2014 has beeeeeeen interesting :D. Can’t say it’s been my favorite year, but I really like where I am now in it, so I shouldn’t complain.
Life stuff — had some serious ups and downs relationshipwise with my husband and certain friends. But, all in all, things have pulled through and I feel more positive and more connected now than I have at any time in the year prior. I think all the shakiness knocked things down to their foundations, and what’s been rebuilt has been made to last.
Health stuff — Oh, my silly heart. It hasn’t had any runs of SVT since the fall, but I went through all the testing and no one knows why any of that ever happened. I hope it behaves from here on out, but there are no guarantees. On a positive note though, my Christmas gift from my husband is a treadmill desk, all the components are being shipped to us as I type, so soon I’ll be typing and writing at the same dang time, I can’t wait ;). AND — I finally found a yoga studio I liked! It only took me six tries at assorted studios :P. (Luckily, there’s a ton of yoga out here, and new student specials.) I hadn’t realized what a special place my studio in Santa Cruz was until I started trying to find its like in Oakland. I’ve been going to one place exclusively though this past month and feel really good about continuing my practice there this upcoming year — my back needs yoga so badly to feel good.
Work stuff! Work’s been grand. Switching to dayshift has meant a much shittier commute, but only having to work ten days a month (although I do work more!) is awesome, and keeping normal daylight hours — OMG, it’s so lovely. I had no idea how nice this was when I was doing my six years of night shift time. I don’t know everything there is to know yet nursing-wise, but I know enough to feel pretty confident on a day to day basis at work. I’m a good nurse, and I do a good job. I love it, honestly.
Writing stuff! (I could include ‘mental health stuff!’ in here too, since my writing basically is my mental health ;)). That’s where 2014 gets a little tricky. I think this past year has been me processing my series not getting picked back up by SMP. It’s really hard to work your whole life towards one goal and accomplish it only to then kind-of-sort-of fail. (The awkward sort of failing that looks like success to anyone else who hasn’t succeed-failed yet, heh.) (I was so mystified-bewildered-upset by the entire thing that I sent a letter in to Dude In Publishing who was kind enough to answer it with an essay that made me cry.)
I didn’t know what to do with myself, really. Spent some time being depressed, and then realized that my series cancellation didn’t change things. I got existential rock-bottom and realized, all I really know is writing — and that I’m a writer. I don’t have any other hobbies or interests or anything. Writing is all I enjoy doing. I like being a writing machine. I like thinking writing-thoughts, I like plowing down words, I like editing things until they shine, I love talking shop with other writers — writing is pretty much all there is to me. If you told me I couldn’t write tomorrow…I honestly have no idea what it is I’d do. What do normal people do with their free time? I’d be lost.
Because of all of that, I couldn’t stop writing, you know? So my way of coping with my cancellation was to pour my energy into some low-ego projects — my Sleeping with Monsters erotica books, The Haunted, The Hunted, and The Hated (coming up.) I got the chance to roughhouse in some awesome genre playgrounds (ghost stories! werewolves! vampires!) and pretend that none of it matters because of all the explicit sex, heh.
But I’m actually really proud of the work I did and the original ideas inside those books — The Hated in particular, since it’s SF. And I wound up writing at least 180k on them this year (probably close to 220k for the year, if I add in my YA) which is cool. I’m going to recover them and do an omnibus and see how that goes — and I’ve got ideas for a few more books in the series if they happen to take off ;).
I wound up selling three short stories this year too, under other names, which also felt really really good.
What’s coming up in 2015?
Well, now that The Hated’s gonna be turned in on Thurs — it’s back to the YA mines for me. I think I’m ready to take on this extreme rewrite on my old book, finally. (I thought it was extreme before, no, this is from the ground up. All the way from the bones. Half the bones. Maybe one fragment of the skull.) Talking to Daniel about it, about what part of that story really mattered to me, has given me laser focus. I’m just hoping that I can do a good enough job to pull it off the way it deserves to be.
After that? I’m not sure. I’ve got 3-4 book ideas bumping around in my head, a middle grade series, a novella set in WWII, my erotica + PKD book that I want to write as a straight literary novel that just happens to be really weird, and I’m tempted to release an older unpublished book of mine on Wattpad just to see what, if anything, would happen to it. I loved that book, I don’t care if it doesn’t make any money, I’d just like it to get it some readers.
This whole year writing-wise — especially writing the eroticas so quickly — has made me realize what a good writer I am. I know my stuff. I can rely on my intuition. I’m talented. I can trust in me.
So now I suppose the best word for how I feel is liminal. It’s not an entirely comfortable feeling, but instead of being scared by that, the in-betweeness of my career and where I thought I’d be instead — I don’t know — I just can’t help but feel full of potential and opportunity. I’m back to where I was before Edie. I’m good at what I do and I can write anything I damn well please ;).
So yeah — that’s been 2014. And as for 2015? It’s time to get back to work. ;)