Yesterday’s meme veered off onto the current fixation in my life which is how to harness myself, my creative energies and move forward as a person with tangible dreams and goals. It’s nothing to do with my personal life. I am quite content with husband and love and children, but a year out of teaching, I recognize that I need to work “at” something.

There is the bookstore idea. However I am not spending that kind of money on something that I haven’t given serious thought to or researched. I am not my mother who took her 2001 Malibu into the dealership for an oil change and left with a 2008 model. It’s not that I haven’t “jumped” when opportunity knocks – as Sondheim reminds us “opportunity is not a lengthy visitor”, but I can’t jeopardize my family’s financial outlook on a whim.

Writing is my true love as far as career goes. I spent time reading sci fi/fantasy magazines while recouping from my illness last week and, as I told Rob, this is the genre that most attracts me. Even though I am not a science geek, there is an element of the fantastic about some ideas that lures me. I also love to incorporate mythology and folklore elements into stories if for no other reason than it is fun. And I like to play with ideas that are hard to understand – like string theory – through fiction.

While tag surfing (again) at WordPress, I ran across a writer’s blog where he was discussing the need to plan and organize BEFORE beginning to write. Caging the muse so to speak as opposed to let her flit about and then wander away when the going becomes work and she is bored. Rob marvels at my ability to generate ideas and wonders from where some of them derive, but the ability to generate what seems to be an endless stream of ideas sometimes is not always a blessing. It can lead to chaos and a lot of unfinished stories. At least for me.

I currently have three short stories and one finished novella in need of a few changes and additions (from years ago) that I need to finish and submit by the time school starts in the fall. The shorts are all sci fi/fantasy/horror. I know where I want to submit. Apex and Analog. There are two other magazines in that same genre that I need to contact for guidelines and then comb my existing work for submissions.

The novella grew out of a seminar I attended one summer. It came from a story starter – Harris Burdick – which I am sure some of my teacher readers recognize. It’s a good story. Solid. Based more than a bit on my father’s family and the stories I grew up listening to but mixed with the Irish mythology I was reading at the time. I have never been satisfied with it despite the fact that it is not a bad story, but recently a way to fix things came to me and I think once I apply my ideas I will have a book ready to shop around. I have no clue where or how to do this and I need to do research. Worst comes to worst, I will self-publish and sell it myself.

One recommendation I have had through my reading is to map out my goals on a white board. To that end I priced a few options at the local Staples. I am torn between 90 or 120 day maps, but I like the idea of having everything I want to accomplish written in one place and visible.

I do really need to go back to Marsha’s post on organizing and employ some of her ideas too. They were wonderful.

One of the things I have come to realize recently is that my job is me. I am the thing that I have to sell and therefore I am what needs organizing and motivating and teaching.