Well, it’s that time of the year where arbitrary time constructs create an opportunity to reflect back and look forward. I started writing fiction in 2016 and started writing and submitting short fiction in 2018. 2019 has been pretty big for me and I’ll be honest, I’m finding that kind of demotivating. Right now, I’m struggling to see how I can make 2020 take me closer to where I want to be. The things that would really make a difference are outside of my control beyond writing the best I can and putting myself out there. There were so many exciting firsts this year and the ones that come next are HARD. But I guess we’ll see.
Anyway, this was supposed to be about celebrating. So, here are some of my highlights:
Reaching dreams
I set three ‘dreams’ for 2019, things I wanted to achieve that were outside of my direct control:
First ‘pro-sale’ of short fiction (SFWA qualifying market)
Get an agent
Get a book deal
I couldn’t quite believe it when I achieved the first of those dreams 8 days into 2019 with a sale to Daily Science Fiction. What a way to start the year! I got there again in March with a sale to Dreaming Robot Press’s anthology The Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide Volume 6, and another three sales of small pieces later in the year hit the per-word payment rate in smaller markets. I’m 3,200 words of pro-payed fiction away from being eligible for active membership. But who’s counting :).
I also completely unexpectedly found myself a finalist for Best Short Story in the 2019 Sir Julius Vogel Awards, a dream that had seemed too unlikely to bother writing down.
The other two dreams are still completely elusive. I queried 40 agents in 2019 and didn’t get so much as a nibble. In November, I sat down with my wonderful friend Graci, a pitchwars mentor, and reworked my query. That much-improved version has been rejected 5 times already, with another 5 still out for consideration. Once I get myself sorted with my second novel I can start all over again in 2020.
Reaching Goals: a year of short novels or long shorts
They don’t feel as exciting, but I achieved some of my goals. I queried at least three agents at a time all year, attended Geysercon, reached out to new beta readers for my second novel (thanks, guys!), applied for a mentorship (that I didn’t get), launched my website, and wrote my first ever reviews. I read a bunch of things, but not as much as I had hoped. I’m trying to be more realistic with my reading goals for next year—read one pro-market story a week and one novel a month. Even that may be tough as I will, of course, read other stuff in between. My life is a big juggling act right now.
I did not write a third novel, revise my second novel, or right 24 short stories (ha!), and I feel like I let myself down a bit there. My writing this year veered away from flash fiction and shorts towards three novelettes and a novella. My total word count was a bit lower than 2018, mostly due to not attempting NaNoWriMo this year. I wrote 52 pieces and around 100,500 words. I really enjoy writing and reading novelette/novella length, but in terms of financial and publishing success, I think I need to refocus in 2020. They are hard to sell to magazines, and I have yet to crack how to sell them as an Indie either.
And a year of volunteering
In May, I attended GeyserCon, our national spec fic convention, which was an amazing opportunity that I felt completely crippled by anxiety at. I felt so out of place, like a total imposter. When I returned home, I decided I needed to build myself a better network of writer friends so I didn’t feel like that ever again, especially given next time will be exponentially bigger as the 2020 NatCon is CoNZealand, the 78th World Science Fiction Convention being held basically on my doorstep in Wellington.
I’ll be honest again here. I overdid it on the things I was trying to do and that also contributed to my reduced word output this year. One of my goals for next year is to volunteer sensibly and with purpose. I’ve got the purpose down, but sensibly is a work in progress. Anyway, it was all valuable and I think it has laid a foundation for better mental health and confidence in the years to come.
Highlights of my volunteering efforts are:
Joining the New Zealand Society of Authors Wellington branch committee. I’m really looking forward to organising the first branch meeting of next year focussed on things I care about a lot—speculative fiction and making the most of CoNZealand.
Volunteering for CoNZealand, first running Twitter and now as NZ Writer Liaison, a position I feel very lucky to have as it lets me reach out to our wonderful local writing community to get them involved, and also gives me the opportunity to talk to other conference organisers about including speculative fiction writers in their programmes. I hope what I am achieving is helping to support marginalised writers, in particular, to attend and participate in the programme.
Organising a Wellington Speculative Creatives Facebook Group and monthly drinks—I feel so lucky to have been able to make some wonderful new friends this year, many of whom are right here in Wellington. At 60ish members in the group and 20-30 regularly coming to our meet-ups, it has grown far beyond where I thought we might get to.
Setting up a writer-support slack group with my awesome new friends Tabatha Wood and Cassie Hart that has taken on a life of its own and become a beautiful monster. Whenever I need advice, tailored revenge fantasies, or a dead mermaid tail to the face, that group is there for me.
Sub-editing Black Dogs: Black Tales, a charity horror/dark fantasy anthology edited by Tabatha Wood raising money for The Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand. It’s not too late to submit! We’re open until 29 Feb.
Collating our awesome kiwi speculative writing from 2019 into a spreadsheet so everyone can see the possible works to nominate for awards in an exciting year.
Starting to share some of what I’ve learned so far right here on my blog. My most popular page has been Making your submission strategy work for you with a little over 300 views. I was so excited to hear from someone who submitted to a publisher after reading my post and now has a book deal!
Huh. Maybe I achieved more than I thought this year.
Lots of numbers (and spreadsheets)!
If you know me, you know I love a good spreadsheet and some stats. I’ll spare you the graphics. Here’s a few numbers for 2019, though: 205 short story submissions, 21 accepted stories, 19 pieces published by various markets and 2 novelettes Indie-published, 162 short story rejections, 40 agent queries, and 38 agent rejections.
Most of all, a year of firsts
There were so many firsts! Including my first:
pro-rate acceptance(s)
convention attended
award nomination, and award finalist
novella and novelette written
reprint acceptance, and in a best of!
qualification for full membership of NZSA
qualification for associate membership of SFWA
appearance on a panel (flash fiction day celebration)
request from a publisher to submit a story to them
website launched
story narrated as a podcast (Strands of Our Tomorrows on The Arcanist, her voice is awesome)
invitation to judge a competition (I had to decline as I was overseas, sadly)
invitation to speak at a festival (still deciding)
exciting reprint acceptance I can’t reveal yet :)
So, where does that leave me? At times it has felt an awful lot like slamming my head against a very solid wall repeatedly and my mental health hasn’t been all that great, but I didn’t predict most of the awesome things that happened this year. I certainly didn’t predict making so many new, genuine, amazingly supportive friends. I guess even if I can’t see it yet, there’s no reason 2020 won’t take me even further.