January Writing Round-Up

New year, new round-up format!

WHAT WORKED
I spent so much time reading this month! Ten books. TEN. That’s a full third of my goal this year! I’m going to feel so well-read by the time I get to my Boskone panels. This is totally all due to manuscript avoidance, but HEY. I. Read. Good. Books. That’s a win all on its own.

I’ve been enjoying the annual Weekend Warrior contest on Codex. One week of the 5-flashes-in-5-weeks contest. I think two of the ones I’ve written this year are good enough to go somewhere. The others will be great trunked seeds for something later on. Who knows what this (final) weekend will bring!

I wrote a story mid-week and it flew from my fingers fully formed. It was great and I can’t wait to get comments back so I can shine it up pretty and submit it to the market I wrote it for.
WHERE I STRUGGLED
Life. Is life ever not a struggle? I’ve been dealing with existential dread on every level: politics, novel querying, novel drafting, short story submissions, and on and on and on. I’ve got a couple of coping mechanisms that work just enough, but I need to not play manuscript avoidance forever. Time to get the butt in the chair.

Words on the page. I really wanted about double my goal for this month, but I’ll take what I got. It was my most productive month since last May when I was drafting my novella, so frustrated or not, it was an objectively good month. Now I just need to tell my head that.
BY THE NUMBERS

• Words written: 16,167/200,000 (on track!!!)
• New works (goal: 12 new shorter works submitted in 2018):
  • Started: 6
  • Drafted: 5
  • Revised: 0
  • Submitted: 0
• Books read: 10/30 (see above)

 

November Writing Round-Up, plus Award Eligibility

Happy past and impending holidays! This year has been….Alright it’s only December 1, so I don’t have to write a year-end post yet, right? Good. This won’t be that.

This past month has been a challenge. I struggled with feels after rejections. I fought through more rounds of preschool grunge. I got just enough good news and found time with friends to keep me sane. I may not be on-track to sweep my goals for the year, but HOLY HECK I’ve accomplished a lot.

Two of the things I’ve accomplished include two lovely stories out in the real world. If you’re looking for works to nominate for any of the various writing awards, I’d be honored–of course–to have your consideration. “The Moon, the Sun, and the Truth” ran in Shimmer‘s July/August Issue 38. “Phalium arium ssp anams” aired as Cast of Wonders‘s episode 256, also in July. This is also my second year of eligibility for the Campbell Award.

With no further ado, here’s how this month stacked up for words.

• Words Written: 10,276  (YTD: 153,199 | 2017 Goal: 200,000+)
• Works Complete: 0 (YTD: 8 | 2017 Goal: 10)
• Submissions to Paying Markets: 3 (YTD: 79)
• Books Read: 2 (YTD: 26| 2017 Goal: 30)
• PLUS
  • Short Story Rejections: 2 (1 personal).
  • Two of my stories are officially in editors’ hold piles. Yay!
  • Querying agents is hard. There will eventually be a whole post about this.
  • I finished Part 1 of my new novel. I like it so far (that’s not always a given).
  • I wrote 15 reviews for Publishers Weekly this year and I’m really proud of them.
  • I’m on programming for both Arisia and Boskone! More on that soon!

On Small Failures and Getting Back Up Again: A Sept + Oct Writing Round-Up

WELL. After almost two years of yammering about my writing goals, I actually forgot to write up my progress against my goals for the year until it was a few days into October. Things have been understandably crazy: my kid started part-time daycare in September; we’ve survived a few rounds of requisite “grunge” and “spikey death” that comes with exposure to bipedal germ factories and fall weather; and I’ve been querying agents with The Botanizer.

Not posting last month’s round-up is a great example of the many, many little things that have gone, are going, and will go wrong in my life. The accumulation of these little failures eats away at me. Add forgetting something like this–that I actually enjoy–to the trickle of rejections for my novel and for my short fiction, to the uphill battle of my immune system, to the ridiculous lack of sleep I’m getting thanks to my FOMO kid, and I start feeling really lost. No wonder my word count has been so low, two months running. I can’t just pass it off to “drafting is hard after revising for so long!” I’ve been in a gross, confusing, frustrating place with myself for two months running. And it’s hard to admit that all of those things piles up and affects my work, but really it does.

But here’s the thing I see as I look back. I kept at it. I sat my butt in the chair and I tried. No, I didn’t draft an entire novel in two months. No I never got to the end of Part 1 much less the rest of it. But I am working. And I like what I’m working on. And I’ve kept my short fiction on submission and I’ve kept at the querying. This is what it takes to be a writer and a mom and a wife and a sane person of my own making.

There’s a lot to celebrate after two months in a mire of life’s making. I can’t say I’m really out of it yet, but I’m going to take my wins anyway.

While I’m not doing #NaNoWriMo–I started this new novel back in September so that technically DQs me–I am definitely going to take part in the cheering and will take heart in all of the encouragement and excitement flowing as part of it. I have numbers in mind, goals I’d like to hit, but what I’ll really be glad of is getting to December and knowing I did my best with the hand I got dealt.

For anyone interested here’s where I stand on my goals for the year.

• Words Written: YTD: 143,419 | 2017 Goal: 200,000+
• Works Complete: YTD: 8 | 2017 Goal: 10
• Short Fiction Submissions to Paying Markets: YTD: 72 | Lifetime: 94
  • I’ll probably hit my 100th submission this year; my 100th rejection will probably come through in the new year.
  • Note that this does not count querying stats, which I’ll only share after that process has wrapped, whatever the result.
• Books Read: YTD: 24 | 2017 Goal: 30