2023 Year in Review

by efuller, posted in Author Lifestyle

I’ve placed nothing in magazines, but received the best rejections of my life. I’ve published next to nothing on my blog and Substack, but I have more followers on my TikTok account than I ever thought I would have. I’ve also logged the least amount of hours for writing this year than any other year previously, at 972 hours rounded. Below are the projects I spent the most time on. Not all projects are shown here.

This graph is making me feel bad. At the top, of course, is reading. The next biggest project is Martina’s Doppelganger, a novella-in-progress. The next biggest is TikTok—still going strong on my craft book reviews. My diary takes the fourth spot, and the fifth is The Icon Painter, a novel which I have no intention of publishing or revising at this time. The tail end are works in progress or works I’ve set aside that will be returned to in 2024.

To look at this graph another way, if I put together Martina’s Doppelganger, The Icon Painter, Perceiver 2 and 3, and the Book of Middles, I’ve spent a total of 307.5 hours on my top writing projects. That makes me feel better. Games is when I played and recorded Omori and Knuckle Sandwich to review as long-form Youtube essays—but I didn’t know what I was doing and my recordings ended up being unusable, so that’s 20 hours down the drain. The Icon Painter is going to be set aside for the time being. IDK if I’ll go back to it. So that’s another 40 hours gone.

What to make of this?

What took my time

Work. Working from home means that your first place is also your second place. When the clock hits 5pm, I get the hell out: to do curls or barbell squats at the gym or read and write at the late night cafe I love. This need to fly the coop cuts into the time I spend reading and writing. I still write at work when things are slow, but slow times are fewer than previous jobs.

Travel. In 2023, I traveled for training and a conference, which disrupted my writing schedule (though I got a lot of reading done.) I also got to visit Los Angeles for a week, and Japan for two weeks. Both were great experiences, and I hope to return one day. When I travel, I set aside my usual stories and articles and focus on filling out my diary. I try to record as much of what I saw, smelled, felt, heard, and thought, plus record impressions of the area. I also tend to read a lot, esp. In the evenings (I’m not a nightlight aficionado.) Reading during those trips also impacts my diary. Example: reading The Man in the High Castle following a trip to the Japanese-American Museum and reading Heaven by Meiko Kawakami in Kyoto.

Longer Projects. Martina’s Doppelganger is a novella. The Icon Painter and Perceiver 2 and 3 are novels. They took the lion’s share of my writing hours this year. Most of the short stuff I worked on this year didn’t make it onto the graph.

Though it’s true I didn’t log as many writing hours as I should have, I feel like this year has been one of experimentation, education, and rumination.

2023 Resolutions

It’s a testament to how badly I failed my 2023 resolutions that I do not remember what they were. I had to look at last year’s Year in Review to see.

Hard goals

  • 3 pages every day. The diary will no longer count.
    • I did count my diary as three pages while traveling, though I returned to my regular notebook shortly after.
  • 500 words a day OR 0.5 hours of writing/editing/revising that isn’t the 3 pages
    • Nope. Travel made this too difficult to continue. If I lump all my time together, I met and surpassed this goal. But the point was to do it daily.
  • 1 weekly vlog with writing updates
    • I made 26 of these
  • 1 weekly review on a book about writing and storytelling
    • I made 26 of these
  • Add hours to my time-tracking app at the end of every month (I’m going to try this one again, with some key habit changes to make sure I stick with it)
    • HAHAHAHA I didn’t do this at all. I spent the Christmas holiday entering all my data.

Soft goals

  • Send Perceiver 2 off for editing
    • No, but in hindsight, I think that was overambitious. I realized while rewriting that adding a second perspective was critical, and I think the story is stronger for it. However, this means the novel is now double its original length and half of that is not as polished as the rest.
  • 5 short stories from draft to done
    • Three short stories, plus a 35,000 word novella. Task failed successfully?
  • 10,000 followers on TikTok
    • As of December 31st, 2023, I had about 5,500 followers.
  • Review another 26 books on writing and storytelling
    • Yes!
  • 3 pages a day.
    • Yes! Twelve years in a row bay-beeeeeeee.

