2020: I Courteously Invite You To Bring It

           Last year around this time, I issued a challenge to 2019 to "fucking bring it." Well, 2019 accepted my challenge and brought it hard enough that at certain points I felt I should've agreed on a safeword with 2019 beforehand. But I'm still here, so I can at least look at that with pride, and in the spirit of "keep on keeping on" I decided to post my resolutions for 2020, too (and yes, I know the year's already a month gone, but better late than never). But before I get to them, let's take a look back at my five resolutions from last year and see how close I got to keeping each, or how radically I failed, in some cases. Because nothing says "welcome to the new year" like a heavy dose of self-judgement, right?

          1.) Go to bed before 11 PM. Excuse me while I laugh my ass off, crying at the same time. To be fair, I had streaks of time where I accomplished this, but it was nowhere near as often as I and my body would've preferred, especially towards the end of the year, as deadline after deadline piled up and my ability to write seemed to disappear more and more each time I picked up my pencil. I'd give myself a C- here.

          2.) Write more. Which I meant both in general and in terms of getting stories that'd been hanging on my "I should do this" list for a while done at last. Well...I got one "I should do this" story done, and a bunch of new stories, some of which have even been accepted or are under consideration, and just in general writing terms I started a new novel I've been plowing along on, minus the occasional gap, but would I deem myself a success here, either? I gotta say not really. I mean, I'm proud of the work I got done, and thrilled that more has gotten or will be published, but last year I started more stories that I left unfinished than I have since I first started seriously writing short stories again, missed several deadlines I really wanted to make because the stories either weren't working or because I hadn't left myself enough time, and also wound up abandoning a novel for the second time since I came up with the idea for it (although, to balance it out, I started a new one in June that, while I'm still working on it, is making me really happy). I don't know if it was just burnout, writer's block, or what, but accomplishments in this area were limited, too, in my opinion. C+

          3.) Balance. The less said about this, the better. F

          4.) Read more. I'm happy to say that I did make progress on this one! I read more consistently and, as the year went on, finished books at closer to my old pace than I have in a while, and though I also bought close to a hundred new books in a couple months (thanks, library book sale!) that jacked my stacks back up to unsafe levels I have yet to whittle down, I still read more than I have been and remember more often to take a book with me when I leave so I have something on hand should any free time present itself. I also read several books I completely fell in love with and might even start ranting about here at some point, so keep your eyes open for that, if you want to know what delights my blackened, withered little heart. A- (I'd rate it higher, but those giant stacks still looming in my bedroom knock me down a few points)

          5.) Send out more submissions. I don't have the exact numbers on hand, but I vacillated between periods where I sent out several at a time and long dry stretches of silence; since towards the end of the year, when more places were closing down their submission calls or reading periods, I tapered off, I don't think I broke any records or anything, but I feel like I at least broke even. My acceptance rate even perked up a bit, as my recent posts have mentioned, so I think I've started moving in the right direction, even if I took a few steps back here and there. B-

          So what are my resolutions for the first year of the Roaring 2020s, I'm pretending I heard someone ask? 

          1.) Do better with the resolutions left over from 2019. More responsible bedtimes, crossing more stories off the "I should do this" list, finding some kind of balance, read (even) more, and send out more submissions. I'm gonna raise whatever scores I can by this time next year.

          2.) Finish more works-in-progress. Currently I have two poetry chapbooks to finish writing, a full poetry collection to organize and send out, a novel I'm over halfway done, a short story left over from last year, and a few novels and novellas in the planning stages. I want to check these off my to-do list and soon, because if I don't change things up every so often I started to get bored, which never bodes well for me or my writing.

          3.) Write better poetry. I love poetry. Love reading it, love writing it, love when I can really get my hands dirty and work at arranging words until I stare at what I've come up with and go "Holy shit, that's actually really good." That's partly why I've been writing at least a poem a day since 2015, and I've gotten some stuff out of it that I'm really proud of. That being said, I've also gotten some shit out of it that I'd rather burn than let the world read, a lot of these being what I call "placeholder poems," little drabbles written just to avoid breaking the streak. Sometimes I get lucky and these inspire later, better poems, but usually they just suck. And lately I've been stuck in a rut of placeholder poems, partly because I've had to give so much time over to short stories I had actual deadlines for, as well as the new novel, and partly because my brain just doesn't seem to be in it as much anymore. There are things I want to write about, and images/people/feelings/thoughts I want to capture in poetry, but everything just seems to come out flat and dull, nothing like what I used to be able to manage. This, too, could be burnout—a poem a day for five years is a lot, even if some of those earlier poems weren't great, either, but I don't think giving up the project is the answer; therefore, I'm setting a goal to work harder at my poetry and create better ones, if not every day, because I understand that's not always possible, than at least more often than I have been.

          4.) Be more realistic. I've been missing a lot of submission calls because I always underestimate how long a particular story will take to complete and wind up heaping three or four deadlines on myself in a time period where I'd be better off trying for one or two. I have to stop that, and realize that if I have time to do them all I can, but if not, I can't force them to fit—it's not good for me or for story quality. I currently have a list of 29 story deadlines from now until October, several of which fall in clusters ending on the same date, and I know I'm going to have to make some tough choices when it comes to what I can handle and what I can't. I'm going to do better budgeting my time, so I can make as many as I can, but I'm also going to do better when it comes to telling myself no, so I don't burn myself down to nothing when I really don't have to. Just because a story doesn't get written for a certain call doesn't mean it won't get written. 

          I hope.