2012 is just about over. I’ll be glad to shake the last dust
of it from my feet. After a rough 2010, where we lost my mom, stepfather, and
brother-in-law, 2011 was a year of
recovery. I wrote more and more as 2011 went on and had a very productive
summer. The fall of 2011 was tough at work and I had to slow down on the
writing front, but I picked up over Christmas break and drove into the first
couple of months of 2012 with enthusiasm and energy that I hadn't possessed in
some time. Everyone who reads this blog knows what happened next and I won’t
rehash it. I could have found the time to write after March, but my will broke
for a while.
I've never kept word counts for my yearly production but I’d
estimate that I've typically produced between 100 to 120,000 words of published
fiction a year for the last decade. In 2012 I actually did decide to keep
records. I only produced about 50,000 words of what I’d consider publishable
material. About 10,000 of that was produced in January and February and has
been published. Another 15,000 of what I did later in the year is scheduled for
publication in various venues. In fact, much of that material was written
because I had requests or contracts for it. I don’t know if I’d produced much
of it without that motivation. The rest of my 2012 writing consists mostly of
partials, most of which I hope to finish in 2013.
2012 has ended on a high note emotionally for Lana and me.
Her cancer is gone and life is steadily getting back to normal for us. Despite
that lift in mood, though, I have really just wasted my Christmas break as far
as writing is concerned. I wrote one 1000 word short story, and that was during
final exams. Since I've been home for break I've done virtually nothing. I’m
not quite sure why. It just seems far easier not to write.
I see 2013 as an important year for me in writing. If I
don’t do better than in 2012 I’m thinking I might as well just admit that I’m a
dabbler rather than a writer. Fortunately, my production this year was so low
that I scarcely have anywhere to go but up. I’m going to try and use these last
few days of 2012 to re energize myself a bit. I've been overdosing on reading
fiction in hopes of feeding my muse some stimulation. We’ll see how that works
out.
What I need, and I know it, is the discipline that has
served me well over previous years. I've never been a prolific writer and have
always had many other work commitments, but throughout most of my life since
graduate school I have written steadily. It might have been just a small amount,
but it was nearly every day. Even if I
was tired, or sick, or depressed, or overworked at school, I produced a
sentence, a paragraph, a page. 2010
knocked that pattern off kilter, and 2012 kept it off. But it wasn't the events
in those years that did it. It was the change inside of me.
Maybe it’s time to shrug back into the harness.
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