Huh. For the first time in a long time, I don’t know what to say at the cusp of a new year. I still feel so close to all the things that happened in 2022 – many of them still feel in-progress! It’s difficult to separate them into one year versus the other in my brain.
But, that’s what this blog post is for. A space to look back, assess, and then take the first quaking steps into the future.
If you’re new to my blog (in the last few months or so), then please allow me to introduce you to this phenomena of the yearly reflection. I’ve been writing up annual goals and reflecting on them online since January 2012 (you can dig through the old site if you REALLY want to read 22 year-old B.’s thoughts). Over the years the format has streamlined, honed into something familiar and efficient. There’s something to be said here about my constant need for organization and routine, but I’ll leave that for a different sort of reflection.
Point is, I’ve been doing this for awhile. I have an established process, one that works. And yet I feel… hesitant? Reluctant? Some sort of -ant about trying to quantify this year. This very well could be related to my lack of ADHD meds, which has left me very unlikely to initiate any task that could be construed as “difficult” or “unpleasant”.
It could also be that I’m afraid to face my successes far more than I ever am my failures. And this year has seen more than its fair share of wins. And I think that had a whole lot to do with my intention for the year, but I’ll get to that a bit further down the post.
2022 Goals
- Revise + Query Tavi
- Finish Victoria Rough Draft
- Submit two new short stories
- Finish Santa Sarita
- Read 52 books
How'd I Do?
- Revise + Query Tavi
- YES!!! I finally finished this project at the end of June. I started querying in July, a notoriously terrible time to query, although I’m told that in 2022 there is no good time to query, so whatevs. That book is still going out to agents, and will until every single SFF/Spec Fic agent turns me down.
- Finish Victoria Rough Draft
- YES! I made no secret about how painful this book was to write. It’s weird. So deeply strange in so many ways. But it’s beautiful too. I’m so glad I stuck it out to write “The End”. It’s currently on submission at a spectacular publisher, so let’s all keep our fingers crossed, yes?
- Submit two new short stories
- Oh, um… YES! A thousand times YES! If you’ll recall last year’s reflection, I wanted to submit three stories in 2021, and felt satisfied that I managed two. This year, thinking that I ought not stress myself, I kept the goal manageable. And then wrote and submitted NINE STORIES. That’s as many as a whole J.D Salinger book!
- Finish Santa Sarita
- Nope. I wrote a little bit on it, did some important thinking, but ultimately didn’t find the way back in this year.
- Read 52 books
- Nope. I only read 36 books as of this writing. It seems unlikely that I’ll get much more squeezed in between now (Thursday night) and Sunday, so I’m calling it there. Does this bum me out? A little. But then I look at my word count and I don’t feel quite so bad.
Let's Talk Numbers
First stop? Word counts, babeyyy!
- January: 3,001
- February: 3,541
- March: 31,327
- April: 15,252
- May: 1,209
- June: 20,389
- July: 8,607
- August: 2,497
- September: 3,997
- October: 4,839
- November: 37,661
- December: 1,639
Total Word Count: 133,959
Looking at my whiteboard, the word count distribution is really interesting this year. I’ve been running on the belief that my most productive writing times are the Fall/Winter months, but that doesn’t seem to quite be true. March, April, June, and November were my most productive months by far. March and April were obsession-fueled fanfic words, while June was the mad dash to finish Victoria. Then November was Nanowrimo.
What I’ve really learned is that Nanowrimo is great for jump starting a new draft, but it absolutely destroys my output in December. I require so much recovery time, which I guess December isn’t the worst time for that what with my birthday and the holidays. But still. Word counts have been minimal this last month, and they were low in January and February when I was clawing my way back to the manuscript.
Maybe in 2023 I’ll plan to take December off, that way I might not feel so ding dang guilty about my lack of output.
2022 Hours Check
I’m not going to break it down by each and every writing related activity I spent time on this year. It’s too much. But I will share the totals for each month, because that seems like useful AND fun information.
- January: 64 hours
- February: 56.5 hours
- March: 42.5 hours
- April: 32 hours
- May: 37 hours
- June: 89.5 hours
- July: 103.5 hours
- August: 54.5 hours
- September: 60.5 hours
- October: 90 hours
- November: 60.5 hours
- December: 40 hours
2022 Total Hours: 730.5
For math-averse readers, that’s about 14 hours a week – this shit really is a part time job, y’all! It’s interesting, and not wholly unexpected, to see the patterns in my time. But it’s nice to see these numbers in juxtaposition with the word count numbers. It proves that not all writing time equals words.
Honorable Mentions
When I look back at this year, going beyond a tidy set of bullet points, I can’t help but think of my intention.
Reach.
Reach. At the start of 2022 I wanted to stretch, to snatch at every opportunity, to stop self-rejecting. I wanted to dive feet first into communities and spaces I’d always longed to be a part of, but thought I wasn’t a “real” enough writer to participate in. Instead of carving out a space for myself, I was burrowing further away.
