Day 34: Progress Update

I think I'm just going to go ahead and have Thursday posts reserved for progress updates because that's what I've been doing so far. These updates might not be as entertaining but they really help me stay on track, and I don't think I should stop doing them. Maybe I could make two posts on Thursday, one for the update, and one that's a little deeper than 'here's what I've done for the past week.'

Speaking of, I wasn't feeling too hot this past week. My word count for Oneiromancer has been way down since Sunday, partly because I was focusing on other housekeeping stuff, and partly because I ran out of steam. The book was coming along, but after working on it everyday for weeks I just needed to write something else. So I started a different story, something to work on when I just can't bear to open up Oneiromancer. The idea has been brewing for a long time, ever since I read Andy Weir's second novel after The Martian called Artemis. I love the survivalist, scientific, and frontiersman themes in his novels and wanted to capture that in a story of my own. Here's an early synopsis that I'll probably alter a thousand times before the story is finished:

After being abducted by mysterious forces and kept in a tiny cage for weeks on end, internet archivist Mark finally wakes up outside of the metal box he's been imprisoned within. He soon realizes he hasn't been freed, but instead moved to a bigger cage, and worse, now he has a creeping suspicion that someone is watching him. The mysterious kidnappers have him in a giant enclosure, like a zoo animal to be studied. He resolves not only to escape, but take his revenge while he's at it. They should have thought twice about giving him room to maneuver.

Naturally I had to pick a ridiculous topic to avoid being a complete clone, but the more I think about it the less ridiculous it becomes. I think trapped in a human zoo has some potential and I'm excited to flesh it out as time goes on. This will be more of a secondary project until I finish Oneiromancer but it's nice to have something to fall back on when I can't focus.

Other than that I'm still on the lookout for somewhere to submit Demonetization, but all the dark fantasy magazines I'm interested in seem to be closed to submissions for a while. I'd like to get some industry feedback as soon as possible, so I may have to unpublish the story I published on this site, Adrift, so that I can submit it for publication instead. Of all the problems I expected to run into, this is probably in the more annoying category. Getting rejected is one thing, but when I can't find anywhere to submit in the first place? Beyond frustrating. Anyway, I hope the rest of your week goes well, and as always, thank you for reading.

Benjamin Hawley