Happy New Year

Something about the turning of the year propels people to resolve themselves. To lose weight, to finish a story, to find a (better) job. I find it hard to go back, scramble through papers and find the ending year's resolutions to see what was accomplished, but I still like the idea of starting off with a goal.

I have some of the usual goals, to exercise more, try to be more fit, and since I graduated in May (spent the summer and part of the fall editing and querying), I haven't found a job yet, so that's a big goal as well. I let my crafty Christmas pull me away from the job-hunting. For this blog, however, I focus on the writing goals.

Between tomorrow and this day next year, I will:


Revise 'Hounds' at least once more.

Query agents on that urban fantasy.

Edit Harry's Skin (my M.A. thesis, and frankly, the reason I applied for the graduate program in the first place).

Start querying for that around May/June.

Finish first draft of my steampunk ghost story. (Probably get some editing in as well, but we'll see how the other editing goes first.)


It was three, almost four years ago that I realized I could finish a novel-length story. After accomplishing a full first draft, though, comes the heavy editing. I've reached a point where I can see what doesn't work, and I can fix some of it, but some solutions still elude me. I resolve to examine my editing practices more this year, so that I don't look at the editing process as endless, hellish, or treat it so hesitantly that I neglect to textually weedwhack it as necessary (I know there are times that I let myself get bogged down in the small edits rather than deleting or rewriting scenes, because I didn't want to admit something so big was wrong.)

One revelation about my writing, which I've made this year, is that my first drafts are rather rambly. So you can see, most (all) of my blog posts are essentially first drafts, but for that, I hope you forgive me and accept the extemporaneousity of it. I'll try to recognize more in these writing habits so as to improve the first drafts and make the editing easier.

Any new writing goals for you readers out there?

I'll leave off this last post of 2009 with a simple wish, for all of you, your friends and family, to be healthy, be happy, and to write much and well.

Happy New Year! Happy writing, everyone!