Creative year in review: 2012

It’s that time again, when I look back on the previous year and check last year’s goals to see how I did.

Last year’s goals, and my progress:

Revise the novel and start submitting it to agents.

Revise, yes; submit, no. But after one more relatively minor round of revisions, I plan to send it out in January.

Start updating at least one (1) of my various Kismet projects as a webcomic

I suppose that technically I did manage to do this one, but what I actually meant was “update, and keep updating” rather than “update, then stop”. Still, I got another 15 or so pages on Sun-Cutter, which is something.

Write another novel

I got about 90% done and stalled out. But I’m mostly there. And I finished two novellas. I think I was pretty damn close on this one. Another 10,000 words on the novel would have done it, but I was so stuck on the ending that I figured it was better to let it sit for awhile, then revise it and write a decent ending, rather than slam out something that I’d have to completely rewrite just to check this one off the list.

Get the Freebird book together

‘Tis done!

Get the Hunter’s Moon book together

No, but now that I’ve discovered how easy (and cheap!) it is to go through CreateSpace, this one is definitely on the agenda for 2013.

As for what I actually accomplished … I’m awfully happy with what I did get done this year, which is:

- Got the Freebird book out, got it in local stores, and did local signings.
- Sold a short story to a pro-rate market.
- Got the urban fantasy novel ready to send to agents (except for one more round of revisions, which won’t take too long).
- Finished most of the urban fantasy novel sequel (book 2) and got a pretty good idea of what book 3 is going to be about.
- Wrote (and finished!) several long short stories and novellas.
- Sold a short story under my “Layla M. Wier” romance alias.
- Started doing art again – and selling it!
- Worked more on Kismet, even if I didn’t get that far along.

2013 goals are coming in a new post …

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2013 creative goals

It’s interesting to look back on my last few years of creative roundup posts. I’ve been doing them since 2006, and sometimes I feel psyched about the progress I’ve made, while other times I feel like I really should have gone much farther, much faster than I’ve managed to do.

But I also feel a little more confident every year, I think. This year I wrote ~250,000 words of original fiction; sadly a good deal of that was, as usual, on unfinished projects, but I’ve written more every year since I started recording my daily writing counts (in 2009).

And I really want to kick my butt in gear in 2013, and get things finished, and get them published. For a while I scaled back my goals because I never seemed to finish any of them, and it was disheartening. This year, though, I’m aiming high.

2013 creative goals:

- Match or beat my 2013 word count (255,700 wds)
- Submit the urban fantasy novel to agents
- Finish the urban fantasy sequel (book 2) and outline book 3
- Write another novel (as me)
- Write another novel/novella as my romance alias
- Sell a short story to a pro market
- Sell more romance fiction
- Get the Hunter’s Moon book out
- Continue pursuing watercolor cards as a business venture

… I think that about covers things.

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Crossposted to Wordpress, Livejournal and Dreamwidth. Comment wherever you like.