Year-End Writing Review and Last Week of ROW80

ear-end writing review and goals!





I've done this post rather sporadically since the first year I began blogging (2007!), first in 2010, then in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. Finally, I recapped my goals for 2015, which carried over into 2016. Here are the writing reviews for 2017 and 2018.

My 2018 goals were as follows:
A Round of Words in 80 Days Round 1:

• enter handwritten edits to The Handful of Time (working title) and reread
• query Druid’s Moon
• query The Charm of Time
• keep editing Mystery at Bertram’s Hotel (working title) on paper
• back to school!

Round 2:

• enter handwritten edits to The Handful of Time
• enter handwritten edits to Mystery at Bertram’s Hotel
• do required research for both and come up with proper titles
• keep querying
• think about short story anthology
• final essays for graduate school!

Round 3:

• reread both stories, enter final edits, and send to betas
• keep querying
• figure out this short story anthology idea

Round 4:

• back to school, year 2!
• get some knitting in?
• NaNoWriMo 2018!

I managed nearly all of this, except the short story anthology, which is now on the back burner, as devoting time to cover design and learning e-reader formatting will take a while.

I also don’t have a real title for Mystery at Bertram’s Hotel yet! If anyone wants to take a crack at titling a spy romance set in World War II... I love thinking up titles, but have been stuck on this one for a long time.

NaNoWriMo stats!

I also wrote two new short pieces:
In August: Summer Blaze, featuring Valentina and Justin
In December: Blackbird’s Song, a ghost story featuring George from Larksong (and Alice in his dreams)

And I took part in the Never Have I Ever writers' houseparty, which ran to the usual hundreds of thousands of words by about 25 authors.

Knitting updates to come in the next blog post!

My NaNoWriMo 2018 story was A Stitch in Time, featuring Angus (Rory’s brother) and Amelie (Christianne’s daughter).

I also made some more story playlists on YouTube:
Titanic Houseparty (technically in 2019)
Summer Blaze
Never Have I Ever Houseparty
A Stitch in Time
Austin and Barb 1983
Austin and Barb, their influences
Austin and Barb wedding, June 1985


Something I mentioned in my 2017 recap was the idea of concentrating on reading all the books we already own. I seem to have a rotating 50 (counted generously) and probably 150 (counting even those books that I never mean to read) in the house at all times. I'd like to move them all onto one shelf, maybe. I do have one dedicated shelf for this at the office, and I’ve slowly begun to work through them.


I also need to:

Keep up with blogging (including commenting during the A to Z Challenge!) and the Forum. And, among beta reading and Forum exercises and book reviews and so on, I added a few hundred more words here and there to a joint novel I'm writing (s l o w l y) with family members (The Horror of Horhor).

Check box of "writing to do" and type up all notes on paper and collate all story ideas and ideas from dreams, ideally into my lovely new Kate Davies journal.

Find homes for finished short stories***:
Blackbird's Song
Summer Blaze
The Tattoo
One to Another
Little Upon the Earth, but Exceeding Wise
Where There's Life
He Ain't Heavy
Eyes of the Sky
Late Night, Maudlin Street

Figure out what to do with the orts, such as the CampNaNoWriMo2015 story The Heathen in the Hold, and others, including items such as this post-apocalyptic story idea I wrote in 2010, based on a dream, and all other such half-formed notions.

I'm going to list my 2019 goals by story, taking up the list of Works Completed and In Progress at the bottom of this blog and adding to it (the last few are all ideas, except for the two completed romances; other ideas and completed short stories and early novels should be added to this list eventually, for the sake of completeness – collating all of this stuff is another ongoing project of mine!).

Goals for 2019:

• Blackbird’s Song (short story, WWII, George and Alice, written 2018)***: edit and consider submitting to the Surrey International Writers' Conference
• Summer Blaze (short story, travel romance, Valentina and Justin, written 2018)***
• The Tattoo (short story, dystopian, Geneva, Marie-Anne and Michel, written 2017)***
• One to Another (short story, dystopian, Montreal, Aggy and snow, written 2015)***
• Little Upon the Earth, but Exceeding Wise (short story, murder mystery on board ship, 1493, Rosa and Baha)
• Where There's Life (short story, magical realism, library card for Alexandria, written 2014)***
• He Ain’t Heavy (short story, 1910s Montreal, Charles and Oliver)***
• Eyes of the Sky (vignette)***
• Late Night, Maudlin Street (vignette, working title)***

• A Stitch in Time (contemporary new adult romance, Amelie and Angus, written NaNoWriMo 2018): edit on paper
• The Handful of Time (sequel to The Charm of Time, Christianne and Rory, written NaNoWriMo 2017): finish second round of edits on screen
• The Charm of Time (contemporary romantic mystery/suspense, Christianne and Rory, written NaNoWriMo 2016): send queries!
• Mystery at Bertram's Hotel (working title, mystery suspense romance set in WWII Switzerland and France, Phillippe and Milly, written NaNoWriMo 2015): find title!
• Peter and Penelope (no title yet, romantic suspense, WWII, Gallipoli, written NaNoWriMo 2014): type up! (on backburner)
• Larksong (historical romance, c. 1914 Montreal, Alice and George, written NaNoWriMo2013): keep editing (on backburner)
• Captive of the Sea (historical romance, 1471 England, Magdalena and Santiago, written NaNoWriMo 2012, typed up 2013): keep editing (on backburner)
• Druid's Moon (contemporary paranormal, Lyne and Frederick, written summer 2012): collate beta reviews and edit one last time, then submit to Barbara Rogan
• Rome, Rhymes and Risk/Verse, Venice, and Viziers (historical romance, 1493 Mediterranean Sea, Ayten and Devran): keep editing (on backburner)
• Out of the Water (historical romance, 1492 Spain and Constantinople, Rosa and Baha): keep querying (on backburner)
• The Face of A Lion (historical young adult, time travel, Austin and Kedi): keep editing (on backburner)
• An Arnavutkoy Spring (historical romance, 1910 Istanbul, Klara and Sevran): keep editing (on backburner)

• untitled (two new ideas for modern dystopian stories)
• untitled (new adult romance about Spanish couple)
• A Fredericton Story (long-term small town romance set in New Brunswick, plot bunny during NaNoWriMo 2016)
• untitled (another story featuring Brother Arcturus and Austin and Kedi, set c. 1520)
• The Heathen in the Hold (working title, featuring Brother Arcturus and Austin and Kedi, set on board ship c. 1496, CampNaNoWriMo 2015 and 2016)
• Coliseum (working title; sequel to The Face of A Lion)
• Radio Nowhere (working title; new idea for Scholastic's Dear Canada series, 1930s)
• Indexing Outlander series (volunteer project started by members of OutlanderGathering Yahoo group)
• Bizim Anadolu www.bizimanadolu.com (travel column and book reviews)
• The Trickster in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (journal article)
• Don't Stand So Close To Me (screenplay)
• A Short Album About Love (screenplay)
• Crash! Boom! Bang! (romance, completed)
• Never Is A Long Time (romance, completed)

The first round of ROW80 for this year ends next week! Of all the items listed above, I'm currently working on on-screen edits for The Handful of Time, and editing an 800-word scene about food for this month's writing exercise on The Lit Forum.

What are your goals for the year? Or for the next month or so?
Do you enjoy coming up with book titles?