New Year's Resolution 2024

Resolution for 2024

"Just write every day of your life, read intensely, and see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers."

— Ray Bradbury

My resolution for 2024 remains focused on my productivity for the most part. In 2024, I will do my best to use my planner (as I am constantly telling my students to do!) to plan out what I will get done during each week based on my current commitments. Then, I will do my best to honor that plan. Also, I will set SMART goals for each month and write those in my planners (goals related to what exactly I will write/create in that month).
Additional pieces to my resolution to keep in mind:

• Stop getting in my own way when writing. Just write and quit worrying about if it will sell or what readers will think of it, etc.

If you're writing, you're not wasting time." and "Believe in my own work. Don't let anyone else touch it." and "No one will hurt you for writing a bad story."

— Dean Wesley Smith

"Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down."

— John Steinbeck

• Have fun with my writing. If I am not having fun, how can I expect anyone else to have fun when they are reading it.

"Write to your passion. If you stop feeling that zing, go back and fix it."

— John Brown

"Writing is fun."

— Dean Wesley Smith

• Finish what I start. I really want to finish a draft--crappy but happily made--of a novel this year. So, I hope by incorporating the productivity habits in my main resolution I can accomplish that goal.

"Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen."

— Jack White

"You must write. You must finish what you write."

— Robert Heinlein's Rules of Writing One & Two

• Finally, continue to find ways to utilize my dead time (daily commute, I am looking at you!) to plan out my stories.

"The best time for planning your book is while you are doing the dishes."

— Agatha Christie

Article Reviews

Noons' The Ivory Ship Inn:

• Likes: I really like the guidebook tone that this one is written in. It greatly feels like an entry in a guidebook to this part of the creator's world... friendly, non-pushy, but still selling it.
• Thoughts: I think that incorporating a bit of mystery or question (Why the human bone hidden among the whale bone, Noons?) is something I would like to do more regularly in my articles, and even chapters. This would give me lots of loose threads to pull on when I am creating story.

Yerran's Dhun Khenil:

• Likes: I really liked the history and the faction descriptions included here. It is clear that this city has evolved over time and is still a living place filled with strife and darkness.
• Thoughts: I like the incorporation in of the timeline in this settlement description. I am wondering how many timelines can be created at my level of subscription because I think I would like to incorporate more timelines into some of my articles.

Peter Nelson's Mystanidrax te Kinyel:

• Likes: I liked how Peter gives some backstory to a known dragon trope--dragon's have hoards, but how did it start and when?
• Thoughts: The word beautiful was used to describe this being and I realized that I want to be sure to use more specific adjectives (or at least modifiers--beautiful to whom?) when I am describing the people and places of my world.

NiLib's The Archivists of Sphera:

• Likes: I really enjoyed the list of assets included in this description. So often I can't think of lists of things that are this comprehensive and this makes me a bit jealous.
• Thoughts: Assets don't have to be a list of specific items (a la RPG games) but it can be more general items or resources. I tend to think as a gamer when it comes to this entry and end up leaving it blank as a result.

Mesayoda's The Canker:

• Likes: I like that there has been another name created for a common D&D trope--the Underdark. In addition, this name seems to be expanded to be also used to describe the feelings associated with that location.
• Thoughts: This article reiterates my love of including quotes and proverbs, etc. in articles. I think it does a lot for worldbuilding, culture building, and establishing threads to pull in the future.

StardustScrapper's The Purge:

• Likes: I like that the paragraphs are kept short and easily readable. This makes it much more user friendly.
• Thoughts: I've steered away from including any military conflicts as I don't have a military mind. However, if I am going to have conflict at the nation/city-state level, I am going to have to get over that.

DesdemonaRose's City Fortresses Building:

• Likes: I enjoyed the Old Earth referenced incorporated into the architecture. While I haven't looked at anything else for this world, this led me to believe that this is some sort of future sci-fi-ish world that has a long history that is honored even to today.
• Thoughts: While I can't draw on Earth references to hint at history, what opportunities can I take to incorporate older cultural traditions, architecture, and symbolism into my world to help make the world have more depth?

mezzopatricia's Full Moon Myth:

• Likes: I've always adored doing interesting things with moons in worldbuilding. So, all the moon stuff here hit me in one of my soft spots.
• Thoughts: After thinking too hard about having to know more about tides and gravitational pull (you know, all that science stuff), I've steered clear of including multiple moons--my favorite thing to do with moons. After reading this, and thinking about the world creation for Kadegan, maybe its time to revisit the idea of multiple moons. Afterall, magic, especially divine magic, can explain away some differences.

Reliquar's Elthen Language:

• Likes: I liked the hints of the past (space travelers) in the description of this language and how it is used secretly in front of others.
• Thoughts: Are there any secret languages or coded languages on Kadegan? In Corethe? I've always been enamored of Thieves' Cant, slang, and jargon. How can I incorporate that into my worldbuilding?

FlyerStitch's Sailor Profession:

• Likes: I like how the word, sailor, wasn't shied away from or modified to fit a new world. I think so often people feel the need to fantasy-fy (new word patent pending) words when creating new worlds. The profession was given a slight twist in this land above the land, but the profession name remains accurate.
• Thoughts: Are there places that I can keep the name of something simple that I haven't? How can I resist the urge to create made-up names for stuff that doesn't need a made-up name?

2023

My resolution last year was to write more and share my writing. As a part of the write more, I wanted to try harder to get out of my own way... stop always thinking about monetizing or publishing my writing before I actually have anything written. I also wanted to figure out how to write/create around my brain's preoccupation with my teaching profession, as I haven't managed to write pretty much anything since I became a teacher in August of 2019.
In 2023, I started by forcing myself to spend most of my commute home (about 1 hour every day) thinking about plot, characters, and worldbuilding instead of about lesson plans, grading, and PD (professional development). Once I started to deliberately force my reflections in that direction, it became easier and easier to do so. After a couple of weeks of this, I used Mary Robinette Kowal's flash fiction creation method (first discovered while watching Brandon Sanderson's BYU writing lectures during Christmas 2022) to write a flash fiction story. Once I realized that it was easy enough to do that, I started writing and publishing a new flash fiction every two weeks on my Patreon page.
I continued that from late January through May. Around April, as I started writing several flash related to one of my previous novel attempts, I signed up for WorldAnvil but I didn't do a lot with it in the beginning except start inching my way through the world meta creation.
In late May, I lost my streak of writing flash fiction in the rush of grading and wrapping up the school year. I forgave myself for that (I can be horrendously hard on myself when I don't follow through on a commitment I make) but found that once school got out, I couldn't get back to it. After several weeks, I realized that part of the issue is that being on break for the summer made me very resistant to sitting at my computer to do anything, and the other part is that I didn't want to be writing short/flash stories; I want to write novels.
I partly participated in the Summer Challenge with the idea of starting to create a foundation for a novel that I had previously got 20k words on. I am a complete pantser and I hope that by having more of the worldbuilding done I can eventually finish a draft of that novel... even if it is crap, I would love to finish a novel length manuscript. I started to dink around creating articles, or to be more precise, figure out how to create articles (and getting really hung up on how they look). It wasn't until WorldEmber that I started really publishing articles.
Summary: In 2023, I wrote approximately 10k words between flash fiction, meta, and articles (both published and not) on WorldAnvil. This is way up from the approximately zero words I've written from 2019 through 2022. I don't obsess as much about my teaching while driving but I don't always make it a point to think about writing related topics still. I definitely still stress about how I will monetize, officially publish, etc. my writing. All in all, I would say that I was successful with my 2023 resolution but I still have plenty of room for improvement for my habits of mind and work.