Resolutions and eligibility

Wait, am I eligible for anything this year? I am! Here is the incredibly short list of my award-eligible work:

“Smooth Stones and Empty Bones,” F&SF Jan/Feb 2016. This story was just listed in the Tangent Online Recommended Reading List for 2016.

Also, as this is my first year of being published, I am now eligible to be nominated for the John W. Campbell Award. If you were wondering.

Meanwhile: resolutions!

First, let’s see how last year’s resolutions went:

2016’s writing-related goals:

• Write an average of 500 words per day – I stopped keeping track of my daily writing stats, so that makes this difficult, but looking back at my finished work, I wrote about 162,000 words. That’s only 20k short of my goal, so I’m pretty happy with that.
  
• Submit to more markets and start querying agents again – According to The Submission Grinder and Query Tracker, I sent out 30 short story submissions this year and queried 14 agents.
• Try to write (or put a substantial amount of work into) a short story a week – In total, I started 37 short stories this year. Of those, 6 are finished and on submission, 18 are underway, and 14 are outlined. I was hoping for more finished short stories, but I’m not complaining.
• Blog more often – I wrote 19 posts this year. This is less than the 23 posts written last year and the 26 posts written the year before that. So I failed that one.

 

2016’s exercise related goals:

• Walk an average of 7,500 steps per day – Nope. I stopped wearing my FitBit at the end of the year, but before that point I only averaged about 4,000 steps per day.
• Learn to do a pull up (at least one. Preferably more.) – Nope. In my defense, I got tendinitis in my elbow, but I didn’t get that until November so that’s not the most convincing excuse.
• Run a 5k in less than 40 minutes – Didn’t even try.
• Send a 5.11 at the rock gym – Haven’t been rock climbing since… not sure when.

 

2016’s art related goals:

• Try drawing a comic – Nope
• Maybe take a class or something? – Nope
• Start oil painting again – Nope

 

 

 

 

 

Other things I accomplished that weren’t part of my goals:

• As of last night, I’m at the 260 hour mark in Fallout 4
• There’s an 85% chance that I got a full time job
• Went to my very first WorldCon
• Dyed my hair blue
• Was published for the first time
• Joined Codex
• Joined SFWA
• Helped launch A Lonely Riot magazine

 

As for this year’s resolutions:

• Write an average of 500 words a day (for real this time)
• Finish and polish all 37 short stories that I started this year.
• If I don’t blog more often than 2016, at least don’t blog less.
• Average of 7,500 steps per day
• ONE PULL UP. JUST ONE.
• Draw more often. At least once a month?
• Finish that cross stitch project from last year.

 

Okay, that’s it. How about you? What are your goals for 2017?