In 2015, I tried to use NaNoWrimo as a platform for arranging an anthology of my published stories and poetry, while adding a few new works. That seed did not take root that year, though I am steadily working on that project to publish independently, it's just going to take a while to edit older stuff and polish up the new stuff. 

In 2017, I joined the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month that takes place every November) in the hopes of beginning a novel that I had been planning and outlining for about six months or so. "I have a plan this time! I have an outline! I CAN DO THIS!!!!!"

Not.

Life, as it sometimes does, got in the way. I managed a little over 5500 words before caving to the pressures of being ill and not having enough time to write between working three goddamn jobs (welcome to American capitalism). I had to pay bills, ergo, writing my novel had to wait.

Now, in 2019, I'm ready to get back to this book. I have a full-time job, my health is a little better, and I have a girlfriend now to help me survive.

I've almost got everything set up on the new NaNo site. Not fond of the new layout but it is what it is. I've got my words entered from 2017 plus another hundred or so that I wrote this morning before work.,

To refresh: The Strange Blue Days of Dr. Fountainbrew takes place in an unnamed city (so far) in the weirdest neighborhood in the world. The protagonist, Dr. Fountanbrew, lives in his own comfy normal world, has never been in loved or loved by anyone, but he is well-liked. His comfy world gets thrown into turmoil when he meets two strange women one afternoon. He gets caught up in a fantastical world of human mutants and demi-humans and gods. And falls in love with a witch's broomstick. That's only the first couple of days.

Here's a brief summary of the good Doctor's"strange blue days" and the people he meets:

• A Goddess who rules the realm of illusion and reality. If she offers a blue marble, it's in your best interest to accept it.
• A witch's familiar, a man who turns into a broomstick by night (or perhaps he a broomstick who turns into a man by day). The last thing he was expecting was to fall in love.
• An ostrich man who sells newspapers on the strangest street corner in the world
• A six-armed girl who delivers newspapers, writes multiple novels simultaneously, and is a superhero in her spare time.
• A scientist who runs a laboratory/orphanage for folks who are a little different He suffers from autassassinophilia and has erotic fantasies about being murdered by the secret agent who has been targeting him and test subjects.
• A woman who transforms into a blue jay and flies.
• A fox-woman who runs a tavern on the strangest street in the world.
• A man who is bodily experiencing human de-evolution, and has the monkey tail to prove it.
• A government agent with strange secrets of his own, and orders to take down all of above.

These mysterious people become part of Dr. Fountainbrew's world and within a few days turn it completely upside down. He is faced with a choice to join them, but is not informed of the consequences if he refused.

I am not making any big goal-setting statements like I plan to write 50,000 words in November or finish this novel this month. I just want to continue to write this book whose characters I fell in love with in 2017. I want to continue to journey with them and learn things from them. What happens and where I am (and where they are) after November remains to be seen.

So that is that. Join me in the madness if you want. On NaNoWriMo's website, I am waning_gibbous.

Ok, yes. I know what you might think as you start watching this. Mr. Jiang is a person in the business world. Talking about his attempts at becoming a successful entrepenuer. But his talk should also resonate with many writers who experience the "no gift, no compliment" version of rejection (in a form email that indicated the editor maybe read a couple words of your piece and that was enough for them). We know whatof he speaks. We feel those feels. Regularly. 

Jiang's talk is funny and inspiring. I hope it gives anyone watching here the courage to keep building up that thick skin, keep pushing past the "no's," and keep chuggling full steam ahead with their dreams. The sin is not rejection. The sin is never trying, and/or never trying again. 

Peace and prosperity to you~~

It feels good to be off to a great start writing in the new year. 

And so far, two of my resolutions are checked off.

First, I wanted to write more blog posts, and although I did not specify and make any certain plans known in my original resoultion post, secretly I made a challenge to myself to write (and publish) a piece for three consecutive days. Today's post is the third. 

I'm not sure I'll be able to continue writing daily posts once I start working both jobs again (and, Goddess help me, I'm considering trying to start freelancing in editing and proofreading as a third job). But the challenge I have set for myself is at least one per week. 

The other resolved resolution was writing more creative fiction and poetry. My grandmother always said that whatever you do on New Year's Day, you will do for the rest of the year. So I worked on and completed a poem from my Priority WIP poem list (more on that in another post). I also started, but didn't finish, a new poem and some future blog posts. 

Today, I will begin fulfilling another of my goals for the year. I will choose a book on writing and editng craft from the five I picked out from my collection of books on craft that I was either given or bought, but haven't yet read. Everyday, I plan to read a chapter or two from each of the five books. Today, I have chosen to read the first chapter of a book that has been on my shelf since shortly after I moved into my current apartment four years ago. Revision and Self-Editing is written by James Scott Bell and published by Writer's Digest Press. I think I got it for some ridiculously low price when I subscribed to Writer's Digest.

