I got another shiny new idea. It now has a home in my notebook, two to-do lists away from the last one. This is fun, but I’m starting to wonder if my brain is generating new stuff to keep me from making progress on the not-so-new. On the other hand, I’m glad I’ve been capturing these thoughts as they fly by. Organizing my mental fluff, giving it a purpose, and setting it down in words can only be good for me.

My writing student is ready to submit one of his short stories for print publication for the first time. He’s investigating that process, giving his story one final edit, and asking questions about simultaneous submissions. It’s exciting! He’s written about half a dozen stories since I started working with him, and this one shows all of his strengths. He’s come so far!

I made sure to warn him that the rejection rate is high for new writers when we first discussed submitting his work to magazines. But I can’t help myself from getting drawn into the excitement. I know I shouldn’t be so hopeful, but I am!

Good luck, kid!

For the record, it was actually my bridal shower, with many wonderful things besides recipes, but since this is a blog about writing, and because my next project is to write about food, Recipe Weekend is what I’ll call it.

On the awesome side, many of these recipes came with stories and/or traditions. It was just perfect.

I’m seeing an increased interest in cake all around… convergence is cool. I will make cake; I will write about cake.

If it were me, the cake would not be a lie.

My fiance and I had a friend over for dinner tonight. We talked briefly about my next blog project: friends and food. He (the friend) has been a part of that happy situation for a while, and was fine with the idea of me putting some of those memories onto the blog. That’s good, because (per 279 Days) I’ve been making notes and jotting down recipes to use as backup content for the days or weeks when I can’t come up with anything fresh. When that happens here, you get a very short post, or I delay or skip a post. Not cool, and it won’t work any better in the future, especially if I want my new blog to be more professional.

Tiny little bits of incremental progress is all I’m making. It’ll have to do.

…as wild as mine get, anyway. There were two parties, one of which was for a bachelorette (not me, yet). My over-organized little chart is distressingly blank in two columns now. Ah well. Congrats to Sara, and Chris can expect some cookies this week in thanks for his excellent party hosting.

Just read a great post by my favorite blogger, Chris Guillebeau. Check it out while I’m patching up my ideas on what constitutes a challenge.

Everything is going well except this.

So now I’m testing this “I’m still a writer, really!” attitude through a missed blog post, with no progress on either project.

Not one of my better weeks.

So far.

…and by “start tomorrow” I meant Monday next week. No, not really; I got distracted. I will try not to be discouraged, and try not to think that two days of non-writing busy-ness means I will never, ever be a writer. I bet I can find two hours over the weekend to make up the lost time.

On Monday, we’ll both know.