It has been a whole week now since my last update! In that time I've been focusing on writing a new story, titled Remember the Zeppelin, and reading up on copywriting. The copywriting books I ordered from Amazon arrived late last week, as did the first batch of course materials from AWAI. I'm impressed with the latter - they comes with a neat binder, along with a "Hall of Fame" book packed with great sales letters and commentary, and a booklet about changing careers. I've had a skim through it all and I'll be making a start some time this week. I've also been reading a very informative book about starting a copywriting business which should prove useful if I go down that path.

The two expansion packs I ordered for The Sims (Superstar and Makin' Magic) arrived late last week and we played them over most of the weekend! We're mainly focusing on the new Superstar features, but no doubt we'll delve more into Makin' Magic as time goes on. With the added expansion packs, The Sims is now even more addictive! We also tried out the Sims 2 preview that came with Makin' Magic and that looks absolutely stunning. I was reading that it has been delayed, so it won't be coming out next month after all.

Late last night I finished the first draft of my Zeppelin story, and in the early hours of this morning I finished the second draft. This is the draft that I send out to my first readers for comment. I like to write first drafts as fast as possible with minimal editing, then go back for an editing pass soon after to tighten the prose and fix any continuity, plot or other errors. Then I usually let the story sit for days, weeks, or months and go through one or more 'polishing' drafts, depending upon the needs of the story. In this case, the final polished draft needs to be done before the end of the week so I can submit it before the deadline!

Today I finished reading issue #27 of Talebones (Winter 2003). This was a solid issue, with a decent variety of stories. My favourite stories this issue were Nina Kiriki Hoffman's Time Bombs (set entirely in a men's bathroom), Martha J. Allard's Dust (what happens to Tinkerbell after the end of Peter Pan), and Ilsa J. Bick's Beyond Antares (an extremely old man looks toward Antares).

And now for this week's stats:

2004 Word count:	7,235
Stories written:	1
Total submissions:	1
Total acceptances:	0
Total rejections:	1
Waiting for response:	2
Books read:	1
Fiction Mags/Chapbooks read:	5

I had to sacrifice most of my reading time while I worked on the story, but I'm hoping I'll be able to slip in some reading between editing passes.

Some time within the next week I'm planning on brainstorming story ideas for my next story (aiming for completion by March 1st). I'm a little behind on that New Year's resolution I made for at least one new story per month, you see :)