What a welcome essay, written in your inimitable Becky way that makes your readers feel so accompanied and seen. That is the best thing about Lit Mag News: The feeling that this lonely work of striving to write beautifully is not so lonely after all. As for me, I resolve to build that new bookshelf in the dining room (yes, in the dining room, and I don't care what anyone has to say about it because it's the only space left in this tiny house). Then, I can get books off the floor, off the piano, and organize a shelf in my office (the one right above my desk) for the magazines and books where my writing has been published. I will look at those volumes and issues every day and remind myself that, though I am practically unknown, no longer young, and have never won a prize, I am still a writer, a real writer, no matter what that nattering, doubting voice inside my head says. There's much about the publishing world that feels like some random popularity contest, a game of chance and fashion. But organizing my books and acknowledging the good work I've done? That's something I can control.
See? People who haven't grown up this way don't understand. My mother also installed bookshelves in the dining room. Of course, her dining room was the size of half my house, but still...
Becky, I love this idea of changing the lens through which we view our goals by looking back at what is working so we have a clear vision going forward. I am impressed with your approach to stay off the internet and be present in the moment. Thanks for sharing that.
The last half of this year, I changed my submission strategy/focus to only submit to lit mags I actually enjoy reading. I do not enjoy a lot of the inaccessible, ultra-experimental work being published in some journals. So, instead of striving to change my writing to fit their preferences, I have made my own preferences a priority. I’m writing what brings me joy. In the coming year, I also want to continue writing legacy stories for hospice patients. If only five family members ever read these people’s stories, it is worth it to have had the honor of writing the substance of one’s life. I also want to continue encouraging other writers by reading and sharing their work. Lifting up others’ art has helped me build a beautiful community of creative friends who teach me new things every day. Lit Mag News has been a blessing to me this year, and I look forward to what this community shares next year. God’s richest blessings to all of you.
Tracie, I have two thoughts for you. First, I salute you for not being swayed by fashionable writing styles that you yourself do not enjoy. And second, there's a book I've put on my reading list that you might also enjoy: Lifescapes: A Biographer’s Search for the Soul by Ann Wroe. She writes the back-page obituary biographies for The Economist magazine. Most of these are fascinating because they are not necessarily of conventionally famous people but rather life stories of people who developed their individuality in some uncommon and thoughtful way, along the lines, I imagine, of "writing legacy stories for hospice patients." She brings out people's life themes beautifully.
In 2024 I had three poetry books published (in 3 different countries) and one won a pre-publication award. In the New Year I will continue my long-standing practice of mentoring my poet friends and my poet colleagues because I'm equipped with "backstage stories" --- and I can rattle off poetry presses and closing dates like the teenage boys on our block can recite today’s New York Yankees’ starting line-up.
Helping other poet friends, steering them straight, and writing book blurbs - - it's the sort of generosity I wish I had access to when starting out.
Well, the book that had been 7 years in the making with rejections and false starts galore was published by Shotgun Honey (Love You Till Tuesday) and I have a contract for the next one, so, yes, banner year, big adrenaline rush. Yet, what sticks most in my ming is how much fun I had writing a novel with another writer, the excitement, the bouncing of ideas, the long chats, the reworking to the point we don't know exactly who wrote what. The thing will be published in April and we're thinking of doing another one. Guess we caught the bug!
Thank you, Becky, for all your generous offerings and wisdom. My first book of poetry was published in 2022, "Ordinary Time." I am in a monthly poetry group that is supportive and expects one new poem each meeting. I read good poetry daily. My goal is to get one poem published by a top tier journal before I expire. I'm 79 and have no departure plans. Love and warm wishes to all.
In the last three years, I have taken 12 writing workshops. Three were worthless, one because of harsh animosity from another participant, another because it was teaching a writing formula and the third because I was actually kicked out of the group, but in all the others I read works that opened my mind, worked on assignments that stretched my abilities and received feedback that often enough helped me think and progress.
