March 18: Year in review

This was one of the oddest years for writing that I’ve had in some time (for those who don’t know, I do my year review/New Year’s resolutions on my birthday, rather than Jan. 1).

•I actually made a profit, due to the nonfiction I sold. That’s a wonderful thing, both for my bank account and my ego.

•I got back into nonfiction after three years focusing entirely on fiction.

•Fiction writing unsurprisingly slowed to a crawl, which is not a good thing. One short story written, Brain From Outer Space still not finished. The lack of finished fiction reminds me why I stopped doing nonfiction in the first place. Fiction is way more fun, and while I enjoy non-fic as well, I do enough of that on my day job to scratch the itch. But on the other hand, it is nice to make more money. So for this year, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m going to submit article queries and see if anyone bites. Since I don’t need the money as badly as I used to, this is proving much less stressful than it was a few years ago, and at one query a week, it isn’t cutting much into my fiction time. If McFarland likes my sample chapter, I’ll be up and running with a new movie book. Balancing my time on that will be a lot harder, but I think it can be done, and it’ll be a lot more fun than many non-fiction assignments I’ve had over the years. I am determined to finish Brain this year. I’ve been working on it off and on for a long time, and it’s time to bring it to a close. And I definitely want more short stories written. It’s a boon to have a small project to work on and finish relatively quickly when I’m working on one (or two if McFarland comes through) big project that will take months. Overall, I’m feeling good about the year to come. A lot of that is because my relationship with TYG has been great; I usually spend my year-review brooding about my love-life (or lack of same) so it’s quite uplifting to find that part of my life filled with joy. And that, in turn, makes everything else look better. Onward and upward!