Writing update

This is almost a non-update update, but I do have some news to share. Over Christmas, while visiting my parents for a week, I wrote two stories. I was specifically targeting two anthologies. As of today, I've learned both stories got accepted. I cannot say more, though, until I've signed contracts. I'll be quite happy to be in both publications though. In one situation, I've worked with the editor before; in the second, it was a blind submission. I've been asked to cut the second story nearly in half, to 5,000 words from 10,000 words. I'll gladly do it, as I'd much rather write a great 5,000 word story than a middling 10,000 word one. That Christmas week was one of the most intense writing experiences I've ever had. My house was burglarized the week prior to it, and I'd spent the last several days in shock and dealing with oppressive feelings of violation. A door was kicked in and destroyed, so there was also the emergency rush of having to repair and re-secure the house before leaving it abandoned for so many days. I didn't write one word over those hectic days, so by the time I reached my parents' house in Kentucky I just had this tremendous build-up of writing energy, and a very real desire to just flee into my imagination and leave the turmoil behind. The net result is that I wrote 17,000 words in 4 days, which has to be near the top of my word output over any similar stretch of time. There was an intensity to the writing I had not felt in a long time, and I was reminded of myself around the age of 13 or 14, when I first felt the desire to tell stories and create characters. While not entirely friendless, I would classify myself as a lonely kid, often cheery on the outside but deeply depressed within. That depression and the urge to escape it was part of the same gasoline that fueled my 4-day word binge over Christmas. Often times there is a sense of great satisfaction upon completing a story or a novel, but that's not the same as what I experienced over Christmas, and it's not the same as what I used to feel as a teenager after writing longhand for hours on end. Satisfaction is not the same as joy. 

In that rush of writing in late December, I found joy again. I'll try to hold onto it in 2014.