What I am writing now I could not have written three years ago. I know more forms and structures to consider and more techniques to apply. I have even more fun with words than ever before! All this makes me very, very happy. Being able to look back at 20 pieces from those workshops having been published or accepted for publication in the last two years is a bonus.
It’s not original, but my goal for this and every year is to aim for 100 rejections. It has worked well for me so far.
I have had 34 poems accepted, mostly in the past five years, and am now exploring the idea of putting together a chapbook in 2025, with about 15-20 of my better poems. I’m hoping there is some way to pursue that without having to win a contest. I don’t mind paying a fee.
I am at a place mainly consisting of frustration. I could say I want to write a novel. Well, I did. And about 90% of the stories have been published, some receiving awards. I can say the goal is to write the perfect query letter. Yet agent after agent tells me how important or timely the work is, but they are too busy to represent it. So, frustration. Then I submit story collections as chapbooks to various competitions. They are expensive at $20 a pop. I am a finalist in one of them, but they will not announce the winner until the new year. I have out floating on over many lit mags about 115 submissions. So I wait, and wait. Many had the entry for already nine months. Others, like Black Warrior and Missouri Review had wonderful things to say on their rejection letters.
So where am I? What are my goals? What I desire is that the novel finds a publisher. I would love to find one of those houses that love politically driven, socio-culturally aware fiction. I want my other three short story collections to find homes. I want by the end of the year to hold in my hands, not a self-published book, but the beautiful labor of love that exists between a culturally conscious editor and an eager author. Will I find that? I don't know. I only know that I have to keep trying, never give up and send the work out. In the mean time. The follow up novel is brewing in my head. Several story-chapters have already found their way to paper.
Thanks for this essay, Becky. It’s very helpful and inspiring.
These are the things that I’ve done inconsistently this year. When I do them I write better. I will be more mindful and consistent starting now. I have found practicing resolutions in December helpful because it feels like the preseason and it’s ok to mess up.
1.One book a week and write my notes and observations. If it takes more than a week then it’s two full weeks.
2.Engaged in SmokeLong Fitness more than the minimum - webinars, open pool, medal round.
David, after I read your note, I signed up for the 100 Rejections competition--and hope it will encourage me to write more and, as you have done, spend less time online.
By the way, about your first goal: in his Story Club substack, George Saunders often shares PDFs one week, then opens up the online conversation the week after. (Most recently, it was a lovely Katherine Anne Porter story I'd never read before.) It's been a helpful way to think more deliberately about craft.
This year, for the first time in decades, I will prioritize my own writing. I grew up in a household where my parents (who were visual artists in their own right) owned, lived, and breathed a business managing and promoting the careers of classical musicians for sixty+ years. I internalized their ethos and have spent most of my life teaching and promoting other writers (also raising four kids who became artists themselves in 4 different fields). I can still work to help others, but I have a LOT to say. I'm an experienced and excellent writer, so I am making a commitment to outsource as much admin work as possible, reign in my teaching energies, and put my own work first for the first time since I was in my twenties. As my oldest daughter, who is my life coach in this matter, says, "The Writer is King."
I retired a year ago after being fired from a longtime job that I had been unsuccessful in leaving for something better. I am still feeling my way into retirement living for a living. I saw my first poetry book published in 2023, but I am not good at self promotion. Last year was a very good year for publications of poetry, memoir and hybrids in various journals and anthologies. I attended two weekend workshops and a couple short weekly courses that have inspired and improved my work. I helped the local poetry club celebrate their fiftieth anniversary by compiling an anthology of their work for them.
In 2025 I hope to do more poetry readings and continue to write work that excites me, to participate in the local poetry community. I know I already have four pieces slated for publication in 2025, so the pressure is off.
When working and parenting, I had to exercise a lot of self-discipline in my routine, and while I suspect that might increase my writing output to be more disciplined, I am still in the school kid on vacation mode of play, sponging up books, music, nature, friendship--trying to hold that light in my mind for the long winter, like Frederick the mouse in the picture book! After a sponge stage, a wringing out of work happens. I alternate between visual art and writing typically, but music is creeping in now to. I guess my goal for 2025 is to trust the process that has been working for me already, though part of my mind tells me to be more structured.
