New Year Revelations.

1) Get Symphonians accepted.

Because it's in halfway decent shape, due to all those revisions I've made for FSG.

I do need to send queries to other agents and editors, just to be on the safe side. Because it could get rejected.

2) Get Leavetaking (the raccoon story) "finished."

"Finished" gets parentheses because no story is ever finished, for real. But I can work on revising Leavetaking until I run screaming into the street from it, the way I did with Symphonians. Then repeat.

I do want to get a good draft by May, since I believe I should have news from FSG regarding Symphonians by then. (That's how it worked out last year -- because I sent the story to them last December, too, and they replied in May, sending me back to work.)

3) Teach my kid how to speak Spanish.

By hook or by crook, since I don't speak Spanish myself. So I get to learn the language, too!

4) Fix up the short story collection and send it to Dutton.

I got a nice letter from Dutton a couple of years back saying that they'd decided against making an offer for it due to the collection seeming not all of a piece. I've been piecing it together more securely ever since. I sent a few of the stories to Eileen Robinson of FirstPages for a critique, which should be back by the middle of this month. After that, I need to pull those stories together, tighten up the collection overall, and give it to 'em.

It would be nice if I sent some of the stories to fiction magazines. Or maybe not, depending on what shape the stories are in. Short fiction is so much harder to sell, since there's so much of it out there, and so much good fiction, and so few venues that pay worth a darn. I don't want to send out lousy material, even if I could make a buck off it.

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That's probably plenty for me to handle right there. More than enough, really. But the reach has got to exceed the grasp.