Happy New Year!

It’s been a quiet end of 2022/ start of 2023 here at the Story Factory, and I have been assessing last year’s production and making plans for next year.

My word last year was Prolific. That said, I wrote 40 short stories (the goal was 52) and 282 poems (totally unplanned, so no goal.) I am going to say that was on the side of prolific for me. I also changed the day job to one that had a bit less free time during the working day, but easier weekends. A win for me.

I have been encouraged to not post as much of my poetry and fiction here on the blog so that I can make actual submissions. So, I will not be posting many stories here, but will post when they get submitted. Poetry will stay, because I really don’t care if it earns money.

I am also over at Medium now, https://medium.com/@susanhaven if you are over in that neighborhood, writing for Writer’s Blokke, Scientific Papers for Non-Scientists, and possibly a few other publications.

I thought about a bit of a rebrand for the blog but decided against it. The photo is of the Garland Sugar Factory in Utah/Idaho. I have been using it for a while because I like the image of a factory, raw materials coming in, and finished goods coming out. And the good can have zero resemblance to the raw material. No one looking at a sugar beet immediately thinks of fluffy white sugar.

The old black-and-white building reminds me that the outside doesn’t matter. It’s the inner work that creates. And that writing is an old art. There are no new stories, no new plots, just fresh takes on them.

And parked to the side, the little delivery truck reminds me that you can’t create stuff and stockpile it. You have to send it out.

Story Factory production goals this year:

It’s back to novels! Yay! Quarter 1 will be the edit/rewrite of “The Purse Driven Life.” Quarter 2 will be the edit/rewrite of “The Victory Girls’ Guide to Island Hopping in the South Pacific.” Quarter 3 will be the rewrite of “The Gospel According to Peter.” and Quarter 4 will be the first draft of the first book in the Time Rangers Trilogy. So that should keep me occupied, right? The first three novels are drafted and between 50k and 70K, so there will be minimal clean-up and rewriting, maybe adding some little things (like emotion?), and so I am looking forward to this writing year.

What about you? Any writing goals you’d like to share?