Jeanne, your comment about balancing writing with visual art and now music made me wonder if you've experimented with combining them. Another thread in Lit Mag News put The Ekphrastic Review on my radar:
Also, two weeks ago I read "Analysis of a Fugue" by Annabel Li. It's an inventive, touching hermit crab story that, as the title suggests, uses a description of a fugue's structure to frame a short story. I ended up teaching it to my high school students.
Yes, I do write ekphrastic work based on visual art and music. A few have appeared in Ekphrastic Review, Pink Panther, and Still Point Arts Quarterly. The last is a hybrid work. Many are still making the rounds. I am having particular difficulty placing the haiku on my own photos.
I'm going to continue to NOT subscribe to the print edition of The New Yorker, a magazine I've read/admired for ages but which takes over my reading life and time and also makes me feel guilty when it stacks up. I'm going to continue to use my reading time and energy to focus on BOOKS, which never stack up menacingly, the way those magazines do. My subscription ended in August and I've felt like a free person since!! If anyone's interested, my list of top 10ish books read this year is posted on my blog: www.workinprogressinprogress.com
Leslie, a couple of years ago I canceled my subscription to The New Yorker for the same reasons you did. But I renewed it, and was rewarded with a wonderful Lauren Groff story in the current issue. Maybe this year reading the latest issue can be a weekly ritual... or maybe they will "stack up menacingly," slipping and sliding in silent reproach.
I do have an online subscription that I got for an amazing deal, so I'll look up that story. But, honestly, I'm happier not seeing those magazines (for now, anyway).
In the new year, we are going to open our submissions properly to all other writers' groups. Right now, anyone can submit but you have to be a member of the Hong Kong Writers Circle to be published. In the future, we are going to keep the "anyone can submit" but we're going to change the "you have to be a member" rule to "we ask you to be active in your local writing community". And we're not going to be hard core about verifying it because it's the principle that's more important.
I am a planner. At the end of the year, I note my year's accomplishments and set up goals for the coming year. But 2024 threw me for a loop with the resurgence of a chronic disease that's treatable but not curable. While initially, my immunocompromised situation left me no choice but to teach from home and led to a period of intense creativity, the mega-doses of steroids swelled up my limbs, rendering me pretty much immobile. I no longer have the energy for the creativity.
As I have finished my infusions for the moment and am stepping down 10 mg a week on the steroids, I should be off them completely by the end of January and hoping to gain some mobility. I am cutting down my teaching load (I taught nine grad and undergrad courses this semester plus advised three grad students on independent studies) to five courses, all of which I've taught before, and all will be async online.
My big goals for 2025: (1) Finish the revision of a magical realism short story that involves female collective memory from ancient Greece forward; (2) Write the first draft of a postwar novel focusing on a displaced person's experiences; (3) Write the remaining pieces of a genealogical memoir I started in 2015; (4) Workshop at least one full-length poetry collection at the Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgrad Conference (assuming I can drive and walk by then); (5) Make a decision about participating in Patricia Tennison's Paris Cafe Writing (hotel paid for and nonrefundable) in late May, depending on mobility; (6) Keep writing and sending out individual poems (during that intense period of creativity, I generated two full-length collections and a microchapbook, much of it ekphrastic.
This all sounds like a lot, and it is. I want to delve more into prose poetry and microfiction as well, because "short" can fit into the spaces between the big stuff. I have planned participation in generative writing sessions each week to write the novel and the memoir.
Wishing you a long ride on the magic carpet of good health, Barbara. In 2024, I had one health hiccup after another, spent time in two hospitals ... oh, boy, can I relate to "threw me for a loop." YOW! Sending you a virtual bouquet of vibrant healing vibes!!!!
Wishing you health above all, Barbara. I have admiration for your multiple projects and incredible energy, even amid the struggles. I look forward to reading your published work, as always.
