What A Year: A Personal Assessment

Here it is, middle of January, and I haven’t done a wrap-up of 2016.   Well, what can be said of such a year?

Politically, I think I have said enough.  You can revisit if you wish, especially via the links to my favorite posts back just a little way.  Personally and professionally…

I finished a new novel.  It is currently in the hands of my agent.  As time passes and I hear nothing the usual swarm of doubts begin to devil me.  It’s probably not as good as I hope, possibly not as bad as I fear, but if things run according to form it won’t much matter.  I continue to write in a manner that I’ve long characterized as half a bubble off.

Which has me contemplating where to go.  I’ve decided to devote 2017 mostly to short fiction.  I have one more novel to finish, the final in a trilogy I feel I’ve been living with forever, which my agent feels very positive about.  Since the first two books are done and have not yet found a home, I’m not in as huge hurry to complete the third one, although of late I’ve been having some stray thoughts on where to take it that are the beginnings of an itch to finish it.  Regardless, I am committed to short fiction for the time being.  I’ve already written two new stories and I am working to complete a novelette that’s been sitting stewing for a bit over a year now.

I declared a goal to myself.  Before I die I want to have published 100 short stories.  Which means I have about 40 to go.  It’s as arbitrary as any goal, I suppose.  I have roughly 20 stories in my files in various stages of completion, and maybe 10 more that are done but require revision.  A few have been the rounds and not found homes, so maybe I should take them apart and put them together again, only better.  I have one I know that I have written four versions of to completion and can’t decide which one works best (or at all).

All of which prompts contemplation of the worth of doing what I do.  Yeah, I tend to do that a lot.  But one reality (out of many) is the fact that I am now 62.  Figuring out what I want to do when I grow up has become somewhat problematic.

Along those lines, I had a small revelatory experience in 2016 that has been working on me since.  I have been privileged to work (day-job) with some extraordinary and talented people.  One of them is a new novelist, her first book came out last summer.  It’s a terrific novel, I recommend it (Kea Wilson’s We Eat Our Own), and she and I have had many conversations about writing and publishing.  One day when I was complaining about the dismal condition of my career, she brought me up short by telling me she thought I was very successful.  “You have twelve books out.”  It caused me to reassess my own metrics regarding “success.”  I’m still reassessing, but I have decided to stop sulking about it.  These things really are relative outside certain narrowly-defined parameters.

It helped.

When I attended WorldCon in Kansas City last August, I did so with a different attitude and enjoyed the whole thing much more.

My main concern now has to do with finishing the work I want to do.  I’ve got that one more novel I mentioned above, but I also have one great big epic I want to write—it’s all in the back of my head, waiting for me to get around to—and a few ideas for other books I’d like to do.  Setting the 100-story goal is part of that.  Finishing.  Leaving a legacy.

No, I’m not dying.  I in good health.  I had a whole round of tests last year.  I’m fine.  Still going to the gym, still doing my 100-push-ups-a-day, still being a taunt to the young guys at the gym.  (You’re how old? No!)  But I’d be a fool to look at life the way I did 30 years ago.  I don’t have time to waste.

Of course, I will waste time.  It’s built in.  Humans do that. We should learn to enjoy it.

Along those lines, though, things have gotten to be  a bit better in that we can waste time on things we like more than in previous years.  The situation that has bogged us down for the last four (which I won’t discuss here, but my close friends know about it) has reached the point of being naught but an occasional annoyance.  We’ve been cleaning house, relaxing, getting to the point where we are allowing ourselves to do things like go to the movies if we choose or just sit together reading.  The pressure has eased.  Life seems a bit broader.

As long as we don’t obsess over the news.

No politics here, I said.  Although just a comment, that the way things have come to pass, we seem to have witnessed a nationwide example of the efficacy of Dunning-Kruger.  (I’ll just leave that here, unexplained for the time being.)

Culturally, I feel beaten about the head and stomach with all the deaths.  The two that hit me hardest were Keith Emerson and Greg Lake.  They, among others, provided the soundtrack of my youth.  Their music still thrills me.  Much imitated, but nothing to compare.  I wasn’t happy when Umberto Eco died.  David Bowie didn’t go down too well for me, either.

2017 doesn’t seem to be starting off too well itself, but…

All in all, though, 2016 has turned out to be a year in which I began to be comfortable with what I’ve done, who I am, and where I might be going.  It helps to have a good partner, and I have that.  Donna and I celebrated 36 years together last spring.  Between us we have tackled the many-hued exigencies of timeless conundrums and come out the other side of various rabbit holes with our fluffy whites intact (if a bit rumpled and smudged).  I appreciate her, in the full meaning of the word.

I have no idea where this year is going.  I feel we have gotten onto a space mountain ride. We may come out on the other side of the galaxy.

One thing, though:  there will be more stories.  It only ends when the stories stop.

Onward.