Honestly, on a real-life, personal level, not a lot happened with me in 2013. At the beginning of last year, I had all these things that I’d accomplished and things that I’d tried, but 2013 was merely an extension of 2012, without the constant fear of dying in an apocalypse of natural and unnatural disasters. So, there’s that. A lot happened to other people: Two friends got pregnant, two friends had babies, my brother married his fiancee in the summer. But there’s a difference between things happening and sitting on the sidelines, and 2013 was a sideline year.
I didn’t advance from my 200 wpm speed level the entire year. I’m really hoping this next quarter is the one, and I’m going to add on hours to my practice, which I hate doing, but I’ll see whether it makes a difference in my test accuracy. I did, however, improve my test accuracy considerably, and by making a lot of briefs (shortening how many strokes are needed for a word or phrase, usually down to one stroke of the keys), I improved my speed. Just not enough, and it’s frustrating having been in school for almost four years and having to field questions of when I’m going to be finished. I wanted to be finished a year ago. I wondered whether I should scrap school and become a scopist (basically a transcript editor), and that’s still on the table, but it’s not very lucrative and my teacher talked me into waiting.
I continued building up my music library with all the groups I discovered in 2012, and they served me well in the writing of things. Lots of great songs for inspiration. I also got a lot of reading done of my new favorite authors, and I hope to continue that effort in the new year. I achieved my 2013 resolution of watching the last season of Angel and the one season of Firefly, which affected me just as I expected: left me wanting more and no more to be had. In 2014, I hope to watch all available episodes of Sherlock and the rest of Fringe before the end of the year. I don’t see a lot of movies in the theaters, but I watched a lot of new horror on Netflix, and I did see Catching Fire, which was amazing.
I edited FTR1, wrote FTR2, and accomplished NaNo2013 with the femme fighting novel, among other fun-writing projects for a total of over 600,000 words written in the year 2013, which is so much whoa. I wrote over a half a million words, so even if my fairy tale remix series is going nowhere and the nightmare novel can’t find a home, that’s still an amazing accomplishment.
The 2014 To Do list includes: reworking the beginning of FTR1, editing FTR2 (including a change to the ending), editing FF (including rewriting the ending so it doesn’t go on and on and on and on…), and writing FTR3. I don’t have any other books to write on schedule for 2013 of the non-fun-writing variety; however, I have a few ideas banging around in my skull, so maybe that’ll be something for this fall.
2013 was not my best year, stagnant as it was, and it ended with my body deciding that it hated me, but at least none of the issues were fatal in anyway. Just extremely uncomfortable, with my legs aching in weird ways and my neck trying to choke me. However, I got a lot of words down and a lot of words edited, and I’m hoping it pays off for me in 2014. After all, I can’t shop FTR1 and 2 around anymore, but I can shop FF when I’m finished with it. Still, I’d prefer the nightmare novel to be my debut, if I had any say in the matter. I love that book so much, and it was my first instance of serious writing way back when I was seventeen.
Here’s hoping. Good luck with all your endeavors this year, too!
a. christine writer 