So, I have a tentative list of what I want to write next year. After some futzing with the order, I think what follows is largely chronological.

Novellas

During the first quarter of '07, I plan on doing quite a bit of research on Tacoma in the 1800's, mining and industry companies, and the "culture" of the steam-driven engine (i.e. how trains and the American industrial revolution changed Pacific Northwest culture by connecting it to the rest of the country). I also plan on reading up on Chinese and Asian immigrants in America in the 1800's - how they impacted labor, economics and culture. While I'm reading up on these things, I'm going to write the following:

"The Tesla Trilogy" (dark fantasy/erotica novellas, which I currently have no markets for)
- "Bellingham Girl"
- "London Calling"
- "The Ruins of Love"

"Blackberry Sweet"
- an erotic/dark "weird" fantasy novella to be sent to Leviathan 6: Sex Issue (Jeff Vandermeer, ed.) when he puts out the call for submissions (which may be end of 2007/early 2008). FYI, this will be a rewrite of the first story I wrote at Clarion - the rewrite will be based on some excellent suggestions by Michael Swanwick.

The erotica novellas won't require any research (beyond maybe a certain odd sexual technique or two, lol), so I can write them as I'm doing research for my other projects. FYI, Tesla is the name of the female protagonist, not the scientist. I have other plans for the real Tesla and his science and beliefs, in upcoming novels.

Once I'm finished with my reading & research, then I'll start in on:

"The Tacoma Steampunk Trilogy" (dark fantasy/horror novellas)
- TS.1: "The Engine of Desire"
- TS.2: title to come
- TS.3: "Destination Unknown"

I have a few specific markets to send these novellas to - most of them publishers of chapbooks and/or magazines (after some research, I've found that quite a few magazines accept sf and dark fantasy novellas under 20k).. Since I'm not a "name", it's doubtful I could sell them as a complete trilogy (a la Cherie Priest's "Dreadful Skin" collection for Subterranean), but it's important that I write them anyway, as they serve as a precursor to:

Novels

"The Cemetery Queen"
- a 100k-word dark fantasy/steampunk novel

The outline for the novel is complete, so all that needs to be done is research and worldbuilding - that will happen with the steampunk novella trilogy. I'm hoping that I at least start it this year. However, 2008 will be The Year of the Novel, so this project isn't offically on the list. :)

Short Stories

I have a few short stories I want to work on next year (I'm making myself write a minimum of six) - only one is intended for an anthology, and the rest are ones that I simply want to write. So far, the only two story ideas I have that are definite are listed below. The other four stories I'll pick from a list of about 20 ideas I have.

"Oxblood Lover"
- a 5000-word max. erotic dark fantasy about sexual possession, for submission to the Circlet Press annual "best of" contest/anthology, to be submitted by August 31, 2007
"The Low, Dark Edge of Life"
- a dark sf story about the only awake person on a STL (slower than light) generational ship

So that's it for the upcoming year. Quite a lot to do - but if I average between 600-1000 words a day, I can finish everything on time. This year has been pretty good, but I'm thinking next year will be better.

Written:

Of nine projects I wrote this year, four will have to be rewritten - that leaves five finished projects. All five of those stories have been submitted to markets, with two already accepted for publication. What's interesting to note is that pre-Clarion, I was writing larger projects, but ones that ultimately were too flawed to finish or rewrite at the time. Post-Clarion, my stories are smaller and taking longer to write, but the first drafts are tighter and more coherent - I'm finally starting to nail the "right" plot/character arc with the first draft, which makes it easier to finish, polish and send them out. They're better stories, because I'm becoming a better writer.

Last December, I declared 2006 to be the "Year of the Story", as a way of forcing myself to evolve to a more publishable level of writing. 2007 is going to be "Year of the Novella", with plans to write my Tacoma Steampunk trilogy and several stand-alone horror and erotica novellas (while continuing to write short stories). While I'd love to start writing novels again, I still think I need to acquire a few more writerly skill sets (including research skills) before I tackle the large projects. As the steampunk novellas will take place in the world I plan to set upcoming novels in, this approach can only be beneficial.

Submitted:

I submitted nine projects this year, of which six were written this year. I currently have six publications out on submission - the highest number of submissions I've ever had at once (although two are for reprint publication). I'm hoping that I can keep at least several items out at any one time during 2007. As long as I keep a fairly steady output of publishable projects, that should be doable.

Rejected:

I don't keep stats for rejections. In fact, I have a shocking admission: I don't even keep my rejections. Listen, I spent twenty years being rejected by THOUSANDS of casting directors. It's not like I have a huge list of all the people who didn't put me in their play or movie because of A, B, or C - I did my piece, was told "no", and moved on without feeling the need to memorialize it or keep some kind of "souvenir" of my rejection. It should be the same principle for writing - at least for me, if no one else I know of.

If the agent or editor asks me to submit again in the future, I make a reference in a spreadsheet. I do keep track of where I send projects to and if/when they return, so I don't send it to the same place twice (hey, I'm forgetful, it could happen). And if someone gives me good editorial advice, I take note of it. But keeping a box of actual rejection papers? I have a box labeled "Contracts". I toss the rejections in the trash. I have no idea how many rejections I've received. It's not relevant. Saying "I have 'X' total sales" is more important than saying "I have 'X' total rejections". I know this attitude goes against everything most writers believe about rejections, but there it is.

