2018 Year in Review

As I wrote in my previous post, I've been down about my writing, so I dreaded writing this annual "year in review" posting. What accomplishments did I have to talk about? It had been a terrible year.

When I started gathering information, I checked my number of submissions for the year. Hardly any, I thought. But, to my surprise, I had logged over a hundred submissions. Huh! Not a record by any means, but still a good number.  What about short fiction publications? Maybe one or two? Nope, I had five. Again, not a record, but better than I remembered. And how had I forgotten that prize I won?

Discouragement not only saps us of strength, it robs us of perspective. I didn't accomplish finding an agent for my novel this year. But here's what I did accomplish:

• I finished revising a novel and started submitting it to agents (!)
• My story "Lost Hills" won the Prime Number flash fiction contest for April, which involved a monetary prize
• I got to see my story "Your Superpower" read by an actress at Play on Words San Jose
• Online and print journals published the following stories, for which I'm very grateful:
  • "It'll Do Motel," Harpoon Review, Spring 2018
  • "Abandoned Bees," Postcard Poems and Prose, May 2018
  • "Lost Hills," Prime Number Magazine, July 2018. Winner of the Prime Number Magazine Flash Fiction Contest, April, 2018
  • "If I Feed It Quarters," Whiskey Island, August 2018
  • "Meet Your Kid for Lunch," Typehouse Literary Journal 15, October 2018

Finishing the novel was huge for me. How had I forgotten? I think I'll have to revise the opening, but that doesn't change the fact that I finished and started sending it out. And in addition to the accomplishments above, I wrote a few stories that have yet to be published. 

In my disappointment over not immediately landing an agent, I'd minimized or forgotten my other accomplishments. And who knows what 2019 will bring? Maybe my new year's resolution should be to try to keep things in perspective.

I hope all of you have a great 2019!