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Year in Review | 2020

2/5/2022

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Honestly, while 2020 was a raging dumpster fire of a YA dystopian novel that hit everyone hard, 2021 turned out to be the personally tragic and gut-wrenching set-up found in the first 5~10 minutes of a classic Disney movie. I can only hope that 2022 turns out to follow through on the rest of the movie and the theoretically inevitable (but deeply implausible) happy ending...
2020 was a literal disaster, and involved a significant number of personal setbacks, but I still managed to accomplish things on a personal level.
2021 was basically abject failure on a majority of counts and it was so particularly awful that I can own up to that without embarrassment or shame or anything but weariness.

Here's my 2021 summary report:
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Okay, so the first half of the year wasn't awful exactly, but it did start out with a failure, even if it was a predicted one. I've never been able to write anything with a particular holiday theme, though I keep getting an urge to try. And since it was only a slight distraction from continuing to draft AG4, I didn't see it as any kind of portent of doom.

However... following that small, reasonable and predicted failure...
​I proceeded to not finish anything...
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      Yup, that's right, I pretty much didn't finish anything at all. Technically, I've finished the draft for both sides of the SPN/BatBros Multiverse Mishap story, but I haven't been able to get the remaining chapters prepped for posting yet. Nor have I got a new story situated to begin posting at a reasonable moment post-completion of Multiverse Mishap...           Soooo, yeah, I don't quite count that as finished.
       And everything after July is just an aberration of personal collapse.
      I DID get 3 months with over 75k written, and 6 months with over 50k, so I do count the first half of the year as not-horrifically offensive, even if I didn't managed to get anything wrapped up. Progress isn't only measured in finished projects, after all, it IS really more of a trend-line trajectory than any kind of destination, so I didn't get much finished but I still got stuff done. If I hadn't collapsed into a black hole of awful, I'd probably be able to count that a win and even with my backslide, I'm still walking away from a year where I do have something worthwhile to show for my labors.

Here's the breakdown of how focused I stayed each month:
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​Again, the first half of the year was honestly  solid.


I managed 6 months in which I got over 40k drafted in a single project. That's not as good as I managed in 2020, but it's still nothing to sniff at. I totally would've been able to just call it a solid try and leave it there if not for the disaster of Aug-Dec...
Still, I managed to meet my Year End Word Count Goal, squeaking out just enough in Nov and Dec to really make it over the finish line: Final Count = 573,470.
Not bad at all, to be unbiased about it. I'm still leaning towards being harsh on myself because until August, I was on a trajectory to hit near a million words, and I'm still not entirely out of my slump (so the weight on self-criticism is overdrawn), but I'm forcing myself to focus on the bright side:
I DID actually accomplish the official goal.


Which isn't something I can say about any of the other goals I set for 2021...


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2021 Accomplishments vs Goals:
- Finished drafting (if not posting) 
Multiverse Mishap, both the BatFam Version and the SPN Version. I should be able to finish posting both stories by mid-February. 
  • It'll be nice to have it fully finished, not gonna lie. I'll probably be taking a few weeks away from posting (especially on Patreon as that schedule was preset, so the Ao3 story is definitely behind), but hopefully I'll have something new to post by Spring!
- Land Publishing Agent Contract.
  • Nope... I did try though. So, yay for that?
- Query at least 12 Literary Agents.
  • Yes! By my count I sent 15! Not that it amounted to much, but still, I did also revise my letter significantly, so hopefully future queries will work out better.
- Finish Drafting Assassin's Game Book 4.
  • Not even close. I didn't quite brush the halfway point, but I still got that far, at least. It's more that I'd gotten done on it in years prior.
- Finish Drafting & Posting Sun & Stars.
  • Nope. I gave up on this story all told. It's not entirely abandoned, but it's no longer pinned in my quick access either...
- ReDraft Duchess & the Dragon .
  • Nope, same deal as with Sun & Stars. I have summarily left it to rot. It's not entirely abandoned, but it's no longer pinned in my quick access either...
- Draft 1 New Batman Fanfic over 50k.
  • Yes! Is it fully finished? Not exactly, but it's getting there.
- Draft 2 additional New Fanfics over 30k.
  • Yes! Technically. Neither are in any shape to really begin being posted or anything, but they technically exist and are at just over 30k each.
- Draft 1 New Original Fic over 50k.
  • Nope. I think I wrote 20k of original fiction at all outside of AG4. And most of it was in Notes for random not-yet-congealed story possibilities...
- Finish 2 more Semesters with 4.0 GPA.
  • Yes! It was a close thing, but I did scrape out a pretty dang lovely final paper.
- Gain a following of 30 more Patrons.
  • Nope. I actually backslid pretty dramatically on that front, for the obvious reason of not really being a creator that was producing any content worth following for a substantial portion of the year.
- Acquire more appropriate employment.
  • Technically no, but effectively, kinda? A Thing has occurred. It's not a Great Thing, but at the very least, I'll be starting 2022 by doing something different with my life. New starts can lead to other new things, right? So, even though I'm not getting much out of the change immediately, I'm hoping it'll lead to better things eventually. I'm giving it 6 months, 1 more semester, before I start to pushing hard for other avenues of potential.

Which isn't a great showing for 2021, but it's a better result than could have happened. It sets up 2022 for a reasonably auspicious start and I'm gonna run hard with that lead...
Goals for 2022:

- Land Publishing Agent Contract.

- Query at least 12 Literary Agents.
- Finish Drafting Assassin's Game Book 4.
- Draft & Post 1 New Fanfic over 50k.
- Draft 2 additional New Fanfics over 30k.
- Draft 1 New Original Fic over 50k.
- Finish 2 more Semesters with 4.0 GPA.
- Experiment with vlog, podcast, tiktok, etc... expand to more dynamic review platform in some moderately measurable ways.
- Gain a following of 30 more Patrons.
- Acquire more appropriate employment.
- ReDraft Duchess & the Dragon or Wirewolves... ? (Bonus Goal?)

It's another rehash of 2020, more or less.
I've culled a couple projects, moved one to being on the table just for bonus points, and added one more about expansion potential that I've been thinking about for a long time.

We'll see what happens. I'm putting a lot of faith in the concept of new beginnings (even ones that aren't what I might've otherwise wanted) pushing hard on the motivation to make other changes too.

Here's to a fantastic slice of potential!


GOOD LUCK, MY LOVELIES!!!

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