For the past several years I’ve put up a blog post in January listing my writing goals for the coming year. At the end of the year, I check back to see how I did — and that’s the subject of this post.

So how did I do in 2018? TERRIBLE! I didn’t complete any of my goals. Here’s what I didn’t do, with the goals I set for myself in January in boldface. 😉

1. Finish the NOVEL IN PROGRESS and get it published…

I DID finally finish this novel. I finished it yesterday. Actually, I revised it a bit more this morning. I’ll have a lot more to say about why this one was so long in coming, but that can wait until after New Year’s.

2. WRITE THE SEQUEL to the novel in #1. Bonus: Publish it by the end of the year.

Hey, at least I was ambitious. I did make a good start at writing the sequel. I’ve got about 70,000 words on the first draft, which is a very nice chunk. So while I didn’t finish the sequel, the situation is not hopeless.

3. RETURN TO MILITARY FICTION by getting started on a novella or novel. I don’t expect to have this one finished at year’s end, just well started.

I did not even make a start on this. It’s not going to happen until novels 1 & 2 above are done.

4. Finish a NOVELETTE I’ve already started. I’m 9,000 words into this one, so I ought to be able to finish it. If it wants to grow into a novella, that’s fine.

I have not even looked at that novelette since I put it aside. You may be getting the impression that I am a slow and inefficient writer. I would not argue with such a conclusion.

5. Write a hard SF short story, 7,000 words or less.

I spent two or three weeks trying to write this story, and finally gave up on it in early December. Maybe the magical writing fairy will come sprinkle pixie dust over my head this weekend and I’ll suddenly be able to finish it in great style. Or not.

6. Write another short story, science fiction or fantasy, in an existing story world or not.

Ha ha. Nope. I’m done with short stories.

******

Okay, so what happened? Well, it wasn’t a lack of time, or of time spent in front of the computer. In large part I think it was a lack of belief.

I’ve written a lot of novels, many of which have garnered praise, but none that have done well in the market. I’ve never gotten a royalty check on the Red trilogy. The Last Good Man did pretty well by my standards, but not by the standards of actually successful writers. I was proud of these novels, and felt they had all the elements to be commercially successful, and yet they weren’t, and I don’t why.

So, not for the first time, I found myself at a point of reflection, wondering: Why am I knocking myself out to create the best novels I can, when the market clearly isn’t interested? My answer to that, which I only came up with late in the year, was “screw the market.” From now on, I’m writing for myself.

Honestly, that’s what I’ve always done, but simply changing my outlook, accepting the fact that I will never be a popular writer, has made a real difference for me. As an analogous situation, I can work very hard in my gardens, enjoy the work, and create something beautiful that means a lot to me, and do it all just for the pleasure of creating something. When I started thinking about writing in those terms, and stopped worrying about the marketplace, I became far more productive.

I think this is why I had such a hard time with that short story that I never quite wrote. I didn’t want to write it, and I knew that writing it would earn me only a few hundred dollars and wouldn’t help my career at all. So on a subconscious level, I began to think, “Why bother?” I just don’t have the necessary enthusiasm for that sort of challenge anymore.

I don’t mean to imply by all this that money doesn’t matter. I’ll be heavily marketing the new novel. Like anyone else, I do need an income. I just need to learn to separate the “Why bother?” bit from the creative process.

Anyway, I’m pleased to have finally finished book 1, above, and am looking forward to completing an initial draft of book 2.

Onward.

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, and wishing all of you a joyful day!

Xena Rose is looking forward to Christmas dinner…

Thank you to everyone who put their name in for last week’s book giveaway! And thank you so much for all the kind comments.

Here on the blog I had a very gratifying FIFTEEN participants. This blog gets automatically re-posted at Goodreads, and over there I had five more names. So twenty altogether. You guys rock!

I plugged the numbers into Google’s random number generator, and it picked John Hattan as the winner of a signed copy of Light and Shadow. Congratulations, John! I’ve sent you an email; I’ll need your mailing address.

And THANK YOU again to everyone else!

Earlier this fall I was concerned when my print-book sales flatlined. To make sure the print-on-demand system was working properly, I placed an order for one of my books (yep, it was my lowest-cost book) and that endeavor led to some assurance that the system was working more or less as it should.

Also, I wound up with an extra copy of this book — a copy I don’t really need.

So let’s do a giveaway.
I apologize to my international readers, but I have to limit this to addresses in the USA because of the astronomical cost of international postage.

So … if you’re in the USA and you’d like to be entered to win a signed print edition of my short story collection Light And Shadow, say hello in the comments. That’s all it takes.

I’ll let this run for a week and then let Google’s random number generator pick the winner. It’d be nice to get at least ten entries.

I do this post every year, for those able and interested in nominating for the annual science fiction awards, in particular the Hugos, Nebulas, and Locus awards. This year’s post is short — I have only two publications to consider.

In the short story category…

“Longing For Earth”
Find it in Infinity’s End, the final volume of the critically-acclaimed science fiction anthology series edited by Jonathan Strahan (July 2018). SFWA members are invited to download a copy from the SFWA Forum.

Also in the short story category…

“Theories of Flight”
This one is set in the world of my Campbell Memorial-award nominated novel, Memory. Find it in the November/December 2018 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. Editor: Sheila Williams.

