Like a lot of people who take on a few too many obligations, I tend to organize my efforts around meeting deadlines (and/or responding to pressing requests from people above me in the organization). That said, for things that are a bit tangential (like creative writing), it is much easier to forget about the deadlines all together. I missed a whole bunch of deadlines for literary magazines (though I really haven't been preparing material for them either). I did manage to enter the Toronto Star short story competition twice, but that's about it.
I already mentioned how gutted I was to just miss the Fringe lottery deadline (by 2 days I think). But I did manage to get my 10 minute play submitted to the inspiraTO festival a few days early. My 3Fest piece is going up this Sunday, and the organizer wanted some rewrites. I got them in yesterday, just in case they still want a few more touch ups, but that's done. And I just sent in a piece for the Dec. 4 Sing-for-your-Supper. That's almost a week early, though I might send in one more piece if I can finish it up in time. Meeting all these deadlines at least partly makes up for missing the others, though the Fringe still stings.
Tonight I need to take a bit of a break, but then I want to work on a short and a long abstract for TRB Innovations. The deadline is Nov. 30, so I have a bit more time, but not so much that I can put them on the back burner. If I don't get through them over the weekend, then it probably won't happen. It is unfortunate that I have really been pushing to get transportation data from various agencies, and it has been like pulling teeth (and I still don't have it all in hand), but I should be able to write up the abstracts as if I knew what the findings were. I guess this is a fairly standard trick, but I'm pretty good at it. Anyway, this is probably the last major external deadline I have to deal with for the moment.
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