Happy Lunar New Year!

Happy Lunar New Year, everyone! Happy year of the tiger! 🐯

PHEW! We made it through 2021! 2021 was a big year for me, in terms of writing! I went from 9 stories to 27 - I basically doubled my output of the previous years in ONE year! Holy cats!

Part of that was due to some pretty fun circumstances; joining writing groups! Finding contests being run every month! I wrote like a maniac, and it was a really hectic, but really fun four months! I had late nights, early mornings, and one crazy nine-hour writing marathon! I churned out an INCREDIBLE amount of writing, by my own standards anyway! For someone who wrote one story a year to be published, this was a crazy writing spurt!

And that's, uh... going to significantly slow down, now! Just a heads up to anyone who actually reads these!

I wish I had some deeper meaning to ascribe to this, something about 'covid fatigue weighs on all of us in equal measure, each to their own way' (and that definitely plays a role as well!), and of course we're all overworked and underpaid, so it's hard to justify the hours spent writing for nothing. But sadly I have to say that a lot of it was simply losing the incredible support system I thought I had. Turns out my 'biggest cheerleader' considered my writing boring. (Hence I can't understand their logic for adding me to a writing group, unless it was solely for an ego boost. But then, I'm weird because I befriend folks that I actually like. ) Turns out, the contests were run partly based on a popularity system, with 'big names' earning extra consideration. Turns out, writing groups only really work if people know how to give critique, and actually take notice of your writing. (And no, 'this looks like I Robot and I don't like I Robot' isn't critique. ) For the most part, my writing received no notice whatsoever, even by the person who invited me to the group in the first place, who regularly praised me in private chats. (Until they didn't!) As a result, the one bit of notice I got that stands out is overwhelmingly negative, which... sucked.

So, sadly, the amount of my contest entry stories is going to drop to almost nothing, which means that my writing output as a whole is going to slow down! (But if anyone sees any contests they think would be fun to enter, please drop me a note? )

I'm still creating; that's always been my problem, I think, is that I'm always writing, but it stays in my head. It feels like the only audience is myself, and so when it felt like I had a ready, excited audience in the group, I wrote more readily. Having contests helped too! But then when it turns out that's untrue, it's hard to recover that excitement, that self-motivation. I've never struggled to be creative; I've struggled to self-motivate. Contests were a way to cheat that internal hurdle, so without contests, I struggle.

If you read this far, thank you for reading! I'm not giving up writing, never fear! But I suppose I wanted to give you all a heads up, to anyone who reads these anyway. I wrote a lot in 2021, and sadly that will probably not repeat in 2022! But I'm still writing, still creating, and still working on more chapters for my on-going works. If you take anything away from this, I suppose it's to comment early and often, especially if you love something that someone has made! Feedback is what everyone craves, and that's what keeps your favorite authors writing!

And since I have nothing else new to tag, I'm going to tag to story that ripped off I, Robot enough to piss that one writer off enough to tell me so. Eat your heart out, Isaac Asimov!