Better than zero, but sometimes it feels like our Year of Submission progress is much too slow. (And yes, Jenny could be writing while her plane is parked on the runway, but she’s goofing around on Snapchat instead.)

Caroline and I sat down with our lattes in the back room at Drip in Five Points last week, ready to push each other along. What have we done lately? Maybe more important, what haven’t we done?

Where are we, anyway? Week 18?

I can say I’ve sent more work out than I would have without our year of submission. I still haven’t done as much as I feel I should’ve. I think Caroline feels the same. We’re making progress. How do we make more of it faster?

These things have helped me:

• Writing a weekly list of three to four specific things to be done
• Having someone to discuss projects with who can suggest ways to unstick them
• This little blog that somehow makes us accountable
• Deciding that submitting trumps (whoops, can we still use that word) getting things perfect. Send the danged stuff out! Reckless abandon! Think yooge!
• And, of course, Caroline. I highly recommend her as a partner in crime. She’s darned near perfect.

Caroline is making progress by working on her novel with an editor. I’ll let her post an update on that experience.

And I’ll wrap this up with a couple of links:

First, a blog post by someone I follow on Twitter: I feel like a fraud most of the time. Scroll down to the story of writers being encouraged by editors to submit and not following through. I’ve done exactly that! I was fortunate enough to be selected for the Rutgers One-on-One conference, was encouraged to submit my manuscript and….thanks to my pursuit of perfection, it still hasn’t been sent anywhere. Wondering how many other people have done the same.

Second, a link to Jenny magazine. They were the recipient of my first Year of Submission submission, they published one of my poems, and I so appreciate it.