It’s been a rather remarkable year, 2021, in my terms, on my terms, and by my terms. Though I have miles to go before I sleep, I think I might just put a list together of the product ‘wot I wrote’ over this twelve months:
- This particular ‘writer’s blog’ set up December ’20 — this past week renewed for another year of musings
- Work begun on Prequel, in an attempt to follow the public advice for self-publishing writers at JerichoWriters.com
- Completed Prequel, ~85k words circa May, along with the free appetiser ‘Fragments of a Song’
- Embarked on the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing adventure with Prequel, and another draft (VII) of the main event ‘A Novel‘ publishing eBooks and paperbacks of both novels by July
- Discovered how hard it is to elicit reviews: 2 by year’s end. Booked a slot with HiddenGemsBooks.com for May ’22 for Sequel.
- Began work on Sequel, the third volume of the Biome NE47 trilogy –> 25k by end November
- Published Allendale Diary as an eBook on Amazon circa September
- Longlisted at AdventuresInFiction.co.uk in early October for my idea of an historical fiction ‘Keep Me in Your Heart’ based on an original Writing Group short story with a WWI embroidered postcard MacGuffin stimulus; –>14k words
- Short story ‘ekphrastic fiction’ in response to VisualVerse.org November prompt published online
- Received feedback on my 14k words from AiF; revised the initial ms after historical sleuthing –>17k by mid-December
- Participated faithfully in weekly Writing Group sessions throughout the three full terms of the year; circa 36 tasks of poetry and prose; collated all my shorter prose and poetry efforts into two eBook collections solely for personal/family purview when it is time
- Of the poetry collection, some dozen ‘spontaneous’ poems on the theme of the dying and death of my father
- Submitted some 29 pieces or pitches to various prose and poetry competitions, or The Guardian Lifestyle section, some free, some fee-based, which elicited 1 ‘Honourable Mention’ for a travel-writing piece and 1 poem published in the parish church pew leaflet
Reflecting on this year then, having started off with a vague sense of ambition on the novelistic front, and armed with the sixth draft of Biome NE47: A Novel, I seem to have got somewhere with a pair of tangible novel volumes and a renewed ambition to get better for Sequel. But the most encouragement I received this year was from Adventures in Fiction on my beginnings of Keep Me in Your Heart.
So it’s a good time now to try to look forward and to think about the particular ambitions I have in terms of writing for the year ahead, 2022.
- January –> April, inclusive, finish Sequel in time to publish as an eBook for paid reviews in the booked slot for HiddenGemsBooks.com and simultaneously try to re-launch the series with professional covers and a new set of titles: Biome NE47: Fragments of a Fugue; Biome NE47: Shrouded Valley; Biome NE47: Daughters of Eden.
- May –> September/October: develop the first draft of KMiYH and submit for Manuscript Appraisal and Pitch Package Assessment to Adventures in Fiction
- Continue weekly tasks with Writing Group
- Continue monthly response to the visual stimulus at VisualVerse.org without worrying about success (the hour-long challenge for 50-500 words of poetry or prose is a good exercise, whether or not the organisers select my pieces)
- Participate in competitions with much-reduced enthusiasm and dramatically lowered expectations
And that’s where I’m at, as 2021 draws to a close and as I look forward to the New Year..
Biome NE47 