Resolutions

Happy New Year!

I posted a few goals for 2025 on Bluesky and Twitter as 2024 came to an end the other day, and I wanted to put them out into the universe here too. 

The biggest one is publishing THE FIRST KID ON MARS with Big Sea Books. This is the story that brought me back to writing for the first time since I was a kid, and it's the story that my kid fell in love with as I was writing it. I'll be editing/revising this spring, and the plan is to publish it by the end of the school year. 

I've only been able to write a little bit of SEVENTEEN MINUTES OF RAIN in the present so far - the rest exists only in my imagined future. I'm planning to catch up to that future this year, with a full first draft complete before the calendar flips again.

With three published short stories (BLUE SKIES and FROM NOW ON in The Accidental Time Travelers Collective Vol. 1 and Vol. 3, respectively, and DAY TEN in the first issue of Bunker Squirrel Magazine), I'm starting to feel like a real writer. I've got two more ready to publish this year (BLIND LUCK and (almost) out of the woods), and a whole bunch more in the works. How many can I get published this year?

Speaking of Bunker Squirrel Magazine, I'm planning to submit a flash fiction piece based on their prompts every month. You should too - it's run by great people, and it's putting some great writing out into the world. 

I want to write more haiku this year. Lots and lots and lots of haiku. I gave my parents a @haikuformykids calendar, and maybe it's time to start selling them somewhere. 

And finally, I want to blog more regularly. I guess I can check that off my list.

For today, anyway.

To Blog or not to Blog?

That is the question. 

I'm still pretty new at all this -- I started to write my first novel last year at 46 years old, which I believe is a bit older than most new writers out there. I'm told I need a blog and a website, but I don't really know what to do with them yet. 

So, if you're listening, I'd love some feedback -- I like the posts that I've written so far, but I don't know if they're the right kinds of posts to do what it's supposed to do. If that makes sense. 

On the one hand, I kind of enjoy blogging (and I think I'm okay at it for an old guy); on the other hand, I'd rather suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune than market myself. 

Time to Make the Donuts

Finding time to write can be hard, especially when no one's paying you to do it. And when you have two little kids. And, and, and, and. It's hard; everybody who writes knows this, and I suspect a lot of other people do too. 

During the school year, my part-time teaching gig gives me two and a half days at home each week (without kids) to focus on writing.  

I don't actually use all that time to be a writer (there are always chores to do, errands to run, and I started picking up work as a substitute teacher - because people will pay me to do that) but it was enough to write a book in about a year and a half. My first book: a science-fiction epic for my kids, grounded in realism and the magic of stories, with an unexpected Winnie-the-Pooh motif running throughout.

sidenote: I think I just found my pitch!

So now it's summer - and for teachers with kids, that means it's SUMMER VACATION. 

In the Swift family, we go all out. I'm writing this on a deck overlooking the Kennebec River, about a half mile upstream from the Atlantic Ocean. We're here with family for most of the summer, and most mornings we take the canoe into the river at low tide so the kids can play on the fleeting sand bar beaches.

Most afternoons, like right now, my wife takes the kids to nearby Reid State Park, with a great beach and a shallow lagoon - perfect for wading and splashing, as long as the mosquitos aren't too bad. 

And I'm here hunched over my laptop, because it's time to make the donuts. 

I'm working on my author website, this blog (hello!), query letters and summaries, and trying to figure out who the perfect editors and agents and publishers are to help me bring this story to life. 

I get that all of this is important, but to me, it's not that much fun. And although I think the guy in the old commercial actually ended up loving his job making the donuts, what's always stuck with me is the way he woke up, muttering that it was time to get to work. 

All right, then. Time to get to work.   

Making a Website

I'll probably come back and delete this later, but for now here are my thoughts on making a website. 

It's not fun. 

Definitely not as much fun as writing, reading, or taking a canoe out in the creek to play on sand bars at low tide.

That's all.