2023 Recap and 2024 Goals

Hiking in Sedona, February 2023

This year was busy, and I know the culprit: out of the 52 weeks of the year, my husband and I spent 13 weekends in Chicago. When we moved 3 hours from our family and friends at the end of 2020, it was with the agreement that we'd visit home at least once every other month. In 2023 we doubled that...and as wonderful as it is to see loved ones, all the time on the road really takes it out of you. In addition to those trips home, I also went to Sedona and Mesa, Nashville, Indianapolis, Seattle and Portland, Milwaukee and Oxford, Wisconsin twice, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Starved Rock, and Carbondale. In total: 24 weekends away from home. Half of the year. 

With all that travel, it's a miracle that I got any writing done at all. 

2023 Writing goals: 

1. 👍Begin querying The Seaming. I send 95 queries for the Seaming between February and September 2023, and received 4 full requests and 3 partial requests. While none of those requests have turned into anything more (so far), I am really happy with this request rate compared to my prior queried works. And while I've learned a lot since finishing this novel and there are things I would do differently now, I still really love this story. 
2. 👎 Write, polish, and submit 6 short stories. I wrote exactly one-half of a short story in 2023... and then decided that I loved the world and the characters too much to abandon them so quickly. I'm waiting for the right inspiration to hit regarding a novel-length plot, but am really excited to continue this story. Ultimately, I realized that I was spending a lot of time doing market research for the short stories I'd written in the prior year, and that was all time that I could be working on a novel. 
3. 👍 Draft one zero-draft. In August I took a week off from the day job and spent the week hiking and exploring the local coffee shops. I wrote 11,000 words in a week, half-outline and half-prose. This story I pulled together during this week is the basis for what I'm calling Predacide going into 2024. 
4. 👍 Be a better participant in my writing communities. I made a choice not to quantify this goal when I set it a year ago. I had a history of lurking in chat rooms and never finishing beta reads, and therefore never volunteering to try. This year I made an effort to say yes when I could--and specifically any time I had a flight to seek out a beta from amongst my communities to occupy the airport time. In all, I read 8 full manuscripts, 5 partials, and 4 short stories for 11 different authors, for a total of 768,000 words. (I tried really hard to push to 1 million, but the holidays interfered with that plan.) Of all my goals, this one was the most rewarding. I got to read a series of excellent works that I can't wait to shout about when they all become public; and reading for a range of agented, debuting, and earlier-career authors gave me more insight into what it takes to make a book stand out. Reading all of my wonderful friend's works raised the bar and gave me something new to aim for in my own work. 

My writing life in 2023 was either continual drafting, or resting away from writing. I did a lot of percolating this year. I finished and queried The Seaming, spent 5 months drafting half of Dandelions and then melting down over the plot, and zero-drafted Predacide. Then did a final push on Dandelions and sent it out to 11 betas, of which 6 returned notes, and of those, 2 reported being moved to tears. From their notes, it was clear that they got the story. 

Really, what else could I ask for on this writing journey? 

Since then, I've polished my query package and sent out 40 Dandelion queries (which I've since renamed to Garden Party), and during Nano attempted a fuller draft of Predacide. This time I got about halfway through my outline and reached 28,000 words. Obviously, if I were to finish it would still be short of a full novel. So back to the Plottr board I've been, slowly applying the Story Genius method to my outline and aligning what I want this book to be. 

My biggest lesson in 2023 was how it feels to have a well-paced novel. Some of the feedback on rejected fulls of The Seaming was that the pacing was off, and with Garden Party I finally learned how to use tension and character needs to build a tightly-paced story. I can't wait to continue using those lessons going forward. 

With these lessons in mind, here are my 2023 writing goals: 

1. Revamp and continue querying Garden Party. Late this year I got a request for The Seaming, after it had already been shelved. I dusted those pages back off and to my deep regret, realized that the advise to "let it rest in a drawer for a few months" actually works. With distance, I was able to see areas of the prose that could be further polished. With that in mind, I've put a pause on sending out Garden Party queries. When I finally finish outlining Predacide, it'll have been 2 months since I last looked at my pages. I'm going to do a full read-through and see if there's any new insights into the pages that might help me make this stronger. 
2. Finish Predacide and send to betas. I'm two half-drafts into Predacide, with the ending still shifting in my mind. If I'm lucky, I think I might be able to actually finish a full draft on the next round. I'd like to get this fully drafted, polished, and out to betas sometime this spring.  
3. Beta read 6 books. I had so much fun and learned so much from reading my friend's work. This year I want to beta-read 6 novels for friends to continue contributing to my community and learning from my friends. 
4. Develop my voice. In November I pitched Garden Party to an agent who was intrigued by the concept and who really seemed to get what I was going for with the story. She said whether she wanted to read more would depend on whether I'd nailed the voice. I spent a lot of time in the period between sending her my pages and waiting for her response worrying over whether my voice was enough. In that time I re-read a lot of opening pages of the types of books I was using as comps. Between those opening pages and what I saw beta reading, I realized: it's not enough to craft a solid book with good pacing. The voice on the page has to grab you and be unlike anything else you've read. This year I want to focus on voice and continue to develop my novels so that readers won't want to put them down. 

Hoping for a peaceful and reflective 2024.

Hiking close to home