This year I'd love to attend a writer's conference. There's one here in Chicago that is literally 'down the street' (all I'd have to do is ride the 147 bus from my neighborhood to downtown, about an hours ride), but said conference is usually the same weekend as training for the new season of baseball. I work for the Cubs, so it's kinda a requirement that I be there.
I'd like to get my act in gear and finish up my Harold and Sallie stories, send them to an editor and start looking into self publishing them into ebook and/or physical book form.
Another bucket list item is attending a writer's retreat. I don't drive, I don't own a car and most of these retreats are in the middle of nowhere. I've found a few where getting there would be a challenge but doable. But this is something that can wait til 2026.
Some motorists who are already signed up for that writer's conference might enjoy driving you there in exchange for sharing the gas $$ and being good company.
I live in Manhattan where it's next to shameful to admit you actually have a driver's license. NYC green-streets programs and Citi-Bike stands are rapidly eroding what's left of parking spaces in Manhattan anyway. Most New Yorkers are happy about it.
What a welcome essay, written in your inimitable Becky way that makes your readers feel so accompanied and seen. That is the best thing about Lit Mag News: The feeling that this lonely work of striving to write beautifully is not so lonely after all. As for me, I resolve to build that new bookshelf in the dining room (yes, in the dining room, and I don't care what anyone has to say about it because it's the only space left in this tiny house). Then, I can get books off the floor, off the piano, and organize a shelf in my office (the one right above my desk) for the magazines and books where my writing has been published. I will look at those volumes and issues every day and remind myself that, though I am practically unknown, no longer young, and have never won a prize, I am still a writer, a real writer, no matter what that nattering, doubting voice inside my head says. There's much about the publishing world that feels like some random popularity contest, a game of chance and fashion. But organizing my books and acknowledging the good work I've done? That's something I can control.
A dining room sounds like a perfect space to do double duty as a library; food for the body, food for the mind!
(Maybe that's why my parents shelved their reference books under the dining room window.)
See? People who haven't grown up this way don't understand. My mother also installed bookshelves in the dining room. Of course, her dining room was the size of half my house, but still...
I love your bookshelf plan. Being surrounded by books is comforting and inspiring for a writer. I’m excited for you.
Becky, I love this idea of changing the lens through which we view our goals by looking back at what is working so we have a clear vision going forward. I am impressed with your approach to stay off the internet and be present in the moment. Thanks for sharing that.
The last half of this year, I changed my submission strategy/focus to only submit to lit mags I actually enjoy reading. I do not enjoy a lot of the inaccessible, ultra-experimental work being published in some journals. So, instead of striving to change my writing to fit their preferences, I have made my own preferences a priority. I’m writing what brings me joy. In the coming year, I also want to continue writing legacy stories for hospice patients. If only five family members ever read these people’s stories, it is worth it to have had the honor of writing the substance of one’s life. I also want to continue encouraging other writers by reading and sharing their work. Lifting up others’ art has helped me build a beautiful community of creative friends who teach me new things every day. Lit Mag News has been a blessing to me this year, and I look forward to what this community shares next year. God’s richest blessings to all of you.
Tracie, I have two thoughts for you. First, I salute you for not being swayed by fashionable writing styles that you yourself do not enjoy. And second, there's a book I've put on my reading list that you might also enjoy: Lifescapes: A Biographer’s Search for the Soul by Ann Wroe. She writes the back-page obituary biographies for The Economist magazine. Most of these are fascinating because they are not necessarily of conventionally famous people but rather life stories of people who developed their individuality in some uncommon and thoughtful way, along the lines, I imagine, of "writing legacy stories for hospice patients." She brings out people's life themes beautifully.
Marcia, thank you! I will definitely check that out. Sounds like something I would love.
In 2024 I had three poetry books published (in 3 different countries) and one won a pre-publication award. In the New Year I will continue my long-standing practice of mentoring my poet friends and my poet colleagues because I'm equipped with "backstage stories" --- and I can rattle off poetry presses and closing dates like the teenage boys on our block can recite today’s New York Yankees’ starting line-up.