In 2022 I vowed to take up space. To apply for fellowships and workshops. To submit to magazines and agents who “would never want me”. And even after rejection after rejection, my confidence grew. Because “real” writers, do in fact, write. They write and they submit and they keep reaching for the dream even when there’s little to no chance of getting it.
Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of it, shall we? Here’s some tangible ways in which I “reached” this year:
- I applied for five different scholarships/workshops
- I submitted fiction 59 times
- If you look at this screenshot from The Submission Grinder, you’ll see that my rejections doubled from 2021, but so did my acceptances! And my personal rejections quadrupled! That means I’m getting closer to acceptances even when I’m rejected. That’s VERY good news.
- One of these submissions is to a market I absolutely love and would never have DREAMED of sending a story to a year ago.
- I had THREE stories release this year! Find them here.
- If you look at this screenshot from The Submission Grinder, you’ll see that my rejections doubled from 2021, but so did my acceptances! And my personal rejections quadrupled! That means I’m getting closer to acceptances even when I’m rejected. That’s VERY good news.
- I queried 23 agents
- I joined and maintained a critique group
- Hosted Top Shelf Librarians for another unpredictable year
- I had a guest spot on a podcast (shhhhhhh, announcement coming soon!)
- I attended the Willamette Writers Conference
- I attended PDX Book Fest
- Started writing an all new novel?!?!
So, yeah. Lots of stuff happened this year. Like, kind of a stupid amount of stuff. Enough stuff that writing this post is going to take over two hours… and now I have to add that to the tally!
2023 Goals
Well, first thing’s first. We need to set an intention. It sounds kind of silly, but each year I keep this word on my whiteboard overlooking my desk, and there’s been a number of times where looking at it has inspired me to take the risk/leap/plunge, etc., etc.,.
So, without further ado, the intention for 2023 is…
GROW
After all my hemming and hawing about feeling uncertain, this word came to mind immediately when given the chance. A year of growing – my craft, my career, my community. Which is literally the Willamette Writers motto, but that’s not why I chose it.
I chose this because when I think of the components that lead to a satisfying writing life, these are the words that come to mind. This is what I want to foster and grow in 2023.
Now the question is, what goals support this mantra?
- Finish Vampire Valley Rough Draft
- This is the working title of the Nanowrimo novel. No, it will not be staying. The draft is a little over a third of the way there, and we’re into the second act. There’s a lot of good things happening on the page, i just need to get back to it and get it done. I’m feeling good about that right now. I’d LOVE to have this rough draft done by April 30th, that way I could take some time away and then still have a bit of summer for revision. Fingers crossed.
- Write Five (5) New Short Stories
- I wrote nine new stories this year, but that seems like a fluke. I don’t want to bank on that sort of output so I’m hedging expectations while raising the goal. Seems reasonable, right?
- Practice Promotion
- This is a tough one for me. I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again, but I am extremely anxious about talking about my writing in a positive way. Or really even just myself? It feels icky, even the smallest self-compliments leave me feeling self-aggrandizing. I HAVE to work on this, especially in 2023. I have several stories slated for publication already, and it isn’t unreasonable to expect more as the year goes on. I NEED to be able to talk about these things comfortably at minimum, enthusiastically at best. Which means i need to take Mr. Darcy’s Aunt’s advice and practice…
- Keep Community in Mind
- I think community and promotion are linked in some ways. Growing my writing community will help me promote my publications, sure, but it’ll also help me practice. Community can offer support when that promotion doesn’t go so well and resources for how to do better next time. Growing my writing community will help me grow in all the ways I’ve listed above.
- I admit, I don’t fully know the scope of what I mean by “community”. I have several writing communities already, of various sizes and purposes. I could, and probably should do a blog post about that soon… Anyway, the point is, I’ll be focusing on growing my writing community and hammering out just what the hell I mean by that.
- I think community and promotion are linked in some ways. Growing my writing community will help me promote my publications, sure, but it’ll also help me practice. Community can offer support when that promotion doesn’t go so well and resources for how to do better next time. Growing my writing community will help me grow in all the ways I’ve listed above.
Thoughts
My biggest takeaway on this list is that, for the first time in many years, I do not have a reading goal. Obviously I intend to read to 2023, I’m just kind of done considering it a challenge. My TBR is not something to be tamed, it is to be cultivated and nurtured so that we can cohabitate in peace until my death.
That’s the energy I’m bringing to my reading this year: marriage, basically.
Really, the energy I’m bringing this year is rooted. Grounded and peaceful, as opposed to frantic and fearful. And things that take root have a tendency to grow, don’t you think?
I’ll end it on that saccharine note, with a reminder that I’ll be back tomorrow to recap December.
Until then, Bloggarts, Happy New Year!
BZ
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