Progress Report: January 2022

Greetings, friends, and welcome to 2022! If you’re reading this, you made it, both to this year and this site, and I’m grateful for both!

2021 was a weird and wonderful transitional year (at least, it was for me). While I didn’t get to do everything I wanted to do, I got some important stuff done. Most importantly, I took a hard look at why I didn’t get everything done that I wanted, especially concerning my writing goals. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but I spread myself way too thin over the last year. There were quite a few spinning plates, what with weddings, moving, and working the normal grind, and it was a lot to ask of myself to try and do all of it in the constraints of the time I had. Burnout happened in the middle of the year, and I think that I did myself a disservice by being as unrealistic about my goals as I was.

But that was last year, and last year’s mistakes are last year’s mistakes. The calendar page has turned, and we’re on the way to something new: a blank slate.

Anyway, I’ve modified my approach to all the things I want to do, and (hopefully) have it broken down into smaller bites. Here’s the meal served for January.

- Restart edits on a completed work. Fun fact: when I started this site, I thought I was

The beast I am to tackle this year

close to self-publishing my next novel. It needed another coat of paint, sure, but I thought I was close enough to done that I could put a “Coming Soon” tag on a page. Whoops. Turns out, six years later, I haven’t gone through it quite yet. Reasons why? Even though several test readers enjoyed it, negative comments from far fewer people got stuck in my head, and every time I picked it up to work on it, I just couldn’t. However, with renewed support from my circle, I’m inspired to pick it up again. I had gone through about a third of it, and I’m going to keep working on it throughout this next month.

- Work on some short fiction. When I started writing as a teenager, short fiction was my bread and butter. I’ve always liked the idea of telling an effective—if not complete—story in a limited space, like a comic book or a magazine. So, for the better part of this year, I’m going to focus on shorter pieces to get myself back into a better storytelling groove.

- Be more consistent in blogging. I’m challenging myself to try and do this part of it consistently. I’m going to try my best to post something every week, at least once a week, on Tuesdays and/or Fridays. That will involve a ton of planning on my part, and I want to see if I’m up to that challenge. I appreciate anyone along for the ride.

Did you get everything done last year? What about your plans for 2022? Feel free to comment on what you did, didn’t do, and hope for!

2021 was a net neutral year from my perspective. Some forward progress happened, but then we lost Betty White at the goal line, and that took a ton of wind out of the collective sails. Here’s to a better year this time around.

Cheers!