Organising and Collating and Tigers - oh my!

I have so much on my plate right now. I have 3 commissions - all in the creative phase, one short story on final edits, three independant ideas, two short stories I am hoping to finish in this month, up to four next month, as well as two scrolls for my re-enactment group. Time for some slowing down and organising what needs to be done by when...

Now an hour later and I have a list of competitions and magazine 'call' deadlines that I would like to complete. There are twelve in all. Eek! They vary from one thousand to five thousand words in preferred length. As I mentioned yesterday, I have three story ideas already on the boil. Two are independent of the above list. The real challenge is to come up with something fresh and new for each individual story. Though I really love the open themes, I like the challenge in creating a story to a set theme. This could actually prove useful with the number of stories I wish to attempt over the past few months. 

Though not as gut-wrenching as the book culling process or the story editing process, I have had to make some decisions today. Gone (for now) is a story I have been looking forward to. It will not fit any of the soon -to-be-due themes and I will definately need longer than the allotted word limit for the others. However, the idea will continue to bubble in the background so all is not at a loss for it. One competition I would like to enter, may not happen. It is one of the longer ones (at up to five thousand words) but is due at the end of the month. I have an idea for it but if I cannot get it finished, edited and polished in time, I will not enter it. As this is an annual competition,  I can always work on it for next year. 

After a hiatus, I can also finally get cracking at two original design scrolls. I have mentioned these in a previous blog, in April, but had to wait until some details were finalised. Now that they have been, I can continue. However, I will need to find a light table that I can borrow, or use the 'old tape on the window on a sunny day' trick. Look for future posts on guache, calligraphy and ink work in the near future. I have three weeks to complete this project. The design work is done so it is just a matter of applying it. 

The tigers?

They could appear in one of the short stories I have planned... but that would be telling...