Sold:

Teslated Salishan Evergreen (A Field Guide to Surreal Biology)
Take Your Daughter to Work (Subterranean Magazine #6)
Jetsam (Sybil's Garage #4)

Last year I had one sale ("Ellensburg"), so this is a small improvement. But because I'm a slow writer, I don't expect to ever have a year where I can run down a huge list of sales. In other words, this number isn't going to be growing by leaps and bounds with each passing year. If in 2007 I get another three sales minimum, I'll be happy. Of course, I'll aim higher, but due to editor & agent response times and personal tastes, this is an area of my career I can't fully control. I can only skew things in my favor by writing faster and getting more submissions out there. Until that happens, I need to be ok with low sales numbers. I am.

Published:

"At the Edge of Ellensburg" (novella, erotica)

In 2005 I had one publication ("Brimstone Orange"), so I'm breaking even this year. Next year will be better, with at least the three publications listed above. My only gripe about this year is that I still haven't been paid for the novella, and don't expect to be for quite a while longer. If there's anything I've learned about publication, it's to not count on the money arriving when you want or need it. Thank god for the day job....

Raymond Chandler's Law:

It takes writing a million words of shit before you become a professional writer - or so the saying goes. Supposedly attributed to Raymond Chandler - I've never been able to find the exact quote or positive proof that he said it. But I like it.

To date, I've written close to 545,000 words - that's the combined word count of all of my finished projects (not including any outlines, world-building notes or unfinished drafts). The bulk of those words belong to several completed but trunked novels, fyi. So, I'm halfway there, according to Raymond Chandler. I've published 28,499 words, which means that the percentage of publishable words out of 545,000 is only 5.2%. It's not a shameful little number - the fact that it exists at all is encouraging. I think the point of Raymond Chandler's Law is that you can expect to write close to a million unpublishable words before you acquire enough skills to start writing the publishable ones. If that's the case, I'm 5.2% ahead of the game.

When I last posted, I was almost to the breaking point over my novella, and writing in general. After a year where I pretty much rearranged everything in my life to accomodate writing, and after almost three solid years of it with no significant breaks, I was burned out. I thought that diving into a novel or novella would be the solution, but everything I wrote was a mess. You don't need the details - just trust me on this, it was shit. I needed some perspective and space.

Also, the erotica story brought up some very personal issues that I won't go into here - but next year, I'll post an entry about writing erotica in general, how/why it's (for me) far more difficult than writing science fiction or fantasy, and what that means to me as a writer.

I'm still taking a break, but I'm calmer now. I haven't "lost it" - whatever "it" is - nor have I decided to abandon writing altogether, a la some kind of pseudo lj-death. But I want to spend some time daydreaming. I cannot stress how important it is to just dream about what you want to do, to let the ideas flit around, grow some weight, mutate and change. My trying to write a novella this month was the equivalent of planting a garden, then eating the sprouts before they had a chance to bear anything truly edible. I just ended up with a lot of dirt in my mouth, and on the page. In a way, though, I'm still writing. The novels and novellas are always in the back of my mind, twisting around, biding their time.

Why am I thinking of yellow wallpaper at this moment? ;)

Speaking of fruits and flowerings - I did send off a few submissions this month. Today I sent "Brimstone Orange" off to Pseudopod for consideration for podcasting (Pseudopod is the horror sister of the sf/f podcast site Escapepod. And tomorrow I send off my erotic novella "At the Edge of Ellensburg" to Susie Bright's "Best American Erotica 2008", for consideration for inclusion. The most I can hope for is that she picks a portion of it to reprint - but even that would be enough. I still haven't been paid for publication, and I have a feeling that the very nice three figures I was supposed to get last July will never come to me. So, a reprint sale of even a couple thousand words would help me feel like less of a failure for it having been published to begin with. I feel like a sucker for assuming I'd get the check in the mail with no problem. Ha. I work in publishing, I know how it is. And yet, still I dream the dream....

This year has been pretty good, but I think next year will be better, in all things.

Every now and then I have to take a complete break not only from blogging, but from all writing in general. This is one of those times. This entire year has revolved around writing - reading about writing, blogging about writing, attending readings, going to Clarion, and the actual act of writing. Enough already. I need a break.

So: I'll be back sometime next year.

I've written about 5000 words of my novella.

I've sneezed about 243,357,947,221,054 times.

Why oh why can I not be as productive as my cold?

This afternoon, iTunes on my smaller laptop decided to crap out, and reset itself to an older version, complete with an older library. I lost several hundred dollars worth of music and tv shows I'd downloaded since the end of August. That alone would be annoying enough, except that now when I look at my music history, it has "Last Played" dates for no later than August 25. It's hard to describe how that feels. I see all these old dates now, when I was back at Clarion - iTunes is a musical time capsule for all I was going through, showing me every song I played at every moment in those six weeks during the summer. All the music I played while I revised stories, while I wrote "The Unattainable" and the outlines for my novella and novel, is gone. It's creeping me out.

So, while I was futzing around with my crippled iTunes, I came up with two new story ideas. Both dark science fiction, one set on a labyrinthine STL generational ship, and the other--? I'm ashamed to say that five minutes after coming up with what I'm certain was a great idea and thinking "wow, that's a really great story idea", I got distracted (probably by a slice of cheese) and promptly forgot it. My brain is obviously operating on shitty iTunes software. I'm not too upset, I'm sure I'll remember it. However, I think I'm going to invest in a few Moleskin notebooks, and have them around so I can jot things down right when they come to me. I keep forgetting that I'm getting old, and probably need all the memory help I can get. Well, I keep forgetting that I'm forgetting, because I'm getting old, and... Yeah. Circle of life, baby.

EDIT: I momentarily lost this post - and Alex Wilson's comment - so I had to recreate it. Not unlike my iTunes library... Thanks to Alex, who pointed out the obvious to me. The library database file is an older one, but everything I bought since August 25th is still on my computer, in a folder called "iTunes Music". I've already re-imported them. Yay!