Deadlines

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.