Helping other poet friends, steering them straight, and writing book blurbs - - it's the sort of generosity I wish I had access to when starting out.
Well, the book that had been 7 years in the making with rejections and false starts galore was published by Shotgun Honey (Love You Till Tuesday) and I have a contract for the next one, so, yes, banner year, big adrenaline rush. Yet, what sticks most in my ming is how much fun I had writing a novel with another writer, the excitement, the bouncing of ideas, the long chats, the reworking to the point we don't know exactly who wrote what. The thing will be published in April and we're thinking of doing another one. Guess we caught the bug!
Congratulations, Martine. "Seven years in the making"!!! Sending a virtual bouquet and much applause. Hooray! Hooray!
Thank you, Becky, for all your generous offerings and wisdom. My first book of poetry was published in 2022, "Ordinary Time." I am in a monthly poetry group that is supportive and expects one new poem each meeting. I read good poetry daily. My goal is to get one poem published by a top tier journal before I expire. I'm 79 and have no departure plans. Love and warm wishes to all.
In the last three years, I have taken 12 writing workshops. Three were worthless, one because of harsh animosity from another participant, another because it was teaching a writing formula and the third because I was actually kicked out of the group, but in all the others I read works that opened my mind, worked on assignments that stretched my abilities and received feedback that often enough helped me think and progress.
What I am writing now I could not have written three years ago. I know more forms and structures to consider and more techniques to apply. I have even more fun with words than ever before! All this makes me very, very happy. Being able to look back at 20 pieces from those workshops having been published or accepted for publication in the last two years is a bonus.
Marcia, good for you. "Schoolyard bullies" do exist, unfortunately, and they infiltrate writing workshops.
You do sound like you have a very fine craft essay in your back pocket about attending and surviving writing workshops.
It’s not original, but my goal for this and every year is to aim for 100 rejections. It has worked well for me so far.
I have had 34 poems accepted, mostly in the past five years, and am now exploring the idea of putting together a chapbook in 2025, with about 15-20 of my better poems. I’m hoping there is some way to pursue that without having to win a contest. I don’t mind paying a fee.
John, my craft article on putting a poetry book or chapbook together may help you.
Also you need poems that will build a narrative arc - - not just random ones or "faves."
LINK: https://authorspublish.com/poets-fast-forward-your-path-to-book-publication/
I am at a place mainly consisting of frustration. I could say I want to write a novel. Well, I did. And about 90% of the stories have been published, some receiving awards. I can say the goal is to write the perfect query letter. Yet agent after agent tells me how important or timely the work is, but they are too busy to represent it. So, frustration. Then I submit story collections as chapbooks to various competitions. They are expensive at $20 a pop. I am a finalist in one of them, but they will not announce the winner until the new year. I have out floating on over many lit mags about 115 submissions. So I wait, and wait. Many had the entry for already nine months. Others, like Black Warrior and Missouri Review had wonderful things to say on their rejection letters.
So where am I? What are my goals? What I desire is that the novel finds a publisher. I would love to find one of those houses that love politically driven, socio-culturally aware fiction. I want my other three short story collections to find homes. I want by the end of the year to hold in my hands, not a self-published book, but the beautiful labor of love that exists between a culturally conscious editor and an eager author. Will I find that? I don't know. I only know that I have to keep trying, never give up and send the work out. In the mean time. The follow up novel is brewing in my head. Several story-chapters have already found their way to paper.
Sounds like you had a stellar year, Luis. Celebrate yourself, please!
As to help getting an agent or a publisher, if you are a paid member of Sub Club, they will offer solid advice on both. My best to you!
Thanks for this essay, Becky. It’s very helpful and inspiring.
These are the things that I’ve done inconsistently this year. When I do them I write better. I will be more mindful and consistent starting now. I have found practicing resolutions in December helpful because it feels like the preseason and it’s ok to mess up.
