2022 - Year in Review

We are not creatures of destinations. It is the journey that shapes us.

by Brandon Sanderson / Nohadon - The Way of Kings

At the beginning of each year, there are a number of authors that do a year-in-review type of post. As a fan, these kinds of posts allow me to see behind the curtain a bit. It's fun to see the things they were looking forward to, keeping under wraps, and what they viewed as milestones. Plus, I'm usually able to learn a bit more about my favorite books, which is good.

As the one who is writing one of those posts, I think the value is even higher.

2022 has been a massive year for me as a writer. Not in the Brandon-Freaking-Sanderson kind of way. But in ways that will forever shape me as a writer.

In January, I was accepted into John Brown's Novel Writers Academy, a month long workshop of learning not only how to come up with story ideas but also how to identify the heart of the story. For January and part of February, I worked at a feverish pace, generating story ideas that I hope will one day will turn into multiple books for all of you to read. This course provided some crucial tools that I now use all the time as I write and tell stories.

February brought the first writing conference of the year, Life the Universe and Everything, aka LTUE. Two days of learning and networking that resulted in the formation of a new writing group made up of great people in and out of my home state of Utah. And there were swords. Lots of swords. Swords make everything more fun.

The writing group that formed during LTUE got underway in March. This was the first time that someone, other than my kids, got to read the first chapters of my work-in-progress novel, Shadows of Light.

Their feedback gave me the confidence to take my chapters to my local critique group. From April to July, I worked over several early chapters with them. Their feedback showed that these chapters needed more polish than I had originally thought. As I worked to address the issues they pointed out, my skill as a writer improved drastically. This was a watershed moment. I improved so quickly that I could recognize the growth after each revision, which was very encouraging. And my characters and novel started to look more like my original vision.

Here is where I took my first risk as a writer. The Latter-Day Saints in Publishing Media and the Arts, another writing conference and community, was running their Praiseworthy Awards writing contest for unpublished writers. In June, I submitted Chapter 1 of Shadows of Light. If you'd like to read more about this experience and the result, check out my other post.

About this time I realized that while I was learning and improving my writing, I wasn't making progress on finishing my novel. While learning is good, a writer can't get stuck in the learning phase. They have to finish stories in order to tell stories. So in July I stopped submitting to both writing groups and focused on finishing my novel. I'd changed a lot as a writer since I'd written the first draft of many of those chapters and from July through the end of the 2022, I rewrote old chapters, added several new ones, and generally reworked most of the chapters for Tirius, my main character.

In September I attended the LDSPMA conference. It was full of inspiring speakers, networking, and I learned a lot more about publishing. And on the last day I received my Emerging Author award.

In November was the Dragonsteel Convention. This is Brandon Sanderson's convention that was coinciding with his latest book release. While there was several writing panels, this felt much more like a fan convention than a writing convention. Still it was a blast and I think the words of Nohadon, which I put at the beginning of this post, is a great theme for this year.

In December, I contracted with Brittany Passmore of Passmore Edits to do a professional edit on my sci-fi short story, Blackout Day. I thought the writing was pretty solid and just wanted to make sure I hadn't missed any grammar or punctuation issues in the roughly thirteen(!) revisions the manuscript had been through. She thought it needed a bit more work. In the end, my short story went from 6800 words to almost 8300. She was right. It needed the work. It was good before, now it's great. I look forward to sharing it with everyone hopefully sometime in 2023.

So why is going through all this so valuable? Because sometimes we all need to step back and appreciate how much we've accomplished, how much we've grown, and how much we've endured before we can truly be grateful for where we are now versus where we were.

I am grateful for this last year. It certainly had its challenges, even though I didn't mention any of them here. But taking a few moments to review everything that has happened makes me realize just how much I have to be grateful for. And recognizing what I've accomplished makes those challenges worth it.

Thanks for supporting and reading. Here's to an even better 2023!

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