Obligatory New Year’s Post: 2016 Edition

Fireworks Hello again, and welcome to what’s become a tradition here at the Ye Olde Blogpostery, a look back at the recently passed year, and a glance at what’s next.

2015 was a pretty good to me. My wife and I had the honor of welcoming our second daughter into the world. She is a joy and delight. Nearly walking now. Says, “Hi Dada!” with a smirk and a squint. Our older girl is three years old. She’s getting a little sass in her sassafras. That’s fun too. Insatiable curiosity. She’s starting to tell jokes that are actually funny. What more could you ask for?

THE WRITING

I completed a few research goals and got roughly three quarters through the first draft of a novel. I also wrote twenty or so short stories.

Despite my impassioned (if short-lived) oaths to the contrary, I continued to write treatments and screenplays last year. I also had some director/producer meetings and watched projects slowly turn brown and desiccate on the rotisserie of Hollywood movie-making.

Tried some new stuff last year too. My sister and I collaborated on a children’s book, which was one of the funnest experiences of my writing life. I wrote some poetry and read it in public. I wrote a one act play as a fun side-project and was fortunate enough to have it selected for an upcoming new play festival. Details to follow…

Probably the biggest change/event in my writing life was that I was accepted into an MFA program and began classes last the fall. It’s been an interesting experience so far. Stretching. Negotiating deadlines. Reevaluating my strengths and weaknesses as a writer.

THE BLOG

I wrote a few posts, though not as many as I would like. Traffic still increased over last year though, which was nice (thanks, Reddit).

2015’s Top Three Posts:

Outside the US, the largest readership was from the UK and (still, strangely) Brazil.

PLANS FOR 2016

Blogwise, I plan to continue writing about the Tea Clipper Races, hopefully one post per month. Not many people care about tea races and tall ships though, and I’m also interested in language-learning, podcasts, parenting, cultural studies, travel, and making sure that Donald Trump never becomes president, among other things. I imagine that these topics will show up on the blog periodically. The plan is to publish one tea-clippery post and one random other post per month.

Personally, I’d like to spend time leveling up my linguistic skills and become a black-belt polyglot. I’ve been working on and off with Korean for years, I’ll give it a good college try in 2016, until college itself gobbles up all my time (in roughly a week and a half) and I quit. I want to up my Spanish game too.

Writing to a daily word count was helpful for getting lots of first draft material done in 2015. I’ll keep that up. Now it’s time for serious revisions. I’d like to have something new accepted for publication in 2016.