Deadlines? WTF?

Nobody pays me to write, at least not yet. I have no agent, no publisher, no master, so to speak, when it comes to my writing (other than me, anyway). So how the heck did I stumble across all these looming deadlines?

The Burrow

My writing family has a website where we do features of Drabbles—we do it monthly, but about half the time we do it as an actual 'production'. These productions include images and drabbles (a drabbles is a story told in exactly 100 words). For February we have a love theme (of course) and TODAY is the day our images are due.

I am not nearly so responsible as to claim I am part of the production team—I haven't had tons of time to be the project manager and I don't have the skill set for coding or image manipulation, so (and I am SO thankful) Jason and Natasha end up with the big jobs each time, and Chary managed the Advent Calendar (Natasha is managing the February feature). But I DO commit to participating every time—I will write 5 Drabbles for February, so needed 4 images (plus the group one we all do)...

I am bad though... I knew this was coming, and I'd even looked a little, but I want to do one on the 23rd about my dad (that would have been his 65th birthday, but he died at 31)... so THIS MORNING I finally took the pictures I'd found up to my office to scan so I could submit my images... flying by the seat of my pantslessness, as I seem to do with everything these days.

I still have my drabbles to write, but heck, I've got a couple days for that!

ONDWAY

I have committed to this insanity, for better or worse, but have gone into a strange mode on my WiP (trying to pull together the three novels so they are consistent, which requires reading and notetaking) that leaves me little frivolous writing time... So here I am, on the day I need to post an update, with no update written... oh, it will be done, but again... winging it here...


Blogging

Not sure when I decided daily was necessary, but I did... so there you have it, blogging about no time to blog.

And the BIG MUTHER

I've decided to Amazon... still no word from those dangling queries, but I figure it's all good. That means I need to get my 300 word pitch JUST RIGHT, and do a proof of my Chapter 1 (which conveniently has 4000 words, more or less, so is perfect for the 3000-5000 word window for our 'opening' we are supposed to fit. And I need to format a version of the book a little differently (they don't want your name in the header, is really the biggie...


So somehow, in spite of my current amateur status, I find myself swamped... Ah well... just keep swimming, just keep swimming...