First, a progress report on the novel…
The manuscript for my next novel is now in the hands of beta readers and editors. I’d originally planned to re-read and do a light edit before sending it out, but decided against it. Better to hear the criticisms first, address those, and then do the final polish.

In the meantime… that short story I’ve mentioned before still needs to be written. I’ve got all the elements — characters, story world, plot, theme, emotional arc — I just need to sit down and do it.

I’m stepping back from short fiction.
This story will be the last short story I’m planning to write for the foreseeable future. I think I’ve done some good short fiction over the past several years, but I’ve reached the point where the creative effort needed for each story far exceeds the returns — both emotional and financial.

Despite the short length, every story is a lot of work. Two fairly recent ones — “Diamond and the Worldbreaker” and “Longing For Earth” — plus the one I’m working on now, have led me to create entirely new future worlds.

Three new story worlds, that I may never write in again! That doesn’t seem very efficient.

I may get one more story out of the “Longing For Earth” story world, since I have a 9,000-word draft sitting on my computer that I may finish someday. That was my first attempt to write something for the Infinity’s End anthology, but the story grew too long, so I had to start over.

Anyway, even though I’ve been writing only one or two stories a year, it still feels like a distraction when I’m trying to get the next novel done — and of course the income from it isn’t much.

All of this would still be okay if short story sales helped me to sell more novels, but in my experience and that of other writers I’ve talked to, that is not the case. Many of you who read my novels like to read the short stories too, but very few of those who meet me through the short stories go on to look for the novels. I think short story readers are mostly a separate audience without a lot of crossover.

Given that I’m so far behind with the novels I want to write — the two I’m working on now, a military novella, and another near-future epic that’s hardly more than a vague thought balloon drifting on the horizon of my writerly ambition — I need to get serious about focusing my efforts. Once I get this next story done, it’s going to be all long-form, all the time.

Hey, unless maybe I decide to write that screenplay. 😉

Wish me luck!

Thank you to everyone who worked hard and honestly in this election. Thank you to everyone who voted, everyone who voted for the first time, and everyone who voted against the Republican party for the first time. You are appreciated and your vote matters. Thank you to everyone who found themselves victims of gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts, but who stood in line for hours anyway to cast a vote. You are heroes! And you won the House!

I still can’t get my head around the idea that so many Americans want to be governed by liars and hypocrites who are utterly lacking in honor, who are driving the country deeper and deeper into debt, mortgaging the future, denying science and climate change in pursuit of personal power and personal profit, while happily reversing the environmental laws that have made this country so much a better and safer place to live. Unbelievable! And yet here we are.

I’d hoped for better, America. But let’s keep striving to make this country a better, smarter, more well-informed place, with a citizenry resistant to the propaganda of oligarchs both foreign and domestic, and let’s care about the future — not just of this country, but of the entire world. We are living on an utterly amazing planet. We need to act like it, and care for it, before we lose it due to the greed and avarice of a few.

Years ago I read a book by Francis Fukuyama called Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity.

The basic point of the book as I understood it was that the quality of trust within a society — the ability of people to trust one another beyond the ties of family — was a driving factor in economic organization and ensuing prosperity. Probably creativity too!

If we can trust our fellow citizens, we don’t have to waste energy eyeing them in suspicion or setting up defenses against them.

Now we have a government that doesn’t give a damn about trust. Constant overwhelming lies issue daily from the Republican administration. They contradict themselves and they contradict the truth, constantly. Their corruption isn’t even hidden, and they have no concern whatsoever for the future of this planet. Who could ever trust these people?

Trump is Trump. His nature was obvious long ago and his behavior is no surprise. The surprise here is the spineless venality of every single Republican member of Congress. No exceptions. They have all failed in their Constitutional duties.

I’ve already voted. Regardless of what political party you once belonged too, I hope you take the advice of Max Boot, writing for the Washington Post, and “Vote against all Republicans. Every single one.”

From Paul Krugman:

If Dems win, we’ll have a constitutional crisis almost immediately. But if they don’t we basically lose the constitution https://t.co/bFp1TP1fG8

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 5, 2018

My newest short story, “Theories of Flight,” is now out in the November/December issue of Asimov’s magazine. This is a big issue with an impressive roster of other contributing writers including Derek Künsken, Nick Wolven, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, William Ledbetter, R. Garcia y Robertson, and more.

Have you read my novel Memory? If so, you’ll want to read “Theories of Flight.” In Memory, one of the important characters is Yaphet. “Theories of Flight” takes a look at his early life and explores how he set out on the unusual road he was destined to travel.

If you haven’t read Memory… why not?! The ebook is only $4.99, and several readers have told me it’s one of their favorite novels. Memory is a far-future adventure set on a very unusual world — and I have plans to return again to this story world very soon. So you need to catch up! 😉 You can read more about the novel here.

If you don’t have a subscription to Asimov’s it might be a bit of a challenge to acquire a copy of the magazine. The website doesn’t offer individual issues. You might be able to find copies on the magazine racks of large bookstores, if you have the privilege of living near such a rare location. If you live in the USA, it looks like you can order the current issue from Barnes & Noble. (Caution! This link will be good only until the next issue comes out!).

Or you can subscribe and support the short story marketplace!

I hope you enjoy “Theories of Flight”!

I have now revised my 84,000-word first-draft novel into a 115,000 word second draft. And I’m not done yet. 🙄

Getting close, though! Goal is to get this draft done by October 31. Then I have to write a short story.