13 minutes. I was also startled to discover that it isn't possible to do 10,000 hours of anything in a year, because there aren't 10,000 hours in a year. Clearly we're going to be here a while.
I have done a little brainstorming for the short story collection, although so far what I have are premises at various levels of fleshing out, and not much in the way of actual plots. But if I just had to write something to put on the back cover, I'd be all set!
Publishing
The unprecedented quantity of submissions we received during the most recent submission period are currently having to take a backseat to me scrambling to complete edits, and an editor's note, in time for Issue 4 to go up on the 21st. So mostly my publishing thoughts this week amount to "Thank the Gods September didn't start a day earlier".
I also got some boring, business side details taken care of, but I oughtn't go into particulars there. Suffice it to say that running a magazine requires a great number of skills and decisions that have very little to do with writing, and can wind you up trying to fit your armchair lawyer hat over your business manager hat, while using Business Words that make the whole conversation feel vaguely unreal, like it must have been written for someone else.
Work:
Paid Hours: 45 hours 51 minutes.
Unpaid Hours: 17 hours 50 minutes.
In case I've never specified, writing time is part of the unpaid hours.
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