30 Days of Return to the Journal Experiments

The literary journal experiments went on hiatus while I dealt with the influx of new faculty scholarly authors to Georgetown's Office of Scholarly and Literary Publications. But we have one fiction group, and I promised to write with the group for all of October -- 30 glorious days -- even though I'm also working on a scholarly article with the Articles-Only group. Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks is going so wonderfully that it makes sense to take on a new thing now that the old thing is well on its way.

This means structure, dates, deadlines, goals. For October 'tis thus: produce a piece for The Georgia Review to submit by October 23. Why that date? Because October 31 is the deadline for a call for submissions, and I want to send it one week early. That will mean devoting a special hour each day for 23 days to this one creative writing task.

RESOLVED

1. Although I'm typically more of a morning scholarly writer, I choose evenings for this writing, from 8-9 p.m. If that time is filled because of an evening event, I will spend a quiet hour before leaving for said event, or a quiet later-night hour after coming home.

2. Even though I don't know what to write, I will trust that coming to the page will yield something. Much of this theory comes from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way that several of the fiction group are reading and working through together.

3. No matter what happens, I will keep this commitment every day, and I will submit something, however poor and miserable, on the 23rd. This is writing as bricklaying, writing as plumbing, writing as a regular-person job. Artists take commissions all the time, and this is my commission.

4. To prepare myself for this I will read back issues of The Georgia Review and blog about them. This office is also a subscriber, but knowing a literary magazine well is a good way to submit to it successfully.

5. We're all in this together. I'm writing with them and they're writing with me. Teamwork.

The image above, of an albino peacock, is a hint of what the call for submissions is about.