I'm moving!

For a while I've felt that blogger just wasn't working for me. Whilst it does the basics of blogging just fine, in particular the inability to properly integrate it with the rest of my website, and the limitations on customising the layout were becoming more and more of an issue.

Last night I taught myself Drupal - which came far easier than I expected - and I've redesigned my website, including the creation of a new blog as part of that. The website is at the same address as always, the blog is here and for the feed go here.

There are still quite a lot of changes I want to make, but I've got the basics in place. So goodbye blogger - and readers, I'll see you at my new home :D

January Goals

I completed three first drafts, but failed to do any redrafting. I'm back to work tomorrow, so these are my goals for the rest of January:

• Reach 10 000 words on the second draft of Invented Wings (this means about 5 500 to go)
• Redraft 'Losing Everything', 'Band', and 'Edith's Second Chance'"
• Write the first draft of the two short stories I'm planning to submit to particular publications
• Start reviewing books here as I finish them
  

First sale!

I evidently spoke too soon in my resolutions! My flash fiction piece, 'Glue', will be published online in January (I'll post a link once it's released). It is a token payment, but still a huge milestone.

I'm trying to work out what I can buy for approximately NZ$8... and just as I wrote that I had an idea. I've been wanting to get stickers to decorate my laptop for a while but never got round to it. It's vaguely related to writing and something I will keep - I didn't want the payment to be absorbed into general expenses.

I'll amend my goal for next year to making my first semi-pro or pro sale - using the duotrope definitions. Until them, I'm pretty happy.

Changing direction

I'm taking a break from the redraft of Invented Wings. This isn't something I feel good about; not least because I'll be failing a challenge I set up. But I'm sick of the story; I love it in many ways, but I've been immersed in it for a good couple of months, and I need to for my heart to be in it if the redraft is going to be worth while. At the moment, I'm procrastinating, feeling unable to write what I do want to write, and then feeling miserable about my lack of progress. That's no way to spend a holiday.

So for the rest of the year (and I count the year as ending when I go back to work, on the fifth) I aim to complete the drafts of three pieces of new or in progress short fiction, and two second drafts of short fiction.

And in January I'll think about a return to Invented Wings...

Resolutions

I'll post a recap of the year later, but 2008 was an important year for me in that it was the year I started to take writing really seriously. It's always been serious in the sense it's been important to me, but this year I started setting clear goals, submitting work for publication and so on.

So this is an idea of what I'd like to achieve next year.

I'd like to finish my redraft of Invented Wings; even though I'm feeling quite discouraged about the story, at the very least editing a novel length piece of work is good practice. I also want to write another novel length piece of fiction, ideally something that's neither SF nor young adult.

I'm going to aim to have a new piece of short fiction for each Readstrange group, which is about one every two weeks, and to keep on top of redrafting them. I'm not going to set a strict timetable for that, but about two months after the first draft sounds like a good timeframe.

I'm going to continue sending writing for publication, and I'd like to achieve both my first print (as opposed to e) publication and my first paid publication, even if only a token payment.

I want to start doing more networking things, and I'll look into other critique groups, particularly online ones, although I'm not sure if they're the best use of my time at the moment.

I'm planning to redesign my website, for which I'll need to learn Drupal; having my blog in a frame is, frankly, rather shabby. I also want to change the way I'm blogging; less of "I've done x and now I'm going to do y" and more thematic posts.

I'm looking into options for studying creative writing in 2010, whether fulltime or just a short course, so I want to research those and probably apply.

I've no idea how it will go, but hopefully I've given myself a good set of varied goals.

Cure

Cure, a piece of flash fiction I wrote some time ago, is now published on the Antipodean SF website, along with nine other short-short stories. I've been reading the site regularly for much of the past year, and I'm always impressed by the variety of ideas, styles and moods showcased - and proud to have my writing amongst them. Definitely something to keep bookmarked.

I completed - once again with moments to spare - the 'I can't believe it's not fiction' challenge, which involved writing a 3000 word short story set during a real event. I like what I've come up with - I'm certainly pleased with the characterisation - but there's a lot of exposition through dialogue towards the end which needs to be sorted, and I'm not entirely sure how. It was also the first non-sf story I've written in a while, and whilst I love writing sf I also like to have a good balance - for the last few months I've felt that the only way I can develop a plot is to include some sf elements.

Introducing Turtle-Ann

I haven't been doing nearly as much writing as I'd planned, which has been quite frustrating - I've only got 1500 odd words of the second draft of Invented Wings. But at least I have a very happy reason: