layla | Creative Year in Review: 2014

It’s that time of year again – my annual year-in-review and accountability post. I’ve been doing them since 2006; here’s the LJ tag and the DW tag.

First of all, here’s what I accomplished creatively in 2014:

Restarted Kismet! (FINALLY! Of everything I’ve done lately, this is what I’m the most proud of.)
My short story “Stormrider” appeared in the SF anthology Fierce Family from Crossed Genres.
I had a story from last year, “The Bride in Furs”, reprinted in Heiresses of Russ 2014: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction.
Published Held For Ransom (romance novel) through Dreamspinner Press.
Short story, “Timethieves”, in the benefit anthology Project Fierce Chicago.

I also signed up for Patreon (hope to do a lot more with that in 2015) and taught comics-making at the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival for the second year.

Under the cut, how I did with last year’s creative goals:

Match or beat my 2013 word count Dismally, no; this is the first year since I started keeping records in 2009 that I haven’t done progressively better. My word count was WAY down from last year, and the worst since 2010. On the other hand, my unfinished-project-to-finished-project ratio was a lot better. Fewer words, but less aimless flailing and a better ability to gauge which projects I can see through to completion, maybe?
Get a Paypal store set up on my website so people can buy things from me No, mostly because I’m not sure anymore if I want to. Still thinking about this.
Publish the Hunter’s Moon book No, but this was at least partly according to plan: I want to build up an audience with Sun-Cutter before launching a Kickstarter for this
Finish the urban fantasy novel edits & submit to agents No
Revise the urban fantasy sequel No
Sell some short stories No; the short stories I had out this year were all sold in 2013
~~Sell some romance (match or beat 2013!)~~ I dunno about the “match or beat 2013″ part, but I did sell the above-mentioned novel (which came out the same year) so I’m calling that a win
~~Write a novel as me~~ See below
~~Write a novel or novella as my romance alias~~ I wrote two novels (books 1 & 2 of a series), intended for the romance alias but may be published under my regular name if I can talk the publisher into it, since they’re much more like my regular writing than not. I’m therefore counting this and the above goal as a win — I did write two novels in 2014, even if it didn’t quite divide up like I’d planned.
~~Start updating a comic again~~ Yes! Still the 2014 accomplishment I’m most proud of.
~~Blog more regularly~~ A lot of it is because of posting Kismet updates — but I’m being less passive and more active online, and that’s really what I wanted to accomplish here.

Back soon with next year’s goals …

Crossposted from Wordpress.