Sunday, December 29, 2013

Mel's Year in Review: 2013

2013 is over!  Man, these years go by so fast.

This past year, I had a major win ... my first contest win.  It was the first time I've ever received a paycheck for writing fiction.  I won "second best overall story" in the 2013 Actuarial Speculative Fiction contest.  I also won "most unique use of technology in a story."  You can read the winning story here.

I'll say this meets my goal of getting published "somewhere."  Though, it would still be nice to get a magazine credit.  That's still up and coming.

This past year was a year of stopping and revising.  Armed with a win, I knew I had the talent inside me.  I had a lot of activity with the critters.org website.  I had some stories in progress critiqued, and I revised several stories.  I also critiqued several stories of other writers, making a few friends along the way.

A summary of my achievements ...
  • Novel Writing -- Even though I was supposed to be concentrating on short stories, I couldn't resist the temptation to begin my semi-autobiographical fictional novel, Space Cadets.  I figure I can write a chapter, then move back to a short story, and come back and write another chapter.
  • Short Stories --
    • "Actuarial Year" -- this is the story that won the contest.  I wrote it, had it critiqued, and revised in less than two months.  My biggest achievement so far.
    • "Depths of Inner Space" -- revised and submitted again.  Still, rejections.
    • "When Time Flows West" -- revised and submitted again.  And still rejections.  I think there may be something about the story itself (the same with "Inner Space") and my best bet may be to concentrate on my other stories.
    • "Stanley Saucer: Space Assassin" -- this story was well received at critters.org, so I've made several revisions and will be sending out shortly.
    • "Gamma Base Mars" -- this story got a major revision and is about to hit critters.org.
    • "Google Brain" -- this is a totally new story that hit me over the holidays.  I have notes, but no first draft, yet.
  • My Facebook Fan Page now has 68 likes.  However, I haven't paid that page much attention this year.  I seem to get more responses to my posts on my personal Facebook page (as recent changes seem to go against "commercial" pages being viewed).  Also, I've had some difficulties uploading videos on Facebook.  Instead, I've switched to posting my videos to my Google+ page.
  • I didn't do as well in keeping up with this blog ... only 40 blog entries this year.  As I explained in an earlier post, I struggled a lot this year as I went through a busy job change situation.  Just recently, I've finally gotten the new work stress levels down to more manageable levels.  Excuses or not ... I wish I had written more.  Yet ...
    • I'm now up to almost 30,000 views ... more than double where I was this time last year (those web crawlers sure keep busy).
    • I reviewed 14 movies, 4 books, 6 TV shows, and a couple of other random posts along the lines of "Google isn't that great." 
    • My personal favorite posts of the year ...
I hope you've had a great 2013, and here's to an even more successful 2014!
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