A quick look at what I wrote in 2018.

Poetry

I can say without a doubt I composed the best poem I have ever written in 2018. Called “Retractable Ball Point Pen” it was dedicated to a friend. At nearly 1,000 words, it is the longest I have ever written, and yet despite the length I still put a lot of work into every word, phrase, line ending. It took months to finish editing, and I had read it so much at that point I nearly had it memorized.

I read it aloud at Scares That Care Weekend, and it was well received. I’m not sure what the future is for this piece.

The interesting thing is that it inspired me to try longer poems more often. My form has always been the short lyric, inspired by Catullus. The longer form has some interesting things I like to play with more. I’ve started one about Odysseus and Aeneas, hopefully it will be worth showing off.

April was poetry month and I did my April Poems as I usually do. This year, based on my obsession with Japanese poetry, I decided to try writing tanka for the month. April Poems, 2018 has 30 tanka, or at least tanka style poems. I am not quite sure if I am getting some of the nuance of the form. That collection I released at Scares That Care Weekend as well.

Fiction

I started off the year with a great accomplishment. The draft of My Brother’s Mountain is finished in January, and I put it together and sent it to a friend to read. She loved it. Oh, I got notes, and edits to do, but the question of “is this something worth reading?” was answered.

Unfortunately I did not finish those edits. But that is top of the list for this coming year.

I wrote a story, “Here there be Dragons, Shopping,” submitted and rejected for a great anthology. It was sadly the only submission of the year.

Blogging

I started off with good intentions, as we all do. I started writing a post on haiku, and plan to write follow on about tanka and renga as well.

I did write about How Reading Wuthering Heights is as Close To Writing a Zombie Novel I’ve Ever Gotten. My goals for 2019 include more nerdy posts about what computer stuff I use for book writing and making.

Writing Software

On the software side, I make a slight change and purchased iA Writer. It has some features, such as tags, which make it better for organization that ByWord. That said, it is only a slight change, as I still use ByWord as well. (like now for this post!)

I’ve recently been going back to Scrivener. When I first got it, I started immediately changing the settings to customize things. I’ve since reset almost everything, thinking some of my issues with the software have been self-created. I do still think that it focuses too much on formatting when it should be focusing on writing.