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To greet the new year I've revamped the site layout with these funky colors (and thanks so much to colour lovers for the amazing background) as my way of greeting 2011 with love and high hopes for a successful year. Last year I did Through 2009 and What I Found There to reflect on the year. Here is Through 2010 and What I Found There:
1) Finished The Scion: The Scion was the second complete manuscript that I wrote and I loved it to bits. Unfortunately, I freaked out at the end and trunked it with hopes of a rewrite. In hindsight, I'm really glad I did. It gave me the time to improve my writing and gather the courage to really query and not just kind of query with a book that definitely wasn't my best. But just as The Pawn taught me how to finish a book, The Scion taught me how to write a book. And that's important.
2) Started two projects (Heart of Angelline and Eidolon): I started Eidolon in the very early days of the summer and trunked it around July and then started Heart of Angelline and trunked it in late October. Trunking both was really, really important because it taught me how to let go, when something is beyond fixing, when fixing something isn't worth it. I was of the opinion that if something wasn't working you could power through it and fix it in the end and I think this is still true for a lot of things. But there are times when it stops being true and it's important to recognize that and pull out.
3) My third creative writing workshop: This. There are no words for the roller coaster that this class was. I'm not going to lie: this class is part of the reason I managed to finish my last project. The professor was brilliant and I learned something I might have never known or managed to forget and it made writing not only easy but fun again. I'd forgotten how wonderful it is to be with your character to know everything about them to enjoy wrecking their lives and then fixing it again. And regardless of how psychotic my professor may have been they did teach me to write again and to stop getting twisted in so much of the business and focus on the craft of it.
4) Cutting back on my social life: I know this sounds kind of ridiculous to be a good thing but - yeah, it wasn't. My freshman year of college wasn't as stellar as I wanted it to be because I invested more time in hanging out and running around instead of buckling down and studying. Sophomore year was all about trying to find a balance between the two and this year (junior year) I think I've struck the balance. I'm doing much better in school, I enjoy the majority of my classes and I have time to write.
5) Finished the first draft of a project I am in love with: This felt like a break through for me. I love this project and I loved it when I started and I loved it even when I was going through revisions. I have never felt this way about a book that I wrote. I've loved characters and plot lines but I've never loved anything as wholly as I love this project.
That's my year in hindsight. Pretty quiet all things considered but I like quiet, thank God. Happy new year! May it be as fruitful or more so than 2010.
