It’s time for LibertyCon! Which means - as promised - I’m taking a look back at the past year to check on my milestones.
First, though: a bit of background. Last year was my first time attending LibertyCon. I’d always wanted to go, and now that I had a couple of short stories published, I really wanted to go! It was as much fun as I could have hoped for. I met a bunch of authors, publishers, and other friendly folks. I got to hang out with some of my fellow authors from Supernatural Streets. I even had David B. Coe tell me I should submit to one of the upcoming anthologies from Zombies Need Brains! (To be fair, I think he said that to everyone, but I’m going to pretend that was a special moment, OK?)
I came back from LC energized, and wrote up my Lessons from LibertyCon. And I decided I was going to put those lessons to work for me this year…
So, here's my plan for the next six months.
Write daily.
Edit daily.
Read daily.
Ideally, I would like to do all three every day. I'd be happy if I can get at least two of the three done. I have my wife and a few friends who are willing to provide accountability…
It's not the "one simple trick" that Teh Interwebs ads like to blather on about. It IS three simple things I can do to improve myself as a writer, though. If I stick to it.
Now I just need to make it so.
So. How did I do?
Spoiler alert: I am happy with where I am, and where I’m headed!
Writing
Let’s start off with the wins! I had four new stories published this past year:
"Pard" in Space Cowboys 2
"Callback" in Postcards from Mars
"On-Site Support" in Fanta-Fly Postcards
"Down Among the Dead Men" in Pinup Noir
Not too bad. Along with that, I’ve got two stories ("My My, Hey Hey" and “Carry Job”) that are in the hands of publishers who are interested in them. No commitment yet, but I’m hopeful!
That’s not all I wrote this year, though. There’s seven other short stories that I worked up, and two longer stories that I have started to extend into novella or possibly even novel territory. Plus I’ve managed to stay consistent here on Substack, with 2-3 posts per week.
Oh, and I finished my first book. I may have mentioned that.
Totaling it all up, let’s see… add those, carry the three… over 165k words, not counting blog posts and non-fiction writing. That comes out to a little over 650 words per work day. Not shabby, but I could do better. I’ll have to think about it, but I would like to see myself hit 250k in the coming year.
Something I will have to think about more deeply this coming year is focus. I feel like I do best when I am working toward a goal. So I think I will try to look at my schedule for the coming year, see what projects I want to complete, then map out a path to get there so I always have something that I am focused on.
Editing
I got involved with a writer’s group, the Alpha Mercs. I have learned a lot from them. Not just writing and storytelling, either. I’ve learned how to give critiques and (I think?) accept critiques.
Thanks to the Mercs, I’ve got a much better set of tools in my toolbox now. I’ve been compiling a list of regular expressions that I can use in Scrivener to help me identify some of my most common issues. Any time I can take that kind of knowledge and codify it, I count that as a win.
The issue with critiques is that they can be spotty - sometimes there’s a dozen things to look at; other times, there’s nothing new. In the coming year, I do want to make a better effort to get to things in a timely manner. I know that I appreciate it, and I want to be consistent with others who are looking to be for feedback.
I also found myself doing a lot of editing and review for a couple of political organizations and non-profits. I honestly enjoy that as a change of pace, and it’s a great way for me to get some practice while also providing others with a benefit.
Reading
OK, there’s not as much here as I was hoping for, but it’s still a pretty big improvement over the doom-scrolling I did the year before. Here’s what ended up getting ejected from my Tower of Reading this past year, in no particular order:
Honestly, not as much as I had hoped for. I was (unofficially) shooting for two books a month. Ah well. I will console myself with the reminder that I did was quite a bit of technical reading related to the Day Job this past year as well. That included online books and references on Kubernetes, the Lustre filesystem, scrum development methodologies, and the Rust programming language.
Other
I saw my youngest daughter graduate from high school; helped organize a successful fundraiser for our local pregnancy center; assisted in launching another non-profit; and provided a lot of informal advice and editing support to a few political candidates.
I also put together a website for #TeamAndMore. If you’re wondering what that means…
We're the author version of the opening act at a concert. The new guys, the up-and-coming. The folks with not quite enough of a following to get our name on the cover of our own book or an anthology (yet!) We might be listed as "... and others", "... with many others", or some variation. However you slice it, we're #TeamAndMore - and we're proud of it!
I’m actually quite excited about the #TAM site. There are a lot of exciting possibilities in the small-press, digital, and indie publishing worlds right now. I hope that #TAM can become a simple, compact reference for new writers to help them get oriented in the writing world as it develops over the coming years.
So that’s it! 165k words, 4 stories published, a novel finished, a website built. Not bad for a first year of taking my writing career more seriously. Let’s see how LibertyCon 2023 inspires me - and what the next year will bring.