The Grand Plan for 2021

Ah yes, the best laid plans yadda, yadda, yadda. Always doomed to fail, but sometimes that turns out better than the original intention. But there can't be any smoke without fire, and no chaos without a plan, and so, here is my roughshod plan for 2021 (as far as writing words on the computer is concerned).

I spent most of 2020 like most people, sheltering from a plague and not doing most of the things I would normally doing, including not seeing all the people I'd normally see. This is a pretty good problem to have, all things considered, and I'm extremely lucky to have gotten through it relatively unscathed (touch wood, the pox is far from over).

Although I was serving substantial meals for a large portion of it, I also had a lot of time on my hands to write. I actually spent most of this time not writing, given that the world had been thrown around like a snow globe, and instead spent most of it getting gradually worse at Overwatch. I did, however, start writing the dailies; micro fiction that I upload, uh, daily, which has no real purpose beyond breaking up the monotony of novel writing and keeping the old tools sharp.

However, most of my words last year went into editing me novel, Aspect, which was written it its first draft at the end of 2018, then entirely re-written (literally, not a word of the original survived) in 2019, then translated from past-to-present tense in 2020, in addition to a lot of re-thinking, soul-searching and general tinkering. The latter part of 2020 was spent querying it out to agents and experiencing professional rejection for the first time, beyond minimum-wage job interviews. It stings, but it is also fully expected.

Even if it takes me the rest of my natural life, I will continue to work on and query Aspect. I've been told its a story worth telling by some people who I trust, so I'll keep cracking on with it. But the problem with editing a novel over a long period of time is that you don't get those regular serotonin kicks from releasing things into the wild. Dailies are fine, but they're the textual equivalent of a doodle and I don't put a huge amount of effort into them. I suspect most writers are in the same boat as me, in that there are a million ideas barging around in my brain trying to get noticed and then painfully manifested onto a page somewhere. Most of them sit dwelling in darkness because the big, bad novel takes up most of my time and energy.

So in 2021, while Aspect is out trying to make a name for itself, I intend to give some of those other ideas their moment in the sunshine. I suspect a great deal of restraint will be involved, as its far to easy to get carried away and turn a short story into a very long one. There are definitely novel ideas I would love to make reality, but that's a lot of work to commit to if you're hankering for some more short-term feedback. So I will do my best to make some concise narratives with a little pizzazz in them.

Online magazines appear to be the best way to get these out into the world. In addition to adding 'published' before 'writer' when anyone asks why I'm spending all my time looking at a screen, it'd also be nice to have the validation that I am at least barking up the right forest, if not the specific tree. Sometimes we all need a little pat on the back, because it's easy, in the dread silence of the working day, to lose confidence in what you're trying to do.

So the plan in 2021 is to write and get published. Revolutionary.

But it will be short stories and maybe a novel, as a treat. Speculative fiction, most likely. Things that are, if not entirely upbeat, at least escapist, because there's been enough grimdark in real life these past years. And the dailies will continue.

I am under no illusion that writing is lucrative. The opposite, in fact. The cost of living is higher than whatever most writers make, so its an active expense for most folk. But I do love it, or at least have been indoctrinated by it and led to believe that I love it. I can't really see much else I'd like to do. Maybe if it all collapses, I'll start a stream or a podcast. Maybe I'll do those things anyway. Who knows? Well that's sort of the point of a plan, to know roughly what is going to happen. But I did say it was roughshod, so. There.

Anyway, if you're the kind of sick weirdo that likes to know the inner-workings of the mind, here was a brief example of mine. I'm gonna make some stuff in 2021, I'm gonna try and be an optimist about it and I'm going to clime out of Gold on Overwatch if it kills me.

Have a good one. Ta-ta for now.