There are also some upgrades to my resolutions. I intend to seek out opportunities for beginning my editing and proofreading career. I hope to save enough money to be able to have my first paying issue of The Were-Travler (information, here). I am hoping to soon sign on to a monthly membership of the gym at the high-rise office building where my new office at the public media company will be located. I want to keep losing weight and feel better. I plan on a long long overdue visit at the dentist (as soon as I get some decent dental insurance) and do something about these awful broken and painful teeth of mine. 

That's it, folks. Just a few excited lines of success in the first week of the new year. I am hoping to receive some long awaited news about some poetry and fiction submissions made in the past. A nice acceptance email would be a great harbinger of 2017. I would blog about that, for sure. 

I hope your pursuits will all be successful as well. 

Peace--
​

A shorter clip of this was posted on Facebook earlier in the year, and it resonated with me. So I decided to watch the longer version of the YouTube clip of a commencement speech given by J.K. Rowling on the subject of the unexpected benefits of failure. 

The beginning of the New Year is typically the time we begin to re-evaluate the past year and make up our minds to better ourselves in the future. But we often have difficulty admitting defeat, even to ourselves, because in our modern society failure carries a negative connotation rather than a positive one. But perhpas it should be different. It's normal to feel some negativity and self-loathing after failing, but that should not last long. It should be soon followed by positive re-focusing of one's energies to strive to be better next time. Joanne nails these points in her own brilliant way. 

It's a little longer than the clip posted on Facebook, but well worth watching. The author of the famous Harry Potter series talks about the most valuable lesson she ever learned in one of the best commencement speeches I've ever heard. 

I've been meaning to post this talk of Joanne's for awhile now, but today it hits home more, so I'm finishing this post and sharing it with the world. Because sometimes you need silver linings when the rainbow fades to pale. 

​May we shoulder onward through our defeats and come out victorious in the end!

You know the song.

If you don't, watch the video above. Or not. It's not a song I would recommend unless you like cheesy 80s ear-worms. It's there as a point of reference, to emphasize the following. 

Writers can totally dig that statement, working for the weekend. For a lot of us, this is the only time we can scrounge some word-slingin' time. Some of us emerge from bed early Saturday morning, haul our half-dead asses to the nearest caffeine procurement device. Once that is accomplished and wake -up mode has fully powered on, we sit in front of our computers for as long as we can and make word pudding on a blank screen. It's gloopy and messy as hell, like all first drafts, but getting it down is all that matters. The time for turning it into something tasty comes later.

I've got several stories of what I call the "backburner" variety in my Word files. I am going to make a habit of it to decide what I want to work on each weekend. I think this is a good way for me to get back into the habit of working on certain stories with an end-goal of finishing something to put in the editing folder or send to beta readers.

Currently, I have two stories I really want to get more editing done on as well as the slew of stories to continue writing.

The following are the stories I want to work on this weekend, and ONLY these stories:

• For Editing:
  • An Irregular Meeting of the Cult of Conspiracy Theorists
  • The Imminent Fall of the Tumbler Stargate and Its Mother AI
• For Working On:
  • Particle Girl Theory
  • Venusian Eggrolls Taste Like Despair
  • 14 Riffs on a 2-String Guitar

I would dearly love to finish one of those WIPs this weekend and chuck them in the folder for beta and editing.

Making task lists like this help me, whether it is getting through college or writing. What works for you?

This is another cross-posting from my Portfolio class from the Fall term. I have edited it a bit to bring it up to date.


Taking a deep breath after graduation.

Hard to believe that my baccalaureate career is over, and I have some tough decisions to make about where to go next. I've begun applications to 2 universities: Florida State University and USF-Tampa.

I have a short list of schools that I would like to attend, but I need to take the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) and take some time off to save up for application fees and collect the needed documents to submit with applications. Some schools are on my shortlist, even though they are far away from Florida and moving out of state scares the crap out of me, simply because they are either fully funded, do not require the GRE, or both. 

My Top 5 Shortlist for Grad Schools:

1. Florida State University
   • Although I'm not sure if they are fully funded or not, they do offer some form of assistance, either with TA's or other forms of scholarships, working opportunities. The reason I am so hung up on FSU, despite the way I feel about their logo that's offensive to Native Americans, is that in addition to having a MFA in Creative Writing, they also have a PhD in Creative Writing, and (here's where I go squee inside) a certificate in Editing and Publishing.
     
