writing

2014 in review

Two thousand fourteen, I think I can safely say, was not my favorite year on record. This is less because it was a terrible year — though it often was that, at least in the news, in the nation, in the greater scheme of things. It’s just that I finished up the year feeling kind of rudderless, set adrift, not exactly happy with the choices that I’d made (or not been making) over the past few (or maybe even ten) years.

On paper, it wasn’t such a bad year. And while of course man does not live on paper alone, there are a few things I’m glad to have seen and done in 2014.

I got to travel a little: for work, to Texas; for writing, to Canada. Both trips were over much more quickly than I had expected, both leaving me a little melancholy upon my return. (I think you could say I still haven’t quite shaken that yet.)

I sold a couple of short stories, one to Andromeda Inflight Spaceways Inflight Magazine and the other to Mythic Delirium. Both are still forthcoming, though I’m hopeful they’ll both appear sometime in the new year. I saw more rejections than acceptances, but that’s the nature of the things. I know I need to write more, even as I know there will be more rejections ahead.

Meanwhile, I keep plugging away at Kaleidotrope, that little quarterly zine I publish. This year, a poem from 2013 was nominated for a Rhysling Award, and I published twenty-two new stories and ten new poems, all free to read. I’ve received some good feedback on the zine, and while I’m not entirely sure where it’s going, it’s something I still enjoy.

I read considerably fewer books than I have in years past, but there were some good ones in the mix. There’s a full list here, if you’re for some reason interested, but I think James S.A. Corey’s Expanse novels were my favorite.

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Having read them all this past year kind of gives 2014 a shape it otherwise sort of lacked.

I saw some decent movies. I even saw some bad ones I didn’t mind quite so much. These, below, were probably the best ones, though it’s all really subjective anyway.

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And I put together a mix of my favorite songs from the year. (A few actually from this past year. It starts with Bob Seger and ends with Taylor Swift, so you try figuring out this year’s theme from it, ’cause I’m sure not. Also, if you’re one of the “lucky” few who I sent an actual physical copy of the mix with a Christmas card, know that this online version contains one additional, concluding track I hadn’t heard in time to add to the CDs. So, yeah: bonus!

Ultimately, though, I’m less interested in revisiting, or even reminiscing over, 2014 and more interested in looking ahead to 2015. It’s going to take a lot of hard work to get where I want to go, and it’s work I don’t feel entirely ready for — but which I’ll need to do nevertheless. It’s going to take a lot of luck and perseverance.

I don’t know if I’ll have enough of either in 2015, but I have to try.

Status update

I think it’s safe to say I’ve been ignoring this blog for a little while.

November has been kind of a mixed bag for me. Emotionally, I’ve not exactly been at my best, whatever that is, and it’s been tough to find any real interest in chronicling my life, beyond the occasional — well, certainly more than occasional — sighing about it over on Twitter. It’s been tempting to just post the occasional link to my last real entry and say something like “ibid.” or “same shit, different day.” It’s not as if anything has really changed.

In all fairness — to the universe, I guess — it’s probably way too early for things to have actually changed. I can’t really expect overnight transformation in my life…but that, of course, doesn’t stop me from wanting it. That doesn’t stop me from being sad when I look at all the things in my life that I want to transform and feel powerless to ever enact that level of change.

I’ve been re-watching a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer recently. It started out as just this thing I was doing and has taken on the level almost of comfort food. And it’s occurred to me, with something akin to surprise and even a little dismay, that the character I most relate to is actually Jonathan. He’s a likable character, but certainly not a model of healthy behavior. This is a character to whom Buffy says at one point, “You can’t keep trying to make everything work out all at once, with some huge gesture. Things are complicated. They take time and work.” It’s questionable if he ever learns that lesson. It’s a tough lesson to learn. I know I’d prefer if I didn’t have to do so.

So what have I been doing lately? You know, besides re-watching old Joss Whedon shows?

