Caroline M. Yoachim

Productivity

After spending several days making extremely slow progress on revisions for one of my Clarion West stories, I changed gears today and worked on a story idea I had last night. It’s now early afternoon, and I’ve finished the story (it’s pretty short, about 2k, but it still feels good to have finished something). I even did a round of revisions, so the draft is pretty clean.

Also, recently:

Submission #66 – To Coyote Wild (my first sub there)

and

Rejection #59 – A 98-day, round 3 rejection from Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine

* * *

And now, back to …

Beautiful October Weather

The air is finally starting to feel crisp in the mornings and evenings, so I can almost believe that it’s fall. Mid-afternoon is pleasantly warm weather for hiking, so this afternoon Peter and I went to McKinney Falls park:

The water level was pretty low so the falls themselves were not especially impressive, but the park had a lot of scenic spots along the creek, which made for a pleasant afternoon walk.

Rejection #58

R58 – 44-days from Analog

I am down to only 5 submissions in circulation at the moment, but I’ve got several stories in my ‘need revising’ pile, so hopefully I can get my numbers back up soon.

Breakfast…or dessert?

I had a pair of slightly overripe bananas:

So I decided to make banana pancakes this morning:

Recipe: Smash 2 very ripe bananas, stir until mostly smooth. Add vanilla extract, cinnamon, a tablespoon or two of sugar, and one egg. Mix together. Add about a cup of Bisquick. Stir to combine. At this point, my batter seemed a bit thick, so I added maybe a quarter cup of milk.

Serve with butter, and if you are a sugar junkie, …

Got pesto?

Turkey-Pesto Meatballs

Little tubs of ready-made pesto were on sale at the grocery store, so I bought one.

Some ideas for what to do with pesto:
– roasted root vegetables (Brush chunks of potato, turnip, carrot, etc. with olive oil and roast in a 400 degree oven until tender on the inside and golden brown on the outside. Toss roasted veggies with a big dollop of pesto and a little bit of butter).
– pesto butter (Let butter come to room temperature, stir in some pesto, …

Miscellany

Over the last week or so:

Sub#65 – a flash story to Nature Magazine’s Futures series (my first sub there)

Rej#57 – 109-day rejection from All Possible Worlds. And, from the magazine’s website, they will not be publishing any more issues, so the market is closed.

Hummus

A couple of writer-friends came over today, so that we could all sit around and write, which was lots of fun, and also the perfect excuse for me to make hummus. It is simple, tasty, and encourages me to eat healthy veggies. The recipe I ended up with (after looking at a couple recipes on the internet and guesstimating how I might want to adjust things):

1 can of chick peas (aka garbanzo beans), drained
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped (mine were biggish cloves, so I used 2)
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Same blog, new username

When I was thinking about applying to Clarion, I read several blogs about the workshop, and I found it helpful in making my decision to apply. So, when I got notification that I’d been accepted to Clarion West, I started a blog so that future potential applicants could look at it, the way I had looked at other people’s blogs. I thought I’d only blog for the workshop, and then stop blogging, so I named the blog ‘cmy_clarion.’ As it happens, blogging is a rather addictive thing, and a good way to keep in touch with people who are scattered …

Asparagus

I decided to roast some asparagus to have with dinner today. Topped it with gruyere cheese and ate it over a risotto cake with a fried egg. Yum!

Still hot outside…

I decided to wander over to Zilker park to do a bit of photography this afternoon. Somehow, I thought since it was October (and somewhat overcast) the weather would be okay. Wrong. The temperatures are starting to cool down, and the evenings are very pleasant, but in the middle of the afternoon I’m better off staying indoors.

But I did get some pretty pictures of butterflies and flowers while I was out, so despite the heat it was a good trip.