Almost ready for TNEO!

I'm psyched for TNEO, the annual workshop for Odyssey grads, which begins this Friday evening. I'm flying out Friday morning and getting there way too early, but when the only airline offering a cheap flight has weird schedules, what do you do?This morning I finally finished the last of my critiques for the extended novel group. Critiquing 15,000 word chunks of novels is time-consuming, but I like the way it forced me to think of things I also should be considering in my own writing.I realize that I have trouble prioritizing as a writer. I haven't gotten much work on anything new in a while because I was rewriting the first 45,000 words of the novel and doing all these monster critiques. But I feel like I've got a couple of shorter pieces and one novella that are pretty close to submission-ready if I would just take the time to work on them some more. But then that takes me away from the novel, and I was so excited about getting back into it. Oh well, I'll have lots to process regarding the novel once I get my critiques, so it may be best to give it a little bit of space and work on polishing a couple of other things.I have one draft of a short story completed this summer, and a couple of other fragments I'm not sure will go anywhere. I've got to come up with something to read at the Slam at TNEO, but I'm hoping I can come up with a new idea or draw on something from my files of jotted story ideas. I don't naturally write things of flash length, but on the occasions where I have, it just comes to me and I write it down in one sitting and it's pretty much done, except for a few tweaks. I'm hoping I can summon one from whatever part of my mind these things come from.In other news, Shasta, the boldest of the feral cats, will now not only let me scratch his back and pet him when I give them their bowl of food in the morning; he will let me pick him up and put him in my lap and will stay there for a little bit while I pet him.I just got the news today that a litter of Burmese kittens were born, two of which are destined for our household and should be able to come home with us in October when they're twelve weeks old. I'm excited! We don't know the sexes yet and it sounds like the colors are champagne and platinum. Pictures of other Burmese cats from the breeder can be found here at their web page. Athena will get some little siblings upon whom to impart her accumulated wisdom. I hope she doesn't abuse them too much.