A new year, new hope imbued. Flow with it, while you can!

Happy new year!

I just finished reading a lovely book that my work secret santa got me: Orscon Scott Card's Writing Science-Fiction & Fantasy. It's well written, with good useful stuff in it, inspiring me to sit down and write. A tad out of date - 1990! - but worth a read just for that push to write. Thank you, santa!

I'm thinking maybe I need to read a "words of writerly wisdom" type book every couple of months. It'll be like a metabolic hit to the writing muse. Keep her in gear.

Shall we set some new year resolutions? Whenever I set them, they're always about writing. And I always fail! But, hey, in keeping with tradition...

This year:

- I want to submit stuff for publication.
- (That means) I want to write some short fiction.
- And, I want to finish at least the first draft of In Finding.

In order to maintain my enthusiasm and participation and achieve these, I'm doing the following:

- Writing every Wednesday evening, at least
- Subscribing / following online SFF magazines (Clarkesworld and Strange Horizons so far)
- Reading more "how to" books??

There's a lot of other things I'm thinking about doing, that I should do. But "should do lists" have the propensity to grow exponentially. So I'm not going to write that and then feel sad when I fail to achieve it all.

And a report on my recent writerly activity:

• Started writing a query letter for In Finding. I'm doing this as a tool to help me define the story and make sure I'm creating the strongest story it can be.
• Approached revision of short story, Dancing at the Lilac Orchid. Will start rewriting this tomorrow now - think I might switch it to first person POV, but will see how that goes.