It's getting harder to find time to write journal entries (or anything, for that matter), so updates will likely be sparse for awhile. In what little spare time I have, I'd like to try and fit in some story editing, but even that can be a struggle at times!

We had an alternately busy and relaxing weekend, doing some shopping, visiting the Outback Steakhouse for dinner (I've only been there a few times, including once in Tokyo, and it always amuses me for some strange reason...), watching movies, and playing video games. We also spent many hours fixing some paintwork on Carrie's car, and we've still got to do more sanding, another coat of paint, and then finally the top-coat. Since we've got a trip to Michigan planned this coming weekend, we'll probably continue this fun (!) stuff when we get back.

The movies we watched were Bubba Ho-tep (excellent movie, and makes me want to check out Joe Lansdale's books and stories!), and The Bourne Identity (entertaining, and much better than I thought it'd be). We've also got to watch Mystic River over the next few days before it's due back at the video store.

After a long drought, I bought some new XBox games on Saturday: Top Spin (tennis game), Silent Hill 2 (creepy survival horror/mystery!), and Burnout 2 : Point of Impact (racing cars and lots and lots of crashes!). We had a lot of fun playing these, especially the car game. The staged crash scenarios are unbelievably fun :) (probably more than they should be!)

This past week I've done jack as far as writing goes. I wrote a critique, edited about two-thirds of an old story (trying to cut it down from 10k words to something saleable!), and resubmitted two flash fiction pieces.

I'm trying to figure out how I can be more productive with my writing, since this lack of writing will continue unless I can break the cycle. So far I've figured that I should do editing during the week, since it requires relatively little brainpower. Weekends are the best time for writing new stuff, but it's a real struggle to find time for anything longer than a flash piece. I have noticed I've been getting up earlier on weekends as a result of the early rises during the week, which means there's an opportunity to get some writing down early in the day :) I'll just have to see what I can do...

2004 Stats:

2004 Word count:	22,016
Stories written:	8
Total submissions:	21
Total acceptances:	0
Total rejections:	19
Waiting for response:	4
Books read:	9
Fiction Mags/Chapbooks read:	16