A Look Back on Writing in 2019 & 2020 Goals for Writing

Even though 2019 was a rough year, one thing I did really well was making sure I had time to write and I wrote. I did not write every day, but I definitely wrote several times every week. I had been trying that "treat it as a job" approach for over a year, but it wasn't working for me. It sucked all the passion out of writing and I felt guilty if I didn't write during the times I had set aside due to a migraine or whatever. So I decided to try the "I Will Write Every Week" approach. Basically, writing became my place to relax and unwind. I was still writing down times to write in my planner, but it wasn't a, "YOU MUST DO THIS OR YOU FAIL AS A WRITER" type mentality. It was more, "hey, look at all this time you have to write! I know there's a lot going on, but once you get done with the stuff you HAVE to do, look at this fun thing you GET to do." Just a shift in perception and it made all the difference. It also helped that I had/have my writing groups and open mics as deadlines keeping me accountable. This is what I succeeded at this past year:

• Wrote every week
• Wrote every day for November & surpassed the 50,000 word mark for NaNoWriMo
• Sent out one Short Story (It got rejected, but with some pointers on how to fix the story so I'm seeing that as a win)
• Set up and started a Grief Journaling Workshop at the Library
• Continued with the Writers' Word Feast
• Visited an open mic I wasn't running
• Ran The No Shush Salon open mic
• Finished my memoir & gathered readers

Here are my writing goals for 2020:

• Send my memoir to my readers (Edit: DONE)
• Continue writing every week
• Send out writing for publication at least once a month
• Visit other (not run by me) writing groups
• Visit other (not run by me) open mics
• After getting back feedback from readers about my memoir (March 1), Edit it
• Figure out what direction I want to go with my memoir & go there

Nanowrimo 2017

Long time no write!

I have been consumed by work and school and not writing enough.  BUT I did have a story published in August called, "The Photo Essay On the Human Race" through thewifiles.com

This short story is the basis of the novel I'm working on for Nanowrimo. I started at midnight and wrote for half an hour - 296 words so far & I'm writing with my Writers' Word Feast group to keep this writing going.

Here is the title:

Title: On the Preservation and Development of Relations between Earthanoid Inhabitants and Incognito Visiting Intergalactic Students Living Amongst Them, an Academic Perspective

Subtitle: How We Never Arrived to Earth

Synopsis: After the disaster at the Intergalactic Photographers’ Convention, Henrietta, Ga, Peeve, and Ted travel to Earth in Ga's incredibly, and somewhat eerily, comfortable spaceship. They don't get there. But on the way, they find asteroids that eat stars, spaceships from a thousand years ago, and the happiest dragon in the universe. They also stumble into a war between robot guilds and inadvertently destroy a couple of planets. Plus, they go to Space Court.

Writing Woes & NaNoWriMo

I have three novels and lots of short stories to work on, but my head and my heart hasn't really been in my writing these last several months. I know part of it is because I have a lot going on - a promotion, two jobs, working on two HUGE events along with my regular ones, housemates moving out, a pretty steady flow of foster kittens, getting ready to launch cemeteryguardians.com for it's second year, and just the regular business of living. But also, I've been feeling a draw to work on my nonfiction... to tell the story of my life... to write about my sisters... a memoir about my family... to write about Joy's brain injury... to write about how that one event completely changed my family. This is something I have been trying to write for twenty years, ever since her accident first happened. But almost three years ago my mother died and she has always been my best fact checker whenever I've written about our lives. Also, writing about something so true and personal is really hard and draining. I fear using what my family has gone through for my writing. I worry about not being true to what happened. Memory is faulty, and I have a brain that likes to embellish and fictionalize. I know that writing is cathartic, but I fear that sharing my life with strangers will not be fair to the people who share my life.

About seven months after my mom died, H is for Hawk came out. This memoir by Helen Macdonald was about her father dying suddenly, something I related to on a very personal level. But it was also about how she threw herself into training her hawk and secluded herself from the rest of the world. This experience is very different from mine, though I do tend to throw myself into whatever I'm doing, I've never had the luxury of time or money to step away from my life. But the emotion, or attempts to side-step emotion, in the story were very familiar. It helped me. It also made me think that if my writing could possibly help someone else, I should write my story.

So my plan is that in November, I will work on my memoir for NaNoWriMo. Over the first week of November, I am visiting one of my dearest friends in Rode Island and since she is an amazing author, I'm certain we will have time to write. I don't know if it will stay a memoir, and that's okay. All I know is that I need to write my life.