Writing News and Updates
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Since 2013 I've taken a moment every December to look back over the previous year and, instead of lamenting all I did not accomplish, enumerating what I did, primarily in the writing department, but also in other areas of my life. This year I felt like I spent a lot of time spinning my wheels. Let's see how it actually shook out!  Writing In 2025, my creativity group went through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, over the course of 12 months rather than the prescribed 12 weeks. Part of this program is to write "morning pages"--three pages written long hand every morning. Although I missed a fair number of days, and occasionally did not fill three whole pages, this practice resulted in my filling up six Decomposition Books (by contrast, in 2024 I filled four of the same notebooks), plus two small travel journals. Also, in an effort to be less precious about writing tools, I stopped buying refills for my favorite jell pen and instead tried to use up some of the several million ball-point pens cluttering up the house. The good news is that I used up a lot of them. The bad news is that my husband replaced them with ones brought home from work at least once a week. Whether any of this morning "brain dump" writing did me any good is still an open question. I did not have any major epiphanies, but I do often mine my old brain dumpings for essay material, so you never know... Aside from journal pages, I wrote:
 Travel & Adventure
Trips taken in 2025:
I recently read the advice to "local like a traveler" (an inverse of the "travel as a local" philosophy), and this is something I want to intentionally put into practice, although I think I did a pretty good job making the most of local cultural opportunities and attractions, in addition to taking a few trips. I didn't set out to visit two museums (or museum-like places) a month, like I did in 2024, but I still managed to visit 21 museums, some of them more than once, which averages out to about two a month:
I also saw four plays and a ballet at local theaters. I went on a few local hikes (and did one volunteer trail maintenance day on the trail nearest me) and paddled a few nearby ponds. Arts & Crafts
Overall, some things I want to keep doing--traveling, making art, visiting museums--and some things I want to concentrate on doing a lot more of--writing, submitting (and publishing), hiking, kayaking--in 2026. NATIONAL DES BEAUX-ARTS DU QUÉBEC
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It's time for the 12th annual I Did It! post, in which I celebrate my accomplishments large and small over the past year. Previous years can be viewed here: 2023, 2022, 2021 (Apocalypse Year 2) 2020 (Apocalypse Year 1), 2019 (including decade-in-review), 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013.  Writing In 2024, I wrote:
I also:
 Travel and Adventure There was no way 2024 could top 2023 in the travel department, but looked at on its own, it was a pretty good year.
 I also made a goal in the fall of 2023 to visit the beach at least once a month, all year long. When January of 2023 came, I made that a goal of visiting a different beach every month of 2024. I managed to visit the beach at least once a month during 2024, hitting at least one different one in every month but December, for a total of 16 -18 different beaches in 2024 (depending on how you count them). I collected sand in little jars at all of them as well (only I accidentally threw out October's sand).  Arts and Crafts
Household C and I did a major amount of home improvements this year, including:
All in all, 2024 was a full and fulfilling year. I see a lot of things I want to carry over into 2025 and a few things I'd like to do differently. That's what the year-end review is all about.  Every January for the last several years, I've made an annual I Did It! list, inspired by Lisa Romeo. Below is the list for 2017.
Writing I Did Its! I finished a draft of the narrative part of The Book and put that narrative though one full round of revision. I still have a lot of research to do to fill in a lot of holes, but clearing that hurdle of getting those first round edits into the document felt good! I continued to write and submit short pieces, especially during the first half of the year. My results: Submissions: 24 Rejections: 26 Withdrawals (due to acceptance elsewhere): 2 Short-listed: 1 Acceptances: 7 Pending Publication: 2 Publications: 14
The reason these numbers don't add up is because rejections, acceptances, etc. include a number of pieces submitted in 2016. Even though my submission rate was almost half what it was last year (24 versus 45), my rejection rate was higher (26 versus 20) and so was my publication rate (14 versus 8), but my acceptance numbers were down (7 versus 9). What does all this mean? I have no idea. The low submission number has to do with me focusing on writing short pieces and getting them out in the world during the first half of the year and turning my attention to The Book during the second half (only two submissions since May!). I would like to find more of a balance between The Book and keeping short pieces flowing next year. Right now I only have two essays that are finished and making the rounds of literary journals. They're two of the best pieces I've ever written, I believe, and they're having a hard time finding a home. Probably because I insist on sending them only to paying journals. I've got a bunch of partially written essays on hold in the files and numerous short stories on hiatus. At some point I have to address the gap between essay and short story—why am I having more success with the former than the latter? Which stories in the queue truly have merit and which need to be retired? I also want to write more fiction, despite the challenges it poses. Other writing activity:
On the financial front, my writing balance is in the black! It's not much, in terms of trying to survive (or even buy the occasional cup of chai), but my income from publications and teaching workshops exceeded my expenses of buying books and office supplies and paying submission fees and alumni weekend registration, Duotrope and Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance membership fees, and cloud storage costs. I've reached my goal of not spending more money on writing than I earn. Now I just need to earn enough to live on. Travel I Did Its! I took the boys on a road trip to Colorado and back home (via Utah, Wyoming, and South Dakota). This was the first time I went on a road trip as the only adult (though I had some driving help from M), and I think I did pretty great (we never ran out of gas and we never succumbed to a hotel room, camping the whole way there and back). We even survived a rare Utah Hurricane which threatened to float our tent away. And my kids had fun! Crafty I Did Its! Making things by hand has taken a bit of a backseat to writing this past year, but I still appreciate the satisfaction of creating a tangible and usable object—a different and often more immediate satisfaction than writing. A few things I made:
I taught myself to watercolor by painting every day for 100 days over the spring and summer (and continuing not quite as religiously since then), following some online tutorials and attending a couple of painting classes at my friend's studio. Watercolor painting is something I've wanted to learn for years and this project not only got me started painting, but also taught me the value of doing something every single day—you actually get better! Nature I Did Its! I taught a couple of nature journaling workshops and have been volunteering at a local nature center, helping lead groups of fourth graders through the woods and trails. I've also put my newly acquired watercolor skills to work in my nature journals. I compiled my birding Life List and went on several bird-watching expeditions, each of which added a few more birds to said list. C, E, Z, and I again did our Christmas Bird Count route. In general, I paid a lot more attention to birds. Phew! That's a lot for one year! Can't wait to see what 2018 has in store, and I'm a little worried about how I'll keep track of it all if I'm not blogging next year. Cross-posted at https://remainsofday.blogspot.com/2018/01/i-did-it-2017.html. |
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Andrea E. Lani. All rights reserved. |
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