There just isn't enough time

Current Project: WoTF short story 2900 words in.

I haven't posted in a while, and I probably won't for a couple more weeks. I'm in the process of working down to a deadline of September 30th, so I need to spend my time writing things that aren't his blog.

I am making progress on my WotF story. It's been taking a long time because I've restarted it 3 times. I just couldn't find the right feeling for it. I think I have it now. It seems the right course was to start it later into the story than where I originally wanted to start. What was bothering me, I now know in hindsight, was that I was putting off the start of action for some 2000 words into the story. I'm sure you can guess why that's a problem.

I've now reached the end of Act 1. So I've got to finish the rest of the story now. That's actually not very hard to do once you have the right start. I've found stories tend to write themselves once you give them enough momentum.

I should say, though, that I probably won't get around to another post until October.

Anyone else wondering what happened to August?

Current Project: A short story for Writers of the Future -- due to the anonymity of the contest I won't publish the title or plot elements of this story at this time. Currently approx 1000 words.

So it's more than halfway through August, and I've barely gotten a day's worth of writing done in that time. My official excuse is the birth of my daughter, but even that's not a great excuse for missing deadlines. (I give myself a weekly deadline based on when my writing group meets) Keeping deadlines is one of the most important habits for a young writer to cultivate. Writing is a business, and a writer who chronically misses deadlines isn't likely to be an agent or editor's favorite person to work with. And yes, that matters.

Anyway, I'm taking forever to write this story because it's for WoTF and I'm being more critical than normal. I've just started over on it because I realized my narrative voice was wrong. I came to that conclusion after I talked with my wife about characters, and she could relate to all BUT the POV character. Bad sign. I was pulling back from really getting in the character's head because I plan on treating him worse than any character I've previously written, and it's hard to do horrible things to people you like. (Yes, my characters become real people to me) But worse would be to do horrible things to someone and have no one care because they don't like him.