My writing is going okay. I’ve sold two short stories in the past month, which is a good incentive to keep writing more. I’ve had more than twice as many rejections as that, of course, and the writing isn’t going easily. But this at least feels like an area of my life I know how to make better. There’s going to be a lot of work involved, which would be easier if I had anything approaching a real work ethic, but I feel better about writing right now than I do about a lot of other things.

I’ve also decided in the new year to take an online writing class with Cat Rambo, which I’m hoping will help me with the craft somewhat, and maybe even get me out in the world a little. I’d been eyeing a couple of other workshop classes, like this one or this one, but Rambo’s seemed a good match for where I feel like I am as a writer and where I want to get to.

Meanwhile, I have been trying, with mixed results, to get out into the world and meet new people.

I’ve gone to a write-in thing held by the Gotham Writer’s Workshop a couple of times. It’s a free-writing exercise, akin to the sort of thing I do most Sundays with friends, but this time with strangers. (And with a $20 price tag, admittedly. Though there is conversation, snacks, and wine.)

I went to a science fiction/horror meetup in the city, where they were showing Nightmare on Elm Street for the 30th anniversary. It was a lot of fun, even if I did only really get to talk to one person — she and I may have been the only ones from the sci-fi half of the meetup group — and even if I did leave before they actually showed the movie. (They showed a lot of other content, including part of a Bollywood remake, but after three hours, I had a train to catch.)

I went to the Fantastic Fiction reading at the KGB Bar in the East Village, where I felt very awkward. Seriously, the readings themselves were great — Nancy Kress and Jack Skillingstead — but I think I said all of two words to anybody else in that very tiny bar. (And that was, “Oh, okay,” when Ellen Datlow kindly gave me a folding chair, I think just to get me out of the way.) I might go back, but I think I’d need more than a couple of beers for courage.

I went to a British film and TV meetup at a bar in midtown. (Have I mentioned how I was once the president of the Penn State Monty Python Society? I do have Britcomedy-fan street cred.) The bar was loud — people sure do drink for a Thursday night — and we didn’t all get to really talk over dinner, but they seemed like a nice enough group of people.

I also skipped out on a book club when, five minutes after I’d turned up, they lost their venue, and I decided to forgo another late night in the city with another meetup that was showing this.

That was all in the past week. (With the exception of the write-in, which was the two weeks before.) None the huge, life-changing gesture the dumb (but likable) Jonathan part of my brain has been looking for, but it’s kept me busy, I guess.

I went to see a live taping of A Prairie Home Companion with my parents last night, too.

Oh, and I also registered for both next year’s Readercon and World Fantasy Convention. But those are a ways off, so.

Finally, the search for an apartment doesn’t go terrifically well, not least of all because New York rental prices are ridiculous and the process is so complicated. But I’m off from work all this week, and I’m going to go look at a place tomorrow afternoon. I’m going to keep my fingers crossed that I like it, can afford it, and won’t get locked out by another renter. Though it might take a minor miracle for that to happen.

All of this maybe makes it sound like I’m meandering towards happiness, and maybe eventually I am. But it’s a slow, long and lonely meander, and, like I said, a mixed bag of a month. I’m going to have to think long and hard this Thursday about just what exactly I am thankful for.

I’m not really at my best lately, but I’m working on it.

So it’s Sunday

I’m a little more adjusted to being back from Canada, I guess, although no less nostalgic for my time there and kind of wishing I could go back. I’d like to, at some point, and hopefully it won’t take another three years like it did last time, but for now I’m sort of getting the hang again of being in New York.

Of course, I’ll be traveling to Texas in a couple of weeks for work. I’ve booked my plane tickets and rental car and everything.

It’s taken me a little while to get back into the swing of things, writing-wise, to recapture whatever momentum I was hopefully learning to build (if some days not actively building) in Banff. Part of that was my writing group getting canceled last weekend, and part of that was just the weirdness of returning after two weeks. But I’m back on the horse, and if not writing a lot yet, at least writing, and moreover finishing things.

