2022

This is going to be a short, not entirely ordinary, post. I fell off the radar last year when a few things changed. I got a job, a regular job, and I really loved it.

My writing goal for the year was a million words, and I was at a point where it had become practically impossible to keep up with, so I figured that my nine-through-five would be good and I just sort of stepped away from writing, not realizing that I wasn’t just giving up a little writing–I was giving up almost all of it.

So this site’s a little dusty. I hope to undo that in 2022.

Goals and New Format

Last year, I got really discouraged with writing. I tried to put on a brave face, and sometimes failed. Sometimes I was open about my mental state, and sometimes I wasn’t. I finished my MFA program, which was an ordeal (albeit a good one), but also had personal tragedies. Those took me out for longer than they should have, which is partly my fault.

I also let myself get sloppy with my writing, in part because I had a reliable job.

I loved my job, but a variety of things revealed that it couldn’t be sustainable long-term. So I’m trying to do writing full time, with some freelancing and odd jobs on the side.

What I want to do to get that working is to get publishing stuff. Some of this will be self-publishing, and some of this will hopefully be through traditional and digital outlets.

That means that the blog is going to be a secondary thing, but there are going to be updates, hopefully two a week.

Right now my plan is to do a weekly update here on this blog, plus work on the serialized Aspects of Sand again. That will come over here (as opposed to being on third-party sites), since I want to drive more traffic here and those sites didn’t really produce additional traffic as hoped.

I’ll begin posting those snippets here on Friday, and as I run out of content, I’ll start writing new stuff.

Publishing Plans

I’m working on a new game, Kenoma, for Loreshaper Games, alongside rebooting the Loreshaper Games website. That’s going to take up most of January.

I’m also working on two books, one non-fiction (TBA formally) and a companion novella to Daughter of Spades that should help to set some groundwork for it.

Those will both be self-published. I expect it to be an adventure, to say the least.

That should keep me pretty busy through March.

Because I’m getting back into game design stuff, I probably won’t do as much pure writing, and a lot more of it needs to be in a direction that is financially sustainable.

What I’m saying is that if I get a chance to freelance or do some odd writing on the side, I’m going to take it like an unattended donut in the staff break room. Since I now work from home, all donuts in my staff break room will probably be unattended, but let’s pretend I still work with other people for a moment.

The Future

I’m heading into 2022 with some optimism. It’s guarded optimism, because I know my goals are going to be difficult, but I have a hunch I can pull it off.

And if I can’t, it’s not like I’m married to burning out and failing horribly.