May Stat Check

During the month of May, I wrote (or did research) on 27 of the days (woohoo!)
I worked on research for a new story (that might become a novel,) came up with some ideas for a rewrite after receiving a ton of critiques from Critters, and worked on a new story.
I made no submissions (because everything was out already)
I received no rejections.  Instead...
I SOLD ONE STORY!!!  (Hooray for an acceptance instead of a rejection!  WOOHOO)
I have 6 stories currently in slush pile circulation
I made 12 blog posts
Between writing, this blog, and Critters, I took 4 days off.

Analysis
This month will always hold happy memories for me as the month when I made my first fiction sale.  I am still quite jazzed from that.  I will keep everyone updated, and will shamelessly promote myself (hey, it's my blog) when the anthology is ready for purchase.

Something I learned this month is that I don't feel very productive when I'm doing research.  I've been researching orbital space colonies (yes, I know there aren't any yet, but that doesn't mean there isn't information on them!) for a story (or possibly a novel) that I want to write.  At the beginning of the month, my creative time each day was mostly spent on the research, and I felt a bit unsatisfied because I wasn't actually producing anything.  However, while we were away on our writing retreat, I decided to pause the research and start writing a different story (my hope had been to finish a short story while up in the mountains.)  I didn't finish the new story during that week, but I'm making steady progress on it even now.  However, I have stopped doing research entirely--which means that I don't have enough time to do both.  I know intellectually that research is important to the creative process, but I guess that I'm going to have to learn to silence the voice that says "But I'm not writing," at least in order to do the major research required for a longer work.

I'm keeping up with Critters pretty well, although I took a week off when we were on vacation (you need to keep your ratio between number of critiques to number of participation weeks at 75% or greater to have your own stories go through, so I'm still in good shape.)  The one thing that has NOT happened is any attempt to do ten in one week.  It really would require a huge time committment to do that, so I'm not sure it'll happen anytime soon.

When it comes to networking, I get a huge fail.  I did a tiny bit at the beginning of the month, but just haven't been very good at browsing the blogosphere and leaving comments.  Maybe this month will be better.

For June, I'd like to have another good month like May (it'd be really nice to have another acceptance again!) with more networking thrown in.  Have a good June, everybody!