“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” –Hunter S. Thompson
I added the subtitle to this obligatory, perfunctory, and inevitable end-of-year goal post because when I started writing it two, almost three weeks ago now, I had no fucking idea where any of this was going. I mean, I really didn’t. And now that I do have some inkling I could still be wrong.
But now that some of the dust from 2022 has started to settle, the way seems clearer. I’m back on my anti-depression meds, and things seem just a little bit brighter. Bright enough to start planning anyway, and I find the subtitle works just as well under this newer, more positive context.
To make things simpler (somewhat), I’ve divided things into categories, or buckets, of broad things I want to achieve in our next trip around the sun. As always, we’ll see what happens. But if I fail it will not be from lack of trying.
I usually have some grandiose scheme for how I’m going to push really hard and double down and 2X my productivity going into the new year and blah blah really cool-sounding plug-and-play aspirational phrases–and then fail.
But what else to do during the “what day is this” twilight time at the ass-end of the year between Christmas presents and funny glasses shaped like the coming year but make plans?
So here they are, True Believers, split into my planned areas of focus, if you’re interested. If not, then consider this post just for me as a way of not only writing everything down but making it public and keeping me honest.
The areas are as follows:
Career, Health, Writing, Conventions, and overall Productivity.
CAREER
First, the Career. I want one. I need one. Even though part of me thinks the other part is crazy for trying to pursue one at this late stage in the game.
See, I’ve been with my current employer for 20 years. In ten more I can retire, then do the writing and travel or whatever.
But it’s been a slog. It’s not a job I find all that interesting, and parts of it are physically demanding. It’s not in a field I have any interest in whatsoever, even though I recognize its importance in all of our lives. I’ve always wanted to get paid to write, and anything less than that just isn’t going to cut it.
Besides, the past two years in this place have been a special brand of Hell I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, and my worst enemy is a toxic coworker who helped bring about these dire working conditions in the first place. Suffice it to say I need a break. I’m at an age where the so-called corporate ladder is no longer a suitable inducement for my labor. Working myself to the bone no longer sounds like a virtue, even if there was a fat wad of cash at the end of it, which there isn’t.
I also want to work remotely. My current job requires my physical presence and can’t be done remotely. My wife works remotely now, a recent development she literally had to quit her job in order to get put in place. And I’d very much like to join her. I’ve grown weary of office politics, listening to other people’s nonsense, and meetings that should have been emails.
Working remotely would provide several advantages. Not only would I be able to cut the forty-five-minute commute to this weird amalgam of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and Hee-Haw, but cutting out said commute would give me time to exercise each day, which ties into the next section. But it ain’t easy.
Job searching in this post-modern, late capitalist hellscape, for lack of a better word, sucks. The only people who are profiting are the multitudes of job coaches, who will gladly hand over the keys to the kingdom if only I part with half of my paycheck.
The vagaries and vicissitudes of modern-day job searching deserve their own separate post. Suffice it to say it is difficult and not every factor is up to me. I’m looking for a remote content writer role, and remote positions have their own separate level of difficulty. I’m doing the best I can and it will happen when and if it happens.
HEALTH
The frail human suit has gotten a few more miles on it since I started on my author journey (and boy, have I come to loathe that phrase), a bit longer in the tooth. I’ve made a few more trips around the sun since then, and as my favorite archeologist once opined, it’s not the years, it’s the mileage.
I’ve watched writers I admire, writers I care about, damn near kill themselves for this gig. They’ve made a lot of money. They have a huge backlist. They’ve won awards. But they’ve almost all but destroyed their bodies in the process. I don’t want that to happen to me. I’ve known writers personally who drank themselves to death or developed congestive heart failure or diabetes. Or–pick your poison. There’s a whole host of scary-ass health problems associated with sitting on one’s ass all day every day. Things like deep vein thrombosis, stroke, and hypertension to name but a few. And I’m as guilty of that (in)activity as anyone.
But I want to hang around as long as I can. And that means taking better care of myself. And I can’t wait until I’m working from home to start making that happen. So I’ll be moving around as much as I can and eating smaller portions of healthier food. At least that’s the plan. I’m certainly tired enough of rich, heavy holiday foods to give it a go.
WRITING
Short Stories. Mentally I made a goal to myself during the last Dragon Con that I would submit more short stories to anthologies in the coming year. I started toward this goal during the latter part of 2022 and made some headway by placing a story in Blaze Ward’s After the Fall anthology. But I want to do more.
To that end, I’m checking out submission guidelines for every anthology project that sounds interesting and trying to come up with something before the deadline. I’ve already submitted one story and I just finished another that’s due December 31st.
The key for me is staying organized, keeping a lookout for opportunities, and making room in my life for creation.