1.One book a week and write my notes and observations. If it takes more than a week then it’s two full weeks.
2.Engaged in SmokeLong Fitness more than the minimum - webinars, open pool, medal round.
3.Submissions following rejections.
4. I did meet my goal of 100 rejections through this competition. http://reneebibby.com/rejectioncompetition
5. Restrict social media and news intake. Cancel, block, delete, airplane mode.
David, after I read your note, I signed up for the 100 Rejections competition--and hope it will encourage me to write more and, as you have done, spend less time online.
By the way, about your first goal: in his Story Club substack, George Saunders often shares PDFs one week, then opens up the online conversation the week after. (Most recently, it was a lovely Katherine Anne Porter story I'd never read before.) It's been a helpful way to think more deliberately about craft.
This year, for the first time in decades, I will prioritize my own writing. I grew up in a household where my parents (who were visual artists in their own right) owned, lived, and breathed a business managing and promoting the careers of classical musicians for sixty+ years. I internalized their ethos and have spent most of my life teaching and promoting other writers (also raising four kids who became artists themselves in 4 different fields). I can still work to help others, but I have a LOT to say. I'm an experienced and excellent writer, so I am making a commitment to outsource as much admin work as possible, reign in my teaching energies, and put my own work first for the first time since I was in my twenties. As my oldest daughter, who is my life coach in this matter, says, "The Writer is King."
I retired a year ago after being fired from a longtime job that I had been unsuccessful in leaving for something better. I am still feeling my way into retirement living for a living. I saw my first poetry book published in 2023, but I am not good at self promotion. Last year was a very good year for publications of poetry, memoir and hybrids in various journals and anthologies. I attended two weekend workshops and a couple short weekly courses that have inspired and improved my work. I helped the local poetry club celebrate their fiftieth anniversary by compiling an anthology of their work for them.
In 2025 I hope to do more poetry readings and continue to write work that excites me, to participate in the local poetry community. I know I already have four pieces slated for publication in 2025, so the pressure is off.
When working and parenting, I had to exercise a lot of self-discipline in my routine, and while I suspect that might increase my writing output to be more disciplined, I am still in the school kid on vacation mode of play, sponging up books, music, nature, friendship--trying to hold that light in my mind for the long winter, like Frederick the mouse in the picture book! After a sponge stage, a wringing out of work happens. I alternate between visual art and writing typically, but music is creeping in now to. I guess my goal for 2025 is to trust the process that has been working for me already, though part of my mind tells me to be more structured.
Jeanne, your comment about balancing writing with visual art and now music made me wonder if you've experimented with combining them. Another thread in Lit Mag News put The Ekphrastic Review on my radar:
https://www.ekphrastic.net
Also, two weeks ago I read "Analysis of a Fugue" by Annabel Li. It's an inventive, touching hermit crab story that, as the title suggests, uses a description of a fugue's structure to frame a short story. I ended up teaching it to my high school students.
https://www.craftliterary.com/2024/04/12/analysis-of-a-fugue-annabel-li/#
Yes, I do write ekphrastic work based on visual art and music. A few have appeared in Ekphrastic Review, Pink Panther, and Still Point Arts Quarterly. The last is a hybrid work. Many are still making the rounds. I am having particular difficulty placing the haiku on my own photos.
I'm going to continue to NOT subscribe to the print edition of The New Yorker, a magazine I've read/admired for ages but which takes over my reading life and time and also makes me feel guilty when it stacks up. I'm going to continue to use my reading time and energy to focus on BOOKS, which never stack up menacingly, the way those magazines do. My subscription ended in August and I've felt like a free person since!! If anyone's interested, my list of top 10ish books read this year is posted on my blog: www.workinprogressinprogress.com
Leslie, a couple of years ago I canceled my subscription to The New Yorker for the same reasons you did. But I renewed it, and was rewarded with a wonderful Lauren Groff story in the current issue. Maybe this year reading the latest issue can be a weekly ritual... or maybe they will "stack up menacingly," slipping and sliding in silent reproach.