2. USF-Tampa
   • Getting into FSU might be hard, it's the #1 MFA school in the state. In case they reject me, USF-Tampa is my backup. Their MFA in Creative Writing is fairly new. How much funding they'll give is something I need to look into. That will be a priority real soon. 
3. University of Florida
   • Fully funded. A little more expensive to live here than in Tally, but not much more so.
4. Virginia Commonwealth University
   • Fully funded with health insurance. A smaller, easier to navigate campus in the heart of a mid-size, very hip and happening city in the midwest. Private, off-campus housing on and off the campus main drag, close to everything. The former home of one of America's greatest fiction authors (IMHO), Edgar Allan Poe. 
5. University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop:
   • It's the mother-effing Iowa Writers' Workshop, continually the #1 MFA program in the country. I have to apply, just to see if I can get in there. 

There are others on the list, but these 5 are in my radar. 

​It wouldn’t be end-of-year blogging without some goal-setting. My Year 2015 Post was about looking behind at the year that was. This post is about looking forward to events as yet unfolded, and trying to orchestrate some good out of what may come. 

Last years goals were a mixture of health and success (academic, financial, and writing) related objectives. I began walking more. Even though I haven’t seen the results of all that walking in much weight loss, I will continue to try hard with my exercise. I also graduated Summa Cum Laude with my Bachelors Degree from the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, and that was an unexpected plus for the year. 

So where do we go from here? Well…here is everything I hope to accomplish in the coming year. 

1. Get some more hours at either job whenever I can. I need the money for taking the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) and applying to graduate programs.
2. Pass the GRE (get brushed up on the maths and nail this thing in one go!)
3. Apply to the 5-6 graduate programs I’m interested in.
4. Blog more. It’s not that I didn’t blog much in 2015. I did a helluva lot of blogging last semester for my Senior Portfolio class. So I have some posts to steal from there to make up for lost time. But I also need to blog fresh good stuff on here. 
5. Read more. I read 126 books in 2015. My goal was 75. I would like to set a goal higher than 126 for 2016 and blow that one sky high as well. 
6. Get the few completed short stories I have sitting around edited and in decent shape for submitting to magazines. 
7. GET PUBLISHED BIG TIME IN 2016! That means a decently paying market. 
8. Write more. Now that I’m not writing for academia anymore, I would like to start making sweet words with my muse again. We have missed one another. 
9. Keep walking. Try to finally invest in a stationery bike or look at getting a membership at the City Gym I pass by every day. I need to get really in shape if I expect to be cruising big-ass campuses like Florida State or Iowa or USF Tampa. 
10. Keep breathing. That's very important. 

That’s it, really. I’m sure there are other things I need to do, but I’ll deal with all that stuff as we roll along. 

As for you all, I hope you manage to slay your 2016 Resolutions List like the bosses you are. 

Peace and Joy and Love. 

Happy New Year, friends. 

Going to make this brief. This the new website embracing a new persona. I'm still working on it so don't trip over any power cords and please wear your safety helmets at all times. Pardon the dust and din. Creating a new persona is messy and loud. But I feel at this point, it's time to make a little noise. 

I don't have a whole lot of goals for this year. But the ones I do have embrace the changes I've ended this past year on. Nothing less than a complete remake of self, starting with a semi-psuedonym. I was going to go all out and call myself something completely different. I have in the past. I have a secret male pseudonym who is responsible for all of my darkest stuff. Not secret anymore. Coming out of that pseudonym closet and going to embrace another, less private one. Sort of. Same first initial and same last name. Only change it to the middle initial. A is not a cool initial. M.A. Kelly is not a cool pen name. X is cool. X marks the spot where the hidden treasure is buried. X is radical and visionary. X stands for Brand New Me. 

That's that for the name enhancement. 

Now for these 2015 goal thingys. The list is short and sweet. 

In 2015, I will endeavor to:

1. Keep breathing and living. Important when you start getting up there in years. I need to get healthier. Will make changes toward this goal, no matter how painful and uncomfortable. 
2. Write, write, write. Need to get more writing in (other than academic writing) for the year. 
3. FINISH the stories I started late in 2014. They came from excellent ideas and have the potential to be some of the best stuff I've ever written, but I need to get on with them and bring them CLOSURE! That means writing "END" after the last word drops. Capped and centered. Ready to edit and send flying into slush piles all over the World Wide Webby.
4. Find a way to make more money. 2014 is the most unprosperous year I've had in awhile. Don't want a sequel of that. 
5. Find a way to make it up to all those friends who helped me get through the shitstorm that was 2014. 

And that's it really. 

I hope all of your dreams and aspirations come true in 2015, and I hope you hold strong and stay committed to your own resolutions. 

Change is a good thing.