Considering I did this while taking on increasing responsibilities at work, traveling domestically and internationally, I feel… still kind of unsatisfied, actually. I know I can be a better writer and storyteller. I feel lucky to be financially okay, when social media screams the opposite. I have a job that I enjoy for a company that values me. My family is healthy. I don’t seek happiness. Happiness happens. I seek satisfaction—of pushing a story past expectations.

But this is the first full year of working remotely, and my life looks very different from when I first started this New Year’s Review. Five years ago I was living with my parents after graduating college and working a part-time job, angling for full-time. I had oodles of free time. Tracking my time spent on writing helped me not waste it.

Now I work from my own apartment in a full-time job that keeps me plenty busy. I feel my best when I can exercise and be around people after work. I can’t stay up until 1 am anymore. Hell, even 11 pm is pushing it. My dad is dead. My mom is aging. As the Silversun Pickups said, “Growing old is getting old.”

This isn’t me feeling sorry for myself. This is a frank assessment of my life circumstances and my shift in priorities. I have plenty to feel grateful for. I can live in a two-bedroom apartment alone without a roommate and have my own at-home office. I love my job and the people I work with. My job pays me well, gives me opportunities to travel, and be involved with national projects and do work that is meaningful. I bought four big beautiful bookcases when my roommate moved out and I’m thinking of buying another two. And every day I get to sit at my desk or my kitchen table and write.

Life is different, but it is good. How then, do I make goals that matter, that I can reach, but will ultimately help me write the best stories I can?

2024 Resolutions

Bring my current WIP short stories and novella to submission-ready status

Next year I want to prioritize the story out on sub, revise another that received positive, personal rejections, and revise the last short story and novella to be submission ready (and they are already very close. Mission: To get the three short stories out on submission, and the novella out on submission. Concrete goal: 1.0 hours/day of revision, submission, workshopping, etc, until all of them are out on submission.

Update: as of 3/06/2024, the three short stories are now out on submission! The last section of the novella has been sent to my workshop group, and I’m working hard on it to hit submission windows for literary magazines in March and April.

Continue TikTok series

I plan to continue my series reviewing books on writing and storytelling, plus get more comfortable talking about my writing and stories on the platform. Concrete goal: at least two TikTok posts per week, goal of 100 posts by the end of the year.

I want to bring the sequel to my second book to publication-ready status

In 2023, I finished two new drafts for the sequel to Perceiver, and another for the third and final book. I put them aside to work on the novella and give my brain a break, but in 2024, I’d like to get back to them. The sequel, in particular, I feel is almost ready for beta readers. For Perceiver 2, I’d like to complete the pending draft revision, then engage beta readers. For Perceiver 3, I’d like to finish the current draft, complete a round of revision, and reassess. Then, if I think it’s ready, engage alpha readers. Concrete goal: After the short stories and novella are out on submission, switch to working on P2 and P3.

Three pages every day

Going for year 13! I’ve realized this year that my diary has been a key part of helping me think about my stories, what helps me produce my best work, what goes into my stories, and more. It’s a vital part of helping me develop attention and sensitivity to my surroundings, especially during travel.

Speaking of travel, these goals (excepting the three pages) are suspended if I have to travel for work, vacation, or family. I can’t always take my personal laptop or revision materials with me. I don’t produce good work when I’m exhausted or have to focus on other things. Luckily I only have training to attend in June.

Summary

Though I set my goals high and I failed to make them, the work I did this year is not wasted.

Wins:

  • Three short stories taken from draft to submission ready
  • One novella from draft to near-submission ready
  • One new standalone book completed (Yes! Though I will not revise it now, the effort I spent on it made me a better writer. Too many old projects to work on)

Half a complete revision of P3

  • One and a half complete revisions of P2
  • +2,500 followers on TikTok
  • Twenty-six new reviews of books on writing and storytelling on TikTok

Conclusion

Argh, this Year in Review is three months late! I had been hanging on to it, hoping that the stories I had submitted in December would find a home. That way, I would have something concrete to show. ‘Tis not to be.

But I’m cutting this review short. There is not a single story of my year that sums it up. 2023 was a year of accumulation, digestion, and groundwork. I hope in the coming year to show you its fruit.