Happy New Year, or The End of an Era

Now Playing: HAVE FAITH IN ME by A Day to Remember


Happy New Year and best wishes for a wonderful, happy, healthy 2016!

2015 was a fantastic year for me. In life news, I got engaged, moved to Winston Salem, and got accepted into grad school at Wake Forest. I had two short stories published and four drabbles, wrote one new story per month to achieve my Write1Sub1 goals, and am currently working on completing a novel, having written about 9000 words toward its end in December.

The year ended on a high note--one accepted shorter story to be published in Perihelion on January 12, and eight drabbles accepted to be published over the next three months in SpeckLit! It's exciting to have publications right out of the gate, and I feel as though it provides a lot of momentum.

Like most people I have many high hopes for 2016, and goals I'm resolving to achieve. Among them are to finish this novel and edit it (maybe even query it?), read 50 books, and continue to write and submit at least one story per week.

That last goal has been one of mine every year since 2013 as a member of Write1Sub1. Beginnings and endings have a way of going together, and this New Year marks the end of a great era. The Write1Sub1 blog, which I had the honor of moderating for the past two years, is closing. The participation waned recently while the workload for us moderators seemed to increase, and I think we mutually wanted to dedicate more time to our writing projects.

It's hard to explain just how much good Write1Sub1 has done for my career. I'm sorry future young writers won't have it to inspire them, direct them, and drive them to further their writing aspirations. But I'm also hopeful that the next generation of beginners will come together in their own way, like we did, and support each other in an awesome community of optimism, togetherness, and hard work.

All isn't over, though. The members of Write1Sub1 may be going their own ways, but the spirit of it lives on in each of us. Like I mentioned, I plan on continuing the goals of writing and submitting one story per month and sharing my accomplishments on Twitter with #Write1Sub1. I'm sure a lot of us will take the work ethic and productivity the blog provided and keep it up moving forward.

This will be the toughest year ever to meet those goals--between planning a wedding and starting grad school in August the demands on my time will be huge--but I'm up to the challenge. I'm ready to work. I'm ready to tackle some great new stories and send them to amazing magazines. Let's get 2016 started strong. Here's to greatness in the year to come!