It’s all about taking the long view in 2023. Placing stories in anthologies won’t pay much if anything, but it will get my name out there, and I will hopefully grow my reputation as a fast and capable writer. The end goal is to have editors invite me to contribute to their books.
And the stories I don’t place will go out to my patrons on Patreon and get compiled into short story collections when I have enough material. In fact, these two things will happen regardless, once I get the rights back.
Books. This is one major area that just a few weeks ago I had no idea what it would look like in 2023. But now I’m starting to see the light at the end, and I’m starting to not only feel like I can plan this stuff, but I finally feel like I want to plan this stuff again, and it feels good.
I haven’t felt like writing fiction in a long time and I sort of just turned off the spigot. Now it’s back on, my antenna is attuned to the aether, and I don’t want to go back. Most of it was because I was, and still am, writing a lot of paying nonfiction–blog posts, ghostwriting a nonfiction book, and whatnot. But a good chunk of it was just plain old seasonal depression.
I’m planning a couple of signature series. One of them space opera, and the other urban fantasy, which will be in novella format. With a good outline, I can bang those out quickly, well within my new quarterly schedule (see below).
I’ve got another sooper sekret project that I’m planning as a treat for my patrons on Patreon. You’ll have to become a patron to learn more.
Kickstarter. I want to leverage Kickstarter in a big way going forward. I’m shooting for quarterly Kickstarters centered around a book trilogy release. Kickstarter will be my initial book launch, followed by Amazon and all the other platforms.
My first Kickstarter of 2023 will be for a new anthology called League of Monsters. If it does half as well as The Complete Monster Earth I’ll consider it a success. Beyond that, I’ll have to build up a bit of a backlist of titles that I can afford to sit on until I roll them out on Kickstarter. We shall see.
Having Fun. As my friend and fellow writer Lucy Blue opined on Facebook: “You know the single greatest thing about being a writer, once you make the decision to be one? You can write whatever stories, as many stories, as you like whether anybody ever buys one or not. So much of the rest of it is out of your control and frustrating and unfair and generally soul-shredding. But the actual writing of stories? That shit belongs to you.”
I think my friend is onto something. Have fun. Control what you can control. And the rest will take care of itself. I haven’t had fun at this game for a long time. It’s time to change that.
CONVENTIONS
I will once again be an attending pro at Dragon Con, proving writers really are masochists.
I’ve applied for ConCarolinas once again. I had to bow out last year due to a lack of funds. Hopefully, I won’t have to do the same this year. I also applied for JordanCon, but for the third year in a row, they rejected me. I suspect I’m not enough Fantasy for their tastes, and that’s fair. I’ll not waste my time on them anymore.
Beyond that, who knows? We’ll have to see how the finances do before I can commit to any more conventions in 2023 and beyond. Much of it will depend on my either finding a full-time remote job or securing stable, ongoing and well-paying freelance work.
PRODUCTIVITY
Early last year I bought this big dry-erase two-month wall calendar and stuck it on the wall in my office. But the other day I started thinking maybe two months wasn’t enough and I should move to a three-month quarterly calendar system for planning. I pulled the trigger and the calendar arrived yesterday.
A lot of businesses use a quarterly system, so from a purely business standpoint, it makes a lot of sense. Plus having three months to do a thing sounds better than cramming everything into just 30 days. 90 days leave a lot of room for schemes and machinations.
The quarterly calendar will culminate in a Kickstarter publishing project, once I have some things written. And I’m devoting the first quarter to finding a remote job. We’ll see how that goes. Like the exercise thing, I can’t hold off on everything else I want to accomplish because the job search is taking too long.
Getting out of my own way. I tend to stop doing things–even to the point of no longer wanting to do them–that I’m not good at or prove ineffective. I would make a terrible gambler. The only way I’d keep putting money in is if I continued getting money out. For most people the opposite is true. Once it becomes too easy for them they lose interest, while a cycle of win some, lose some keeps them hitting the big red button like a lab monkey. They say the difference between a regular person and a gambler is that a regular person will go to Vegas, lose his nest egg and go home, whereas a gambler will go to Vegas, lose their nest egg and then move to Vegas. I am not the gambling kind. If it doesn’t at least look like a sure thing I am unlikely to even attempt it, because I feel as if I do enough unsure things already, like writing. I discourage easily, but I am just as easily encouraged. Success can be just as fleeting as failure. This is something I am working on getting over as I move forward.
A big part of it for me, I think, is keeping the long view and having fun with it. Late-stage capitalism has put a price tag on every field of human endeavor until no one feels validated unless they’re making money every single minute of the day. That doesn’t have to be the case with everything. Every blog, story, or novel I write has value even if no one ever buys it. I think we lose sight of that fact to our detriment.
So here it is. My plans for the new year. Not goals per se, because those are easily demolished the first week in January. But plans and processes are not so easily dismantled. Wish me luck, and good luck to all of you in all your endeavors in the coming year.