Well, hello there; fancy seeing you at a blog like this. Which is to say, welcome to my new and improved, three-in-one blog! This new blog will combine and replace my two previous blogs (The MFA/MFYou Newletter and The Process IS the Product), while also being a general writer’s blog as I enter into a new stage of my writerly life: book publication!

First of all, the website: I’ve been working for the past few weeks on building my very own writer’s website, which I expect to have up and running in another week or two. I’m pretty excited about the way it’s coming together.

I’m making the website interactive by creating a virtual book club discussion forum. This is not really anything new (I noticed, for example, that Stephen King has one on his website), but I’m hoping that having an online place where readers can discuss the stories in my book will encourage people to visit the website regularly and—dare I say it?—motivate teachers to adopt the book in their classes (although, to be honest, I’m torn on whether I think that would be a good thing, since, as a teacher myself, I’m well aware that most students tend to hate anything they’re required to read for school).

Now, on the writing front: Ever since I signed the book contract, I’ve been busy (and sometimes mildly stressed) with getting the book ready for publication. I haven’t, in other words, been doing much writing. Revising, some, but mostly proofreading, along with other, essentially non-writing tasks, such as seeking out blurbs, writing a description of the book for promotional use, putting together my website, etc.

Once I sent in the final draft of my manuscript, though, and completed the other tasks I had been assigned to do, I did start working on some new stories. For the month of September, I made the tentative goal of getting back on track by spending an average of an hour a day writing. I didn’t quite make it, but I only fell short by a few hours, and I did finish out the month with a handful of working drafts of new stories that I can revise and, hopefully, begin submitting soon.

My goals for the next month are fairly straightforward: I’d like to make another go at getting back in the habit of writing for an average of at least an hour a day (I average, by the way, the time over the course of the entire month, so if I miss one day, I can make it up on another). I think I can do it. I think I can; I think I can. I also am using some contest and submission deadlines as motivators to get some things ready to submit. I’m going to submit to places with deadlines falling on or around the end of the month, for the next three months (to finish out the year).

For October, I’ll use the Narrative 30 Below Contest as a deadline (since this is, after all, the last year I’ll be eligible . . . wow, am I really almost 30?). At the end of November, I’d like to have a solid second draft of my new novel together, or at least a really solid beginning, to submit to the McSweeney’s Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award (another contest that I’ll only be eligible to enter for a short while—until I’m 32). And by the end of December, I want to have a submission to send out to Fast Forward, a journal that only accepts submissions until the end of the year, and one that I really, really like and would love to appear in again (I had a story in their Summer 2010 issue).

I have to admit, there’s something kind of frightening about openly admitting that I’m submitting to these contests/places. I usually keep these sorts of specifics to myself, so as not to feel any embarrassment when I don’t win/get accepted. But screw it! This is a new blog, for a new era in my writing life. Why should I be ashamed of not winning contests, when it happens to the best of us, when winning really requires as much luck as it does talent? Why should I only talk about my successes, when my failures have played as much or even more of a role in my writing life?

Nope, from this point forward, I’m going to hold my head up high and admit it: I get rejected. A lot. Way more than I ever get accepted. The only writing contest I’ve ever won (and mind you, I’ve submitted to plenty) is the one that is resulting in my book publication. The only reason I have the number of publication credits that I do is because I submit so much—if you could see the actual ratio, you’d see that for every one acceptance, I get something like 50 rejections. And you know what? There’s no shame in that. No shame at all.