Yes. Yes. The intention here was for me to write about book releases for the coming year. But since this is New Year's Day and you are either A) still asleep or B) hung over, I am comfortably certain the sole person reading this blog post (and noting that I'm punting the rules) is my mother. And her philosophy can be summed up thusly: Write what you want.
So yeah.
What am I looking forward to? Not books. Not movies. Not TV shows. Because that way lies disappointment and bitter tears. I'd rather not get my hopes up for something only to have them dashed to pieces. I'd rather be pleasantly - even fantastically - surprised rather than tossed into the pit of missed story opportunities despair. This is a relatively recent thing for me. I *used* to get all worked up in advance for events (books, movies, TV) but, alas, I've been betrayed a few times and now, I hoard my emotional energy for losing my shit at the time I read/see/experience something. That said, I have tickets to the January Sherlock event. I am secretly looking forward to it. If my expectations are crushed beneath Benedict Cumberpatch's period boots someone may have to talk me down from the cinema's roof.
The real thing I'm looking forward to in 2016 is the SCIENCE. 2015 was a stellar year for science. Water on Mars. Amazing images and geology from Pluto. Earth 2.0. In 2016 I desperately want a fossil from Mars - a single celled organism would be fine. Don't care. A LIVE critter is too much to ask just yet. Unless the Big Foot rock decides to take a stroll across Curiosity's field of view. I'd love confirmation of those proposed ice volcanos on Pluto. I'd kill for hints of pollution in the atmosphere of Earth 2.0. Eh. Listen to me. Getting all greedy again. Yes. I want to be alive when life is found out there in the universe. So hey. Why not this year??
I'm also looking forward to each of you having a healthy, prosperous New Year full of joy.
Showing posts with label New Year. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Year. Show all posts
Friday, January 1, 2016
Friday, January 2, 2015
New Year Resolutions Writer Style
Welcome to the second day of the New Year. Hopefully, the hangover has worn off by now and you're staring at the list of resolutions you scribbled whilst judgment impaired by the adult beverage of your choice. Yeah, I don't (can't) drink, either, but work with me. I need an excuse for looking askance today at the unreasonable promises I made yesterday. The first item on my list: Move to Hawaii. Lovely thought. It misses a really vital step: Win the lottery. Because that is the only way I'd be able to afford a move to the islands. The second item on the list: Learn to love the cold is just laughable. A couple of years in Iceland when I was a kid cured me of cold forever. All I do is whine. Is it too much to ask to live someplace where making contact with the toilet seat isn't akin to planting my tender butt on a block of ice? It's 21 degrees outside and one of the radiators died a cowardly death. It has yet to be replaced because who wants to go outside in this nonsense? Which brings me to my next resolution: Go cold turkey on complaining. Yeah. Banner start to the resolutions.
Kidding. Don't do resolutions. I prefer goals. Minor difference of semantics, maybe, but resolutions seem so absolute. Goals get broken down into actionable steps. And when we talk about how my writing will change over the coming year, I can talk about how I aim for deeper POV, characters who follow you around your house for days after you read their stories, and maybe even a little angst, they're goals I really can't measure or control - they're a learning process that will take whatever time they're going to take. What I can control are these:
1. Finish what I start. No. You don't understand. This is a serious thing for me. I started five things this year. I finished two. Wait. No. I started eight things this year. Finished two. Sure. Those two things were novels. But seriously. That start/finish ratio? MUST get better. (The measureable goal: The equivalent of three novels this year. I'm asking myself for 300,000 finished words this year - first drafts accepted.)
2.z <-- This was the cat's input. One thing I can safely say won't change? Feline editorial input.
MY #2: Genres. More of 'em. We've got yer scifi, yer urban fantasy, yer sword and sorcery, and coming soon to a venue near you, contemporary romance and possibly historical fantasy. Already underway. Assuming proposals don't get kicked back in my face accompanied by the music of mocking laughter.
3. Finishing that which was started many long years ago. I started with scifi. I got stalled in the middle of a series. That series wants to be finished. Book three is half done. It's rattling its chains in my dreams at night. So it looks like this year will be a form of old home week. All year long. (The measurable on this one is a completed book three. It will count as one of my three novels for the year IF I get it done the way I want.)
Do you set goals for the new year, writing or otherwise? Why or why not? What helps you stay on track? That's, you know, legal.
Kidding. Don't do resolutions. I prefer goals. Minor difference of semantics, maybe, but resolutions seem so absolute. Goals get broken down into actionable steps. And when we talk about how my writing will change over the coming year, I can talk about how I aim for deeper POV, characters who follow you around your house for days after you read their stories, and maybe even a little angst, they're goals I really can't measure or control - they're a learning process that will take whatever time they're going to take. What I can control are these:
1. Finish what I start. No. You don't understand. This is a serious thing for me. I started five things this year. I finished two. Wait. No. I started eight things this year. Finished two. Sure. Those two things were novels. But seriously. That start/finish ratio? MUST get better. (The measureable goal: The equivalent of three novels this year. I'm asking myself for 300,000 finished words this year - first drafts accepted.)
2.z <-- This was the cat's input. One thing I can safely say won't change? Feline editorial input.
