Feeling Capable

As a writer, there are days I feel so clever and legit. Those are the days I allow myself to imagine an end to the day job (and all the correcting of others’ writing that being a full time  language arts teacher entails) and the beginning of a full time writing career that takes me into my retirement years.

I see myself sitting on panels and playing goofy games on stages at cons. I picture myself wearing “Presenter” badges all across America (instead of "Attendee" badges). I picture my agent and a publishing deal and seeing my books on the end shelves at Target.

Then there are days I feel like a dense sham. I suspect my work is okay, even good. But all of those pie-in-the-sky dreams feel out of reach. Silly, even.

Alas.

For the third year, I am keeping track of my writing life in this journal: 

It starts with several pages of reflection and goal setting, which I like. I have to admit, my pattern is to overestimate the amount of work I'll do in a year. By the end of the year, I will have finished my January-February writing goals. But the outline of the story I've made each year has worked as a roadmap. I'm on the path, moving in the right direction, and I know where I'm headed. I just don't make the progress my optimistic January self thinks is possible. 

This year, my main writing goals are:

* To finish draft 1 of Lio and Lamb: Haven

I had hoped to accomplish this in January and February, as March and April will be filled with the spring musical. But January is almost done and the musical has already started. It might be my summer goal.

* To refine my character arcs

"Refine" actually means "make them happen." Thanks to a class I took at The Loft last November/December, I have some good ideas jotted down. Right now, my characters are too similar. Probably too much like me, to be honest. I need to complicate and gunk and weird them up. 

* Deep revision on Aco

I need to use the advice  Matt Bialer offered in his critique to do more than surface level revision. I'll concentrate on making decisions about POV characters, examining chapter length, and introducing the main plot more clearly/earlier. He also voiced an interest in a small, throwaway detail that I've decided to amp up in the earlier volumes so it will resonate later.

With hope, I will move along the path toward my goals and feel even more capable when I fill out my goals for 2020-2021. 

A New Website

Sometimes I feel competent when it comes to technology. Sometimes I don't.

For many years, I had a simple website at snowmoonpublishing.com to share SPOTD with the world. I built the site on iWeb, bought my domain name from GoDaddy, and had it hosted through iPage. More than once I had problems getting GoDaddy and iPage to work together, but with a little patience and grit, I figured it out.

Somehow, at some point, everything stopped working. And I no longer had the patience to fix it.

Over this Christmas break, I finally decided to do something about my lack of professional web presence. The least "banging-my-head-against-the-wall" solution seemed to be starting from scratch. So I bought my name as a URL and set up web hosting -- both products from the same company this time.

There was a definite learning curve as I built the site using WordPress. But an afternoon's work was all it took to get a basic site live.

Ta-da!

Click here to visit annwachtler.com!

Thanksgiving

What???!?! It's not Thanksgiving, it's New Year's Eve.

Yeah, but the end of the year is a great time to be thankful. Besides, I wrote this post a month ago but never posted it. Out with the old, as they say.

Jump on the metaphorical TARDIS with me, and let's visit November, 2019...

NOVEMBER, 2019

Nanowrimo. It was fantastic. I admit, it wasn't my most successful as far as writing new words or writing every day. As usual, book club did me in. But I did (mostly) revise and (minimally) draft 45,000 words.

The reason it was so great is this: I found my ending!

During a Writing Excuses podcast, I have no idea which one, Mary Robinette Kowal advocated for the writing of short stories, if only because it forces a writer to write endings. And the panelists agreed.

Additionally, they said that it is better to finish works, even poor ones, than to leave them undone, because that is how you learn how to write endings. And I completely agree.

I felt great after finishing Aco this summer. In fact, it was a high from which I did not recover well. After I found and drafted that ending, I revised (minimally) for the rest of the summer. I wrote very little new material. I sent it off to my alpha reader and shifted attention to my day job. Until November and Nanowrimo.

So today was Thanksgiving. I was stuffed and bored with watching television. Most of the extended family had gone home many hours before. Knowing that there were only three days left in the month (and in Nanowrimo 2019), I decided to at least work on my outline for the final chapters of Haven…

And VOILA! Several important plot twists practically wrote themselves. Each event led to the next, inexorably and inevitably. The direction I thought it would go? Wasn’t how it went. And I’m pretty happy with how it went. Still a little jiggling and chapter POV manipulating to do. But it’s there.

I remember getting to this point last July and feeling capable. Not brilliant, just capable. It’s a good feeling. I am thankful for it.

DECEMBER 31, 2019

Now I'm in the throes of making that ending happen. Christmas break was lovely, with lots of time for writing. I added around 7000 words to the draft and have roughly outlined the final chapters. If I can keep going in January, I'll have complete drafts of two volumes in the new series. They'll both need work, especially character work, but the stories will be there.

Looking back, I am pleased with my progress this year.
Looking forward, I am excited to continue the Lio and Lamb series.

Full of thanks, I sign off for 2019.