The Year-End Writing Post
Dec. 30th, 2009 03:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
michaeldthomasI have mixed feelings about my year in writing.
2009
I made some changes after last year. I started the year with a 1.5 draft of a novel and a bunch of critiques. After looking through all of the notes, I decided the best thing I could do for that novel was to trunk it for a year or two. Though I had many positive comments, it became clear to me that I needed to work on my technique before I tried to fix all of the broken parts.
With the novel out of my life, I heeded the advice of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seanmmurphy and wrote some short stories. I did this for a variety of reasons: I wanted to play with some ideas, hone better sentence-level skills, and test the markets for publication. I finished four 1/2 stories.
With my first two stories, I sent them out into the wild without any help. I thought that this was a good way to figure out where I was in my writing career. The results were encouraging. Though I accumulated a bunch of rejections, most of them were personalized. The first story actually had two rejections with notes from the editors about how they almost accepted it. I've trunked these stories for the moment.
I worked with critique partners on the next two stories (heavily workshopping my most recent story). I learned a lot this year from the critique process. I have no idea if any of these stories will get published, but I'm confident that I've grown as a writer.
Along with the short stories, I began writing two novels. One will probably never grow beyond the first four chapters.
All in all, I'm a better writer than I was at the beginning of the year. There was, however, one big negative: my word count sucked this year. I never felt like I gained any steam. I achieved about half of my writing goals.
2010
My goals for this year:
Write, revise, and submit at least two more short stories.
Revise my two stories from early 2009.
Finish my middle-grade novel, The Scarlet Queen.
Continue working on MNP's Fluid Links (nonfiction).
If all of that goes well, I'll probably start writing another novel.
2009
I made some changes after last year. I started the year with a 1.5 draft of a novel and a bunch of critiques. After looking through all of the notes, I decided the best thing I could do for that novel was to trunk it for a year or two. Though I had many positive comments, it became clear to me that I needed to work on my technique before I tried to fix all of the broken parts.
With the novel out of my life, I heeded the advice of
seanmmurphy and wrote some short stories. I did this for a variety of reasons: I wanted to play with some ideas, hone better sentence-level skills, and test the markets for publication. I finished four 1/2 stories.With my first two stories, I sent them out into the wild without any help. I thought that this was a good way to figure out where I was in my writing career. The results were encouraging. Though I accumulated a bunch of rejections, most of them were personalized. The first story actually had two rejections with notes from the editors about how they almost accepted it. I've trunked these stories for the moment.
I worked with critique partners on the next two stories (heavily workshopping my most recent story). I learned a lot this year from the critique process. I have no idea if any of these stories will get published, but I'm confident that I've grown as a writer.
Along with the short stories, I began writing two novels. One will probably never grow beyond the first four chapters.
All in all, I'm a better writer than I was at the beginning of the year. There was, however, one big negative: my word count sucked this year. I never felt like I gained any steam. I achieved about half of my writing goals.
2010
My goals for this year:
Write, revise, and submit at least two more short stories.
Revise my two stories from early 2009.
Finish my middle-grade novel, The Scarlet Queen.
Continue working on MNP's Fluid Links (nonfiction).
If all of that goes well, I'll probably start writing another novel.