I finished a story this evening, a flash piece I think I still need to trim about a hundred words from before sending it out. Meanwhile, I’ve got a couple of other stories — one written before, then other at, Banff — out for consideration elsewhere. The waiting to hear isn’t fun, nor are the rejection letters, but those rare moments when a story actually clicks, then falls together? That’s worth it.

My writing group wasn’t canceled this week, and I actually like what I wrote there too, but I think I’ve decided to stop posting those works in progress here. Partly because they sometimes do become actual works in progress, something I might want to expand and adapt and, eventually, submit. I don’t know that a short selection from a rough first draft posted here precludes me from doing so, or that it could reasonably be considered a reprint — which most places won’t buy — but I think I’ve decided to stop taking that risk.

Hopefully that will just give me added incentive to finish stories and sell them if I want anybody but my writing group to see what I’m working on.

Sunday

I’m going to admit, my own writing has suffered this week, as I’ve struggled to adjust to not being in Banff.

A big part of it, obviously, is the return of the morning schedule — having to get up at a specific hour each day and go to sleep at a reasonable hour the night before. I’d be lying if I said that hadn’t kind of kicked my butt all last week, and that I didn’t miss being able to sleep in a little should the need arise.

But the truth is, I just plain miss Banff.

It was a week full of catching-up projects at work, and planning for more travel at the end of October, this time for work, to Texas. And my sister visiting from Texas this weekend (along with her husband, dog, and new cat), so that we could take our parents out for a long(ish)-planned anniversary dinner.

And then there was that brand new issue of Kaleidotrope that I launched on Wednesday.

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I’m really happy with how the issue turned out. But, frankly, it’s a little amazing that I got it — much less anything — done this week.

I need to get back into the groove of writing. That, or I need to go back to Banff.

Oh. Canada.

I am having a marvelous time in Canada.

I didn’t plan on ignoring the blog altogether, at least not the same way I actively planned to take a break from my Tumblr and my work e-mail. (In the case of the latter, I changed my password just before I left the office last Thursday and refused to memorize it.) It’s just turned out that way.

Granted, most of the regular visitors to this blog follow me on Twitter, where I’ve continued to blather, or have themselves actually been here in Canada with me. So posts here, even if I’d had the time or inclination, would have mostly just been repeating myself.

Still, it’s good to write these things down.

I arrived in Calgary on Friday evening, after a pair of pretty uneventful flights. On the way, I read about half of Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, which I’m really enjoying. I may get around to finishing it on my return trip. (Although I do leave at 6 in the morning, so…)

I spent a good block of Saturday afternoon walking around downtown Calgary with Jocelyn, who offered to be my tour guide for a couple of hours while I was in town. The last time I was in Calgary, in 2011, I saw basically none of it, so it was nice to have the company and see a few of the sights. (That those sights included things like a flame-throwing octopus — fresh from Burning Man, apparently, and in town for Beakerhead — was just an added bonus.)

I had dinner, then, with Heather, who it was great to see again — even if I did feel like I should be using the servant’s entrance to visit her palatial estate. (My own room was nothing to sneeze about, quite lovely, but still.) We grabbed breakfast the next morning as well, and then I was racing out the door to catch the bus to Banff.

Which is where I’ve been since Sunday.

And it has been ridiculously beautiful here. Seriously, the cold weather I was warned about so far hasn’t really materialized — though it does feel like early fall — and it really is impossible not to be impressed by the gorgeous scenery. There’s just so much of it! I went to a geology talk-and-walk yesterday, given by the Banff Centre’s Director of Customer Service Jim Olver, and I still don’t quite remember how many mountains are around us.

And, despite a crazy-making evening during which my Chromebook died on me and I ran around (with Heather’s help) trying to get it to work again, the writing has actually been going well.

I finished a short story yesterday, then threw caution under the bus completely and decided to submit it somewhere. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen, they reject it? (Oh my god, they could totally reject it. What have I done?!) It’s a goofy little piece, but I had fun writing it, so we’ll see.

I’m not yet settled on what’s next, though I’ve got a few stories in the pipeline and almost another week and a half to work on them here.

Did I mention that I’m having a marvelous time?