Happy New Year, and happy Friday, friends. I hope you are staying healthy and safe and finding what happiness you can. If you are in the United States, as I am, I hope you are able to find calm after the turbulence of the last few days.
2020 was challenging for so many of us, but it was also the first year I approaching my short fiction writing in a rigorous, systematic way, and the results, I think, speak for themselves. I was lucky enough to be able to find the space — the time, the mental resources, the physical space — to write, although I also have to admit there were weeks when I felt utterly unmotivated and unproductive. I also had the mental energy and the morale to submit (the morale piece around submission is no joke! Collecting the number of rejections you need to in order to get published takes resilience.)
- I submitted 34 times, with four accepted stories, all to SFWA qualifying markets. Yay!
- But on the other hand, the novel draft I was supposed to finish by December didn’t get finished. Boo!
- Landed a big freelance work-for-hire writing project!
- Joined SFWA as an associate member, and I volunteered for the Committee for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
- Renewed my membership to SCBWI because a few of the things I write are squarely in the YA and MG categories, and I hope the organization can be a good resource for me. I don’t think I was ready to take advantage of it when I first joined, back in 2016 or whenever that was.
- Took a bunch of classes from Cat Rambo’s Academy for Wayward Writers, which was a great idea. I learned a lot and I also firmly believe now that taking ongoing classes as a writer can be really helpful for some of us.
- Entered and finished the Codex Weekend Warrior writing contest, which was a fantastic experience.
- Volunteered to organize Flights of Foundry, a creative con.
- Volunteered to be on a panel at Boskone.
- Pitched a collaboration (Story Kitchen) to my friend and former colleague Maureen McHugh about writing and education and we started working on that.
So, even though I failed at one of my BIG goals (the novel) I still feel like, on balance, I am leveling up as a writer not only in terms of my productivity and craft, but also in my community engagement. So those are all trends I’ll be mindful of developing for 2021.
Concrete goals for 2021 include:
- FINISH THE NOVEL by May 1.
- Submit 40 times.
- Participate in Weekend Warrior again (it starts this evening!!! Eep!)
- Speak at three events.
- Pitch a nonfiction work.
- Complete phase one and two of Story Kitchen project.
- Explore other venues for writing/storytelling, like Youtube, Medium, Serial Box, etc.
- Land $5000 of writing-related income.*
*This can be in the form of the collaborative project I’m working on with Maureen which will have a monetization component, story sales, freelance work, etc. I was a little hesitant to put a monetary value here but I think it’s useful to have measurable targets.
So that’s the plan for 2021! Keep growing the writing side of my work life, keep writing, and most importantly, keep finishing and putting things out there. Good luck to all of us!