I do have an online subscription that I got for an amazing deal, so I'll look up that story. But, honestly, I'm happier not seeing those magazines (for now, anyway).
In the new year, we are going to open our submissions properly to all other writers' groups. Right now, anyone can submit but you have to be a member of the Hong Kong Writers Circle to be published. In the future, we are going to keep the "anyone can submit" but we're going to change the "you have to be a member" rule to "we ask you to be active in your local writing community". And we're not going to be hard core about verifying it because it's the principle that's more important.
That's very thoughtful of you. Happy New Year!
I should clarify that this means submissions for our lit mag, The Apostrophe.
I am a planner. At the end of the year, I note my year's accomplishments and set up goals for the coming year. But 2024 threw me for a loop with the resurgence of a chronic disease that's treatable but not curable. While initially, my immunocompromised situation left me no choice but to teach from home and led to a period of intense creativity, the mega-doses of steroids swelled up my limbs, rendering me pretty much immobile. I no longer have the energy for the creativity.
As I have finished my infusions for the moment and am stepping down 10 mg a week on the steroids, I should be off them completely by the end of January and hoping to gain some mobility. I am cutting down my teaching load (I taught nine grad and undergrad courses this semester plus advised three grad students on independent studies) to five courses, all of which I've taught before, and all will be async online.
My big goals for 2025: (1) Finish the revision of a magical realism short story that involves female collective memory from ancient Greece forward; (2) Write the first draft of a postwar novel focusing on a displaced person's experiences; (3) Write the remaining pieces of a genealogical memoir I started in 2015; (4) Workshop at least one full-length poetry collection at the Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgrad Conference (assuming I can drive and walk by then); (5) Make a decision about participating in Patricia Tennison's Paris Cafe Writing (hotel paid for and nonrefundable) in late May, depending on mobility; (6) Keep writing and sending out individual poems (during that intense period of creativity, I generated two full-length collections and a microchapbook, much of it ekphrastic.
This all sounds like a lot, and it is. I want to delve more into prose poetry and microfiction as well, because "short" can fit into the spaces between the big stuff. I have planned participation in generative writing sessions each week to write the novel and the memoir.
Wishing you much good health in 2025, Barbara, and here's to your reaching all your goals (they sound wonderful!)
Wishing you a long ride on the magic carpet of good health, Barbara. In 2024, I had one health hiccup after another, spent time in two hospitals ... oh, boy, can I relate to "threw me for a loop." YOW! Sending you a virtual bouquet of vibrant healing vibes!!!!
Wishing you health above all, Barbara. I have admiration for your multiple projects and incredible energy, even amid the struggles. I look forward to reading your published work, as always.
Hoping to develop a more consistent writing practice in 2025…
I call them more...bucket list goals.
This year I'd love to attend a writer's conference. There's one here in Chicago that is literally 'down the street' (all I'd have to do is ride the 147 bus from my neighborhood to downtown, about an hours ride), but said conference is usually the same weekend as training for the new season of baseball. I work for the Cubs, so it's kinda a requirement that I be there.
I'd like to get my act in gear and finish up my Harold and Sallie stories, send them to an editor and start looking into self publishing them into ebook and/or physical book form.
Another bucket list item is attending a writer's retreat. I don't drive, I don't own a car and most of these retreats are in the middle of nowhere. I've found a few where getting there would be a challenge but doable. But this is something that can wait til 2026.
Some motorists who are already signed up for that writer's conference might enjoy driving you there in exchange for sharing the gas $$ and being good company.
I live in Manhattan where it's next to shameful to admit you actually have a driver's license. NYC green-streets programs and Citi-Bike stands are rapidly eroding what's left of parking spaces in Manhattan anyway. Most New Yorkers are happy about it.
It's really going to come down to if said conference is the same weekend as Cubs training. I won't know the training dates until probably Feb.
Getting there is actually really easy, seriously just taking the bus. No airfare or hotel to deal with.