Wait. It’s 2023?
Already!?
What the hell?
O.K.
Well, as unbelievable as that is, it’s time. Time for another post. A post about where my writing is headed this year.
Here we go.
In Search of a Strategy
Right now, what I’m really searching for in my fiction writing/career is a strategy. The ability to answer questions like:
- What do I want to achieve?
- Do I want this to be a career or not?
- Do I want to be an agented/contract author or a independent writer?
- Which genre should I commit to?
I don’t have an answer to any of these questions right now. None of them. But I do feel the need for a strategy.
I feel like I have dabbled in Podcasts, poetry, stories, novellas, but not truly found my footing in any of them. And part of the reason is that I have switched between these mediums constantly.
The problem, I think, is that strategizing is a “thinking” thing. While creating art is a “feeling” thing. So, you either follow your feelings or what rationally makes sense. But if you just think—you won’t create any art with emotional impact. And if you don’t feel—then everything will just come out flat. And you won’t have much of a career anyway!
So, there’s the problem. I don’t have a solution for that now, but I just want to lay it out there. If and when I have a solution (don’t hold your breath!), I will let you know! Until then, I’m OK with letting this one go.
Be Bolder
As I sort of drift and muse over strategy, this is my only true resolution this year:
Be bolder.
That means taking more risks creatively. Being bolder in subject matter selection, in themes.
It also means more concrete, tactical things like:
- Writing poems that really get to the core of things and submitting them to tough, Pro Markets. Maybe even to (gasp!) Literary Fiction markets.
- Writing those short stories that burn in my belly—and to hell with all these false partitions between genres! If it has Horror, Fantasy, and SciFi all in one—so be it!
- Writing novellas or even novels. And submitting them to agents. Go all the way.
- Writing Podcasts for top Markets because I love it! Simple enough!
I think all of these, for my skill level now, are NOT too deep, complex or big of a stretch. The challenge is to match growing skills sets to growing challenges. One step at a time… As I discussed in this post on Bowie and as delved into in Csikszentmihalyi’s great book called “Flow.”
As the saying goes: “If not now, when? If not me, who?”
I love having just ONE resolution—it makes things so much easier!
New Blogging Cadence
I also will be cutting down my posting to this blog.
There are two basic reasons for this:
- Blogs are sort of seen as passe these days. As something from the -10s (Remember them? No!? It’s fine! I don’t either! Nobody does!). They’re not something seen as fundamental or necessary for a writer to maintain rigorously and systematically. They’re still important, sure, but I’ve noticed many writers have reduced the frequency of their posting or, sometimes, don’t post at all. These days, it seems it’s all about NEWSLETTERS, and the remaining social media platforms like Instagram, Tik-Tok, and this thing called “Twitter.” Perhaps you’ve heard of it?
- Every hour I spend blogging could be an hour spent writing fiction. That is…Writing first drafts, editing second drafts, submitting stories, editing third drafts, networking with other writers, dreaming up poems, etc. You get the picture.
So based on that, I have decided to post five blogs per year on this schedule:
- Early January. (This post right here!)
- A look back at Q1 around March 31.
- A look back at Q2 around June 30.
- A look back at Q3 around Sept. 30.
- And look back at my year in writing around Dec. 21.
I plan to keep to that schedule going forward.
Also, these will probably be more ‘writing updates’ than longer “themed” or “How-to” posts, but I retain the right to do those longer, musing posts you guys seem to like from time to time with the Writing Update stuck on at the end.
That’s all for now. Until next time…
Keep reading, keep writing.
Darius
Inside the Writer's Mind 