Like many of you, my year so far has been marked with kids coming home with germs to share with their family. After a December filled with colds and flus, my daughter brought home stomach evil with her happy new year crafts from preschool and blessed our whole family (possibly extended family) with it. Happy new year indeed.
Apart from the late night running children to the bathrooms to miss the toilet anyway, I’m happy coming into this new year. Did I get a sweet publishing deal? No. Is my music finally breaking into the mainstream? Nein. Did we discover a secret inheritance that enables us to quit our jobs and devote ourselves to art, literature, travel, and music? Still hoping.
The truth is, despite a year of steady writing and hard work, I’m coming into this year in about the same place I did last year. That is to say, I have made no real progress in the quantitative steps of making a living off of creative writing and music (aka, the dream).
But I’m still happy as I enter 2023. I have another year under my belt pursuing life as a writer, and for that I’m grateful. And the work that does pay me is also writing, which is still an amazing thing. Much of the reason I started this substack and bother you with it in your inbox is to give you some insight into what it looks like to do “the work.” “The work” is that one itch we all have that has to be scratched—that thing we do while we are busy doing those things we have to do to survive.
For me, that work is writing fiction and music. And on that front, despite a lack of public output, I’m really proud of the work that happened last year. I started a new novel that I’m still chipping away at. I walked away from a novel I started but wasn’t ready to write. I finished writing some new stories for the Lightcatchers podcast that I will start to record this month. And I wrote some new songs, which I also hope to share on here this year.
If last year was the year of putting my head down and doing the work, I’m hoping this year will be the year of putting that work out into the world (while still keeping my head down and doing the work). I’m not ready to share all the ways I’m cooking up to share the things I’m working on, but I’ll just say it will hopefully involve forest creatures in print, clumsy pirates on pirate ships, sad songs played live for normal people, and possibly an episodic release of a dystopian thriller with a not so happy ending.
Or it may end with none of those things happening. Thus is the nature of “the work.”
What does this year look like for your “work”?
Oh man, I'm considering this very question. Gonna finish out this serialized novel, record an audio version, and dig deeper into where to publish it more online. Basically just dig up press. Other than that, I wanna build up the Green Room and figure out some sort of curation/shared blog with you. And likely find some of that proverbial higher-paying work, as well. Good health and Godspeed on all your endeavors this year, my friend.💚