2019 Review and 2020 Introduction

Happy New Year!

I pretty well dropped off the face of the planet after April. I’ve been busy. Super busy. So epically busy that even when I wanted to work on a WIP (work in progress) book, I literally could not fit it into my schedule except at the doom of all other projects on my plate (and yes, that’s even remembering the amount of time that the average person wastes per day). Doing so would have also been disadvantageous for my future writing, so I grudgingly refrained. Anyway, for the most part I’m not going to delve into what has kept me busy, although it’s great, and I’ve told some of you already, but my schedule is finally(!) clearing up to let me focus on my novels. Do you have any idea how glad I am for that?

Most of my 2019 work will be covered in the 2020 goals, but there are a few minor (but major) things I’ve been doing to keep writing at the forefront:

• Back in September I joined a local writing group. We meet once a week, and it’s been great—yay.
• I wrote a few narrative poems this year. They tend to almost write themselves—and in far less time than novels. I enjoy that—shocker.
• I’ve been helping someone prepare their own book for self-publication (that’s the route they want to go). I will not go into depth about it, but I will be happy to finish the project. It has been an insane drain on my time this year—shrug.
• Trivial as it may sound, I have pursued opportunities to think about the stories/novels I’m working on. Sometimes we get lost in the stories we’re trying to tell, and it can be hard to see the forest for the trees [here’s to this entire post not becoming a long list of pathetic metaphors]. It helps to toss those stories around in my head in order to get a clear picture of what path to take [oops—metaphor].

But although I have been busy and my writing feels neglected, it has been a productive year. Quite productive. Healthy-productive towards writing full-time in the (comparatively) near future. Anyway, without further ado, here is the 2020 edition of T. D.’s To Do’s:

January

Main Focus

I plan to finish off most work on the aforementioned book I’m helping somebody else ready for self-publication. This project has been the only true hindrance to my own writing (all other busyness aided my writing, just not in the short-term). I’ll be happy to be done with this. Note to anyone with ambitions of making me edit/revise your books: I neither want to, nor do I have time.

Lesser Focus

Because my January is relatively open, I intend to work on a few lesser, but important, writing goals:

1. I will submit my narrative poems for publication. Simple as that. There’s a good chance this will extend throughout the entire year (unless everything gets accepted for publication from the get-go…).
2. I will organize my writing. This has been an ongoing project to weed out what’s useful and what’s not. On the digital side, I created two copies of my files to avoid losing potential good previous material that does not currently fit: one to act as “archives,” and one to modify at will. This whole project ties back to the bad “forest for the trees” metaphor, but it’s allowing me to digitally declutter and remove distractions from my real work. This also includes fixing my filing methods so that everything useful pertaining to Story X or Poem Y is all together, not spread around ten different documents in seven different locations.
3. Modified 30 Days, 30 Outlines – If you remember my 30 Days, 30 Outlines project (I mean, it is only a few posts ago…), I not only enjoyed it, but found it astoundingly(!) helpful. Last year I learned that when I outline like this, I can complete a full novel draft in one to one-and-a-half months, if not quicker. That’s a huge deal. Short stories? I can complete those in a day. Talk about speeding up my writing drastically.Well I plan to repeat this process every year going forward, but on a modified basis. Instead of “30 Outlines” (which is a catchy addition to “30 Days” and which is why I’m still officially calling it 30 Days, 30 Outlines), I intend to select a handful of outlines to write instead, probably seven to fifteen. For the most part, my higher quality outlines require two to five days to construct. In the future, this will take place in December—so as to outline my next year’s major writing projects—but because I did not think to do that in December 2019, I will do this in January(ish) and December of this year.

February and Beyond

I call it that because I’m not quite sure how the months leading up to summer will go. Once again I will have a lot on my plate, but like I said, I arranged my schedule to benefit my writing. If my plans fall apart, summer will still be almost solely for writing with the exception of helping at a few summer camps for foster kids. Instead of outlining the rest of my year to you by months, I’m going to base the rest of this post on writing projects. For myself I’ll set dated goals, whether I state them here or not:

When the World Grows Dark

I remain enthused by this book/these books. Remember it pretty much came out of left field and surprised me without how fun it was to write, but it requires my full attention. I can’t write it in bits and snippets like some of my other stories. I still believe that if I sat down and focused, it would not take more than two weeks to complete. Note to self: spring break might be a good time to focus on this [to everyone else: yes, I began substituting for local school districts on a part-time basis, so “spring break” actually is a term I use again]. Regardless, this book should be completed (including revisions) by the end of this year, probably by the end of June.

Bluestone

For all of 2019 I spent much of my time pondering on the Bluestone story (I pondered instead of writing because it’s where the vast majority of my woods and trees metaphor comes from). It took me a while but I finally settled on a format that I think best suits the story. This year will see me begin to piece together a solid outline using old drafts and new writing. Late this year or next, I expect to begin drafting a far sleeker, cleaner, and more enthusiastic (and coherent) draft than the ones I have written previously.

The Lands of Imagine

Because of the nature of my schedule, I’m not sure if I will delve much into these this year. If I do, it will likely be to write the first draft of The Black Rainbow; I have a complete outline for that book, and usually mid-May to mid-June is when these books call to me. I’m just not sure what I will or won’t do about this series this year…

MG Loss Book

This remains how it was back in April. I know what more I want to write and how, but I’m still struggling turning it into a complete novel instead of a middle grade novella or short story. Depending on my schedule, I should be able to complete about a third of this on top of the third that’s already written.

Jesse the Pirate

This idea has swirled around in my head for a number of years—about seven, I think. I know where it takes place and the opening premise, but I have not yet created the story. This year I plan to make a quality outline. May be part of my January 30 Days, 30 Outlines.

Poems

This came as a surprise. As time began to burn itself, I turned my attention to poems because they don’t require as long of a time commitment. I have been pleasantly surprised by the poems that result. This year’s poem-focus will be on writing more narrative ones and submitting the poems I have already completed—most of which are not true narratives.

I also have a poem(/short stories—maybe?) project dealing with the universe, but each of these poems requires its own research, so I’ll probably get a few of them written this year but not many.

Short Stories

Most likely this is out of my time range this year. If not, there are a few stories I’d like to write first drafts for.

The Healer Town (working title)—about a boy raised in a town of medical Healers. These types of towns exist in many fantasy worlds, but we rarely spend much time in them.

The Organizer of Files—I completed a draft of this many years ago for NaNoWriMo. Because of the focus on words over quality, it’s recklessly jumbled but the story is present. I just need to make it cohesive and flesh it out a little. This year’s goal would be to get a complete second draft that actually makes sense to somebody without access to my thoughts and brain.

One Sick Brother—I outlined this novella-length(?) story during 30 Days, 30 Outlines last year. I’m excited about it (then again, aren’t I excited about almost anything I’m writing?). I should be able to knock this out during spring break if When the World Grows Dark is complete before then.

Chapter per Week and Poets Anonymous – These remain goals, but they moved to the backburner. For more information see my 2019 T. D.’s To Do’s (modification for Poets Anonymous: I think I’d make it a minimum of $20). Still looking for help with these if anyone is willing—even if you’re simply interested but don’t think you can help, let me know.

Conclusion

Yep, I’ve got a lot of goals and loads of ambition. If the figurative stars align around my schedule, this is all easily doable. If not, I should still be able to accomplish about half. Regardless, I’m excited by what I’m going to accomplish with my writing this year. I’ll try not to drop off here again, but don’t expect posts more than once every…two months(? sounds feasible to me, but we’ll see). ¡Tuanis!