Happy Arbitrary Marking of the Passage of Time day! It seems only fitting that I’m a day or two late with this post.
2011 in writing was an uneven year. At the beginning of the year Clarion West classmate Nate Parkes dubbed 2011 “the year of 2009” in hopes that it would be a banner year for us CW survivors. And so it seemed, at the outset. For me the year began with the sale, to Ideomancer, of my favorite story, “Apology for Fish-Dude.” I got the news on January 2.
And then . . . a stall. 2011 for me was the year of the black hole, as stories just sat and sat at markets. A couple of them have been “under consideration” for over a year! I didn’t score again until Rudy Rucker accepted “The Curse of the Were-Penis” for FLURB.
I spent most of the year working on novels. During the summer it was novel #2, which is kind of the bane of my existence. What I have now is close to a first draft–let’s call it a .75th draft, and I know I ought to try to beat it into shape. Experience tells me that even though I hate it, others might not. And yet . . .
Novel #3 has been captivating my mind. It came to me mostly formed in a dream, a radical departure from the kind of thing I usually write. I started it during NaNoWriMo and finished the draft today. Seriously, like twenty minutes ago I typed the last words of draft one. It came in much lower on word count than I expected, and that whole 1,000 words a day thing that I said I’d do didn’t so much happen, and it needs a lot of work. But it’s work I’m excited to do. I think this could be the one. Surely I’ve written my million words by now, right?
But wait, there’s more! As it turns out, I also wrote some short fiction in 2011. I discovered the joy of flash fiction and the glow that comes from starting and finishing a draft in one setting, and wrote three of those. I also wrote a story of traditional length, and revised one 10,000 word monster, sending it rampaging into the unwelcoming world, knocking over buildings and trampling frightened pedestrians.
Here’s another thing that I just want to share. I’m not on the Tangent Online Recommended Reading List, but a number of my friends are. Congratulations to Nalo Hopkinson, Karen Joy Fowler, Von Carr/Siobhan Carroll, Liz Argall, Andrew Penn Romine, Rudy Rucker, and Cory Skerry.
Looking forward, I have ambitions both large and small. Like a birthday candle wish, I am keeping my grand hopes a secret lest they fail to come true. So I’ll end this post with a modest wish for 2012. This goes for all of you writer friends: may our acceptances be numerous and our rejections swift.