It’s traditional to make a list of resolutions for the new year both personal and professional.

Personal:

• Finalize the divorce
• Get out of debt
• Be happy

Pretty simple plans for the next year. There are endings and new beginnings. Take care of my finances and embraces the things that make me happy.

Writing:

• Write 12 new short stories
• Revise and polish 12 stories
• Submit 12 stories for publication
• Submit a story to the Writers of the Future contest quarterly

Writing my first drafts longhand has turned out to be very productive. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to produce one first draft a month. I should also be able to revise one story a month. After that, submitting the polished piece is easy. I’d also like to go back to CSSF again and I would love to go to Viable Paradise but I’ll have to play it by ear as the year progresses.

Work:

• Finish migrating out of my hands-on role to more of a managerial one
• Successfully manage and complete all planned projects
• Come up with brilliant new projects for people to work on
• Grow the company

Perhaps the most challenging of tasks for me but ultimately the most rewarding, as it means more time for my personal and writing time. I’m in the process of letting go of what I’ve spent the last several years crafting and building and letting others take control of it. It frees up my time to work on larger tasks that have a bigger impact on the success of the business.

As each year dwindles to an end, I like to take a few moments to reflect on the previous twelve months. 2007 has been a year of reflection and change. All in all, it was a good year, filled with challenges, decisions, and growth.

Personally, I made the decision to pursue my dreams in the face of those that were content to maintain the status quo. I had to make some hard, life-altering choices. Choices for the better, for sure, although there are short-term consequences. It’s the price to pay for happiness, however. Life is too short and too fragile to spend it in the wrong situation or with the wrong person. Onward to a brighter future and better days.

Writing-wise, I attended the CSSF Science Fiction Writers Workshop in Lawrence, Kansas over the summer. I met many fine people there and my skills as a writer improved greatly as a result of the workshop. I submitted a few stories and collected a handful of rejections, including one “near miss” postscript.

Professionally, I’ve begun the transition from day-to-day operations to management, which basically means I let others do my work for me while I come up with creative new ways to keep them busy. It’s a challenge letting others take control of the things I’ve spent the last three years building. It also means that I’ll be able to spend more time writing and enjoying the company of those I love.

Life is full of regrets, over things that we should have done sooner, would have done differently, and wish we’d never done. Regrets are a part of who we are, but they don’t define us. What defines us is how we handle those regrets. We can either wallow in our guilt or we can learn from those mistakes, better ourselves, and move forward. Here’s to 2008, which is already shaping up to be a spectacular year.

I started out writing everything longhand in a notebook and typing it up on a computer when it was finished. Eventually, I skipped directly to computer input because, computer geek that I am, I thought that would be more efficient. I had some inspiration to try writing longhand again recently. I sat down with my little moleskin notebook that I usually use for ideas and started to write. In a few days, I had finished the first draft of a story that had been rattling around in my head since last summer’s short story workshop. That has since been typed up, edging in just over the 1,500 word count. A sweet spot for this particular story. I’m already several pages of scrawl into the next story.

Obviously everyone is different and you go with what works for you. I’m curious as to what the rest of you do when you’re writing a first draft.

I’ve been trying to cook a few nice meals a week. Tonight’s experiment was a Lemon Pepper & Herb Chicken with three-cheese ravioli:

I started with a chicken breast, sliced. I cooked it on the stove in some lemon juice and seasoned with a lemon pepper & herb mix. I boiled the three-cheese ravioli. Drained and stirred in a can of diced tomatoes and tomato paste. A dash of oregano, salt and ground pepper. Chicken mixed in and plated.

In hindsight, I would have prepared the sauce separately and let the diced tomatoes cook down a bit more. I would also have added some green pepper, but the ones I had were moldy. I was all out of mozzarella for a topping. I’d have topped the pasta with the chicken, instead of mixing it together.

The end of November is approaching and it’s time to admit that I’ve called in the towel on completing my Nano novel this year. Way too many life-changing things happened early in the month. I plowed through the best I could but there was too much turmoil to get it done.

The silver lining to it all is that I feel content with where things are going. That’s something I haven’t felt in a very long time. I started fresh on a new short story this week. I survived my first Thanksgiving alone and I’m even contemplating putting up a christmas tree.

Happy Thanksgiving to those that celebrate it. I spent the day relaxing. I played some video games, watched some movies, worked on a short story, and cooked this marvelous little feast:

I cooked a turkey breast, creamed corn, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and brownies for dessert. I’ll be eating leftovers for a week, but it was worth it.

I’m falling very far behind on my Nano novel. Not hopelessly behind, but behind enough that hitting 50k is going to require some serious effort.

I drove to Detroit last Wednesday for meetings, drove back on Saturday and attended Windycon Saturday and Sunday. Add quite a bit of personal turmoil into the mix, shake and stir. I spent today getting things in order and tomorrow I’ll get back to the writing.

I had a good time at Windycon. I sat through some fun panels, including one on Zombification (with Tobias Bucknell) and one about Baen’s Universe with Eric Flint and Mike Resnick. I’ve seen Eric a few times and always enjoyed his panels. Mike and Tobias were both great panelists.

I ran into writers group members Tim and Trey, and my friend Aaron, who was in to promote ConClave.

Just over 7k words now, and I got to work through a new idea that popped up in Chapter 1. Time for a full nights sleep and I’ll start on Chapter 6 tomorrow.

Comments from a few brave readers have been promising so far. I hope I can pull off the major plot points I planned for and keep everything held together. Good stuff.

The night is still early, and based on the wacked sleeping schedule I seem to have adopted lately, I have another six to eight hours to write. After an afternoon of writing, I now stand at 5,036 words. This has officially become the longest continuous story I have written to date. In order to be on track, I’ll need to be at 6,668 by the end of the day.

Hemingway said “The first draft is always shit.” If he were alive today and doing Nano, I suspect he would amend that to say “complete and total shit”.

The working title of this novel is “The Dark Edge of Night”. Emphasis on working title. I’ve posted the first chapter on the Nano site, if you can get it to load.

My favorite line so far, in chapter two:

They crossed the foyer and entered the chapel, walking past row after row of dark wooden pew, their surfaces polished by decades of pious asses squirming in uneasy silence.

Day two of NaNoWriMo is over.

I’m a little behind from where I wanted to be, but I’ve completed my first chapter and I have the whole weekend ahead of me to write. I suspect the first few chapters will be the hardest. It’s like those first few steps or riding a bicycle for the first time. Once you get going, it feels less forced and more natural and the actions flow more smoothly.