2018 Writing Year in Review 2

Writing This Year

Novels: 0

Novellas: 2

Novellettes:  0

Short Stories: 5

Flash: 2

TV/Movie Scripts: 1

Other Scripts: 2 scripts written for Six to Start

Paid Nonfiction: 22 for Book Riot, 3 short textbooks written

Treatments/Outlines: 2

Editing: Several small freelance editing gigs

Consigned to the trunk of awfulness, never to return: None this year, maybe because I’ve been completely ignoring my short stories in favor of long stuff.

Best/Favorite story of the year: Probably Siren. You can read it in Sword and Sonnet.

Magic Spreadsheet wordcount: I stopped tracking this year, which may have been a mistake. I felt like I finally hit a place where I could be productive without really flogging myself with daily tracking…and then everything basically went to shit from August onward, mostly thanks to having surgery on my foot. I’m trying to get back into the habit now, and in the new year I think I’m going to start tracking my word count and editing hours again so I can set more concrete goals.

Publishing

Queries sent: 25
Rejections received: 21
Pending: 4
Most rejections received: This year, it’s The Devil Squid Apocalypse, but I’m going to keep trying goddammit. I LOVE THAT STORY TOO MUCH.
Gross earned: $13,645.47, surpassing last year by over $2.8K. Which I’m finding even more personally impressive because I only had one advance payment for a novel this year. The bulk of the rest was freelance income or work for hire.

Published this year:

1. Blood Binds the Pack
2. Murder on the Titania and Other Steam-Powered Adventures
3. Excerpts from the Personal Journal of Dr. V. Frankenstein, MD, Department of Pathology, Our Lady of Mercy Hospital in We Shall Be Monsters
4. 40 Facts About the Strip Mall at the Corner of Never and Was in Shimmer #46
5. Siren from Sword and Sonnet
6. The Best Fantasy Short Stories and Where to Find Them
7. The Weird Libertarian Trojan Horse That is the Little House Books
8. 10 Great Underwater Sci-fi and Fantasy Works
9. 5 Books Over 500 Pages That Are Well Worth Your Time
10. All Issues of FIYAH Literary Magazine Removed from Goodreads
11. WorldCon 76 Report: Hugo Awards, Lodestars, and MAGA Hats
12. Overdrive vs. Libby: Which Will Serve You Best?
13. 12 Books to Pierce the Filter Bubble
14. WorldCon Updates Programming in Response to Critiques from SF Creators
15. How WorldCon Failed Marginalized Creators With Programming and Communication
16. Tor Hits Libraries With Lending Delay
17. The Ripples of #Cockygate
18. 35 of the Best Fantasy Audiobooks
19. #Cockygate Continues: The Best Bits of the Recent Hearing
20. My Housemate Explains The Fountainhead to Me
21. 5 Speculative Fiction Takes on Sherlock Holmes
22. The Most Ambitious (Literary) Crossover Event in History
23. Thank You, Naoko Takeuchi, for Sailor Moon
24. Reader Shame: Award Season Edition
25. Speculative Fiction on Tap: The Light Side of Beer
26. Brain Armor: 6 Books for Skeptical Self Defense
27. Author Banned From Attending WorldCon
28. Science Fiction Short Stories to Read Online (and where to find them)

Slated for 2019:

1. The Plague Doctor and the Stoker in Straight Outta Deadwood
2. The second installment of the collected Captain Ramos Novellas from Queen of Swords Press
3. Those text books I wrote this year–and I have three more I’ll be writing next year.
4. Looks like I’ll be doing some TTRPG writing for Laser Kittens!

Goals for 2019

1. Get back into writing nearly every day; get writing endurance back up to 1-2k words per day.
2. Finish novella project and turn it in.
3. Suck it up, find the money, and put at least the TV pilot script on the Black List. Submit to more contests.
4. Make an actual effort to find out about work for hire for video games instead of just whining about it.
5. Work on at least one collaborative project.
6. Write one novel. Two as a stretch goal, but unlikely with the amount of freelance work I’ve frontloaded with.
7. Finish editing Flash Memory and make it my agent’s problem.
8. Read at least 60 books.
9. Do the birthday story, as usual.
10. Do posts on my personal blog more often. My ability to write blog posts has kind of atrophied, and I need to practice it. (And convince myself I have interesting things to say, which is sometimes the harder part.)

Other Stuff

1. HUNGER MAKES THE WOLF WON AN AWARD!!!! I’m still fucking blown away by this.
2. I read 68 books this year, which is two short of my goal of 70.
3. I fucking love my Destiny clan.
4. Got back into baking this year, and I want to continue next year. Goals include: curry goat pie (hot water crust pastry), learn how to make bread, something involving meringue, make a puff pastry once so I never feel the need to do it again
5. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is my pick for best movie this year, and definitely the one that made me feel happiest. Close second is Black Panther.

Real talk: while I managed to do better monetarily than last year (and I’m proud of the work I’ve done), this year has kind of sucked for me on a personal level. Mostly because I got taken out by an injury at work in March, and it’s just been that drama ceaselessly since. I’m on the road to recovery now, but it’s slow, and it’s fucking painful, and I think that’s really hurt my ability to write since August (when I had surgery). Beyond that, it’s forced me to do some really painful self-assessment about what I can even physically do any more, at the ripe old age of 38, and what that means from aspects of my life from my leisure activities to my ability to do my current job. And that’s also been a major, ongoing source of anxiety for me. Like this is probably the most continuously stressed out and anxious and internally fucked up I’ve been since my last year at AT&T, when I was so depressed I literally stopped sleeping.

So yeah. Here’s hoping 2019 is calmer.