Just another writer
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My social media fast
Back at the beginning of March, I deleted the Twitter and Facebook apps from my phone, signed out on all my computers and began a Lenten fast from social media. Shortly afterwards, COVID-19 sent everything kiddlywumpus. It’s ben an interesting experience not being connected to the communities on social media that I had been for…
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Writerly resolutions: March Status—Quarantine Edition
So you’d think that with quarantine I’d be more productive as a writer. You’d think wrong. I made good progress on revising the last chapter I wrote in the first half of the month, but the new chapter has been coming a few words at a time. My Submittable queue has drained much more slowly this…
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Writerly resolutions: February Status
February continued to be a crappy month for me personally, although, unlike January, I actually made some progress on the novel. Chapter 19 is finished and Chapter 20 is nearly done with its first draft. I even managed to write a paragraph on a short story. My Submittable queue continues to drain, with its total down…
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Writerly resolutions: January Status
January was a crappy month. I did very little writing on the novel. I started a new project which I’ve since discarded as self-indulgent garbage. The lone bright spot was an acceptance for a story and the slow decline of the size of my submittable queue (down from 53 to 31). I can only hope…
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Writerly resolutions for 2020
2019 was a disappointing year on many fronts, so I figure 2020 can’t help but be better. My goals for the year Finish a complete draft of We, The Rescued. Rewrite and revise to get it in a state where I can have some other eyes read it. Cut way back on submissions. I’m not…
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Writerly resolutions for 2019—the post mortem
I had two goals for the year and failed on them both. I aimed to finish the full draft of We, The Rescued. This entailed writing some 50,000 words over the course of the year. I made steady progress (as the graph above shows), but not steady enough and I had more than a few…
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2019 in rejections (and acceptances)
2019 was a grim year for me publishing-wise. I had only two acceptances, one each of fiction and poetry, the worst rejection rate since 2012 and for the first time since I sold my first story, I went a year without any income (not even a token sum) for any of my writing. As the…
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2019 in reading
I had set a goal for 2019 of reading 100 books and nearly made it with 95 books. I’ll aim again this year. My favorite reads for the year, in alphabetical order, were: Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath The Best American Essays 2019 edited by Rebecca Solnit and Robert Atwan…
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Beautiful Sentences: Ann Patchett
There was no logic to the way any hospital was laid out—they grew like cancers, with new wings metastasizing unexpectedly at the end of long tunneled halls. Ann Patchett, The Dutch House.