MY #2: Genres. More of 'em. We've got yer scifi, yer urban fantasy, yer sword and sorcery, and coming soon to a venue near you, contemporary romance and possibly historical fantasy. Already underway. Assuming proposals don't get kicked back in my face accompanied by the music of mocking laughter.
3. Finishing that which was started many long years ago. I started with scifi. I got stalled in the middle of a series. That series wants to be finished. Book three is half done. It's rattling its chains in my dreams at night. So it looks like this year will be a form of old home week. All year long. (The measurable on this one is a completed book three. It will count as one of my three novels for the year IF I get it done the way I want.)
Do you set goals for the new year, writing or otherwise? Why or why not? What helps you stay on track? That's, you know, legal.
Friday, January 3, 2014
Resolution Resistance
Ah, resolutions. Useless bits of crystallized resolve set onto a page so the universe at large has something to shoot at and down.
Not that I'm bitter.
Would you believe me if I said that has no bearing on my resistance to making resolutions? Fact is, I the daughter of an engineer. Do you know how many times I've had it explained to me that the concept of 'New Year' is 100% arbitrary and meaningless? I mean it doesn't even mark a celestial event like perihelion or aphelion or a solstice or equinox - things that can be measured and marked down to the second. The science rants. They began early in my childhood. You may correctly assume that the engineer wasn't big on resolutions. They just weren't a thing in my family. Still aren't.
Which isn't to say that some of us don't want to enact change. I'm still working on producing more material in a shorter time frame. But it's not something that started on January 1. Nor will it ever end. It's an ongoing effort of testing what works versus what doesn't and tweaking my methodology. However, if we want to talk about what I'm working on? That I can do.
1. Experiment with shortening the story production cycle by sussing out where my time sinks occur. Once I find 'em, plug them. How I go this may be it's own blog post at some point. Because there are steps and some rinse, repeating. I'm pretty sure I know where in my process I can look to shave weeks off a story schedule.
2. Step outside my comfort zone. Something about what I write should scare me at least a little. The current UF story set scares me because of some of the emotional lines my heroine is crossing. It's too easy to slip into comfort and for comfort to become a rut. So I want to do something (like learning to rappel) or write something that shoves at least one foot firmly outside of 'I'm okay with this', but still remains within the confines of 'reasonably safe and sane-ish'. You aren't likely to find me wanting to jump out of airplanes, if only because I'm not going to go up in one on a lark in the first place.
3. Play. It came to my attention that in recent years, I've limited my creative expression to one format. Writing. Something that's become a job - lucky me! But seriously, there're pressures on that mode of expression that weren't present before I was published. It's still creative. It's still fun, I still love it. But it's not PLAY. Play is where you go to laugh and make mistakes and laugh some more. This feeds the creative critters that we are. So I'll carry my camera and take stupid, blurry photos of things I think are a good time. I'll get out my sketch book and pencils out and see if I still remember how to draw. Badly. Not because I think I'll suddenly turn into Picasso, but because it might be fun. It's possible some reading will happen in there, too.
Were you hoping I'd give up pseudo-science and conspiracy theories? Sorry. That's Lent you're thinking of. And the wrong religion. :D
Not that I'm bitter.
Would you believe me if I said that has no bearing on my resistance to making resolutions? Fact is, I the daughter of an engineer. Do you know how many times I've had it explained to me that the concept of 'New Year' is 100% arbitrary and meaningless? I mean it doesn't even mark a celestial event like perihelion or aphelion or a solstice or equinox - things that can be measured and marked down to the second. The science rants. They began early in my childhood. You may correctly assume that the engineer wasn't big on resolutions. They just weren't a thing in my family. Still aren't.
Which isn't to say that some of us don't want to enact change. I'm still working on producing more material in a shorter time frame. But it's not something that started on January 1. Nor will it ever end. It's an ongoing effort of testing what works versus what doesn't and tweaking my methodology. However, if we want to talk about what I'm working on? That I can do.
1. Experiment with shortening the story production cycle by sussing out where my time sinks occur. Once I find 'em, plug them. How I go this may be it's own blog post at some point. Because there are steps and some rinse, repeating. I'm pretty sure I know where in my process I can look to shave weeks off a story schedule.
2. Step outside my comfort zone. Something about what I write should scare me at least a little. The current UF story set scares me because of some of the emotional lines my heroine is crossing. It's too easy to slip into comfort and for comfort to become a rut. So I want to do something (like learning to rappel) or write something that shoves at least one foot firmly outside of 'I'm okay with this', but still remains within the confines of 'reasonably safe and sane-ish'. You aren't likely to find me wanting to jump out of airplanes, if only because I'm not going to go up in one on a lark in the first place.
3. Play. It came to my attention that in recent years, I've limited my creative expression to one format. Writing. Something that's become a job - lucky me! But seriously, there're pressures on that mode of expression that weren't present before I was published. It's still creative. It's still fun, I still love it. But it's not PLAY. Play is where you go to laugh and make mistakes and laugh some more. This feeds the creative critters that we are. So I'll carry my camera and take stupid, blurry photos of things I think are a good time. I'll get out my sketch book and pencils out and see if I still remember how to draw. Badly. Not because I think I'll suddenly turn into Picasso, but because it might be fun. It's possible some reading will happen in there, too.
Were you hoping I'd give up pseudo-science and conspiracy theories? Sorry. That's Lent you're thinking of. And the wrong religion. :D
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