Hmm.. *checks notes* It looks like my last post was way back in November, saying that I was going to write 30,000 words of my novel for NaNoWriMo, and finish it by the end of the year.   I also said it was going to be, and I quote “a busy damn month.”

I wasn’t wrong about the later.  Kids got sick. School (for me, not them) was more overwhelming that I expected.  I discovered that I really like reading and analyzing fiction, but do not enjoy writing essays about it.  Then, there was Thanksgiving, which we hosted, and Christmas shopping.  And all the things that come with the holidays when you have kids, like baking cookies and making sure the house is decorated.

That 30,000 word goal was a stretch to say the least.

I didn’t do too badly though.  I could have hit it if I had kept going.  I got seventeen thousand in less than two weeks and then…honestly I don’t know what happened.  The last half of November and all of December were a blur of brightly colored wrapping paper, holiday spices, and reruns of Call the Midwife.  

Now, school is back in (for me and the kids), and things are returning to normalcy and I am hoping to be more productive in the coming year.  I have set some writing-related goals for the New Year, and they are as follows:

  • Write seventy thousand creative words. This is about what I wrote in 2022, so if I actually finish said novel and write some stories, should be doable.
  • Finish that novel. I don’t expect it to be good.  I just want to finish it to prove that I can, as well as for practice.
  • Make fifty or more short story submissions. I made almost exactly one hundred this past year, and none of them got accepted, so this one is definitely doable, considering I have at least two stories from last year that haven’t even been typed/edited yet, in addition to all the ones I will write, and all the ones that have not yet found homes.
  • Post here more.  If I’m hoping to actually get published and have my bio for that link here, people have to have something to read, right?

Just going to throw this out there that I’ve been a little depressed, which is has been a huge contributor to my lack of writing (and to me watching over half the seasons of Call the Midwife in less than three weeks).  Not a lot depressed, just the kind where one feels like being more of a couch potato and less of a productive potato.  I think trying to do so much just overwhelmed me into submission.

I’m going to try to not spread myself so thin this year.  You shouldn’t either. You deserve to be a pat of butter, not a smear.