My Writing in 2014.

I wrote a bit this year, but nowhere near enough.

My Fiction Writing.

I began the year by finally finishing the first draft of my 215,000 word epic, Jack Logan: Astronaut. I then spent a lot of time redrafting an 8,000 word short story and 23,000 word novella. It wasn’t until November that I got stuck into writing when I did National Novel Writing Month for the third time, just making it over 50,000 words for the month. My output then dropped off again in December. I wrote every day of the year except one when I had computer problems.

My Non-fiction Writing

I continued to amaze myself by coming up with ideas for new articles for Divine. The articles need to have a disability angle. I wrote ten articles for them, nine of which have now gone up on the website. I also had one article written at the end of 2013 that went up in early 2014. My favourite of the articles I wrote last year was Petitioning for Change, about petitions started by people with disabilities.

I wrote 44 blog posts, the best of which were probably about the Melbourne Writers Festival. It’s getting harder to come up with ideas for posts. I am not confident or arrogant enough to try to tell people how to write, so my posts tend to be more about publishing and books, with a huge bias towards science fiction and apocalyptic fiction.

Other Writing Activities.

I started an online free English course, and I lasted only a week. I found the instructions unclear and the responses to requests for clarification came too late. Thousands of people signed up, so it was too huge; I wanted something more intimate. But what can you expect when something is free? I started the course because I wanted to learn more English terminology, as I cannot recite many of the English rules. My English has developed from what looks right to me. I grew up in an era when we were taught little grammar and punctuation.

As mentioned above, I attended the Melbourne Writers Festival. I went to the second weekend and enjoyed listening to emerging writers like Holly Childs and award winning writers like science fiction author Lauren Beukes. One session by Australian small publishers, that included Text and Scribe, finally convinced me that Amazon was evil and I no longer buy books from it or its subsidiary the Book Depository.

My Writing Plans This Year.

After last year’s unrealised grand plans, this year I just hope to finish Branded, the novel I started in National Novel Writing Month. I have written 55,000 words with another 30-40,000 to go. It’s a young adult science fiction novel. I also hope to critique more.