Taking Stock
It all adds up + a prompt for heading into a new year
I am not a numbers person. I hate spreadsheets, and anything with numbers or statistics in general makes my eyes glaze over. But it’s natural at the end of a year to look back on how you’ve spent your time and energy, so I’ll give it a try.
FUN THINGS
I’m happy to say I spent WAY more time with my friends in 2024 than I have in the past few years, making time to share a meal, a walk, a shopping trip, a game night, a concert, a writing weekend, a class, a vacation. I explored two new countries (Serbia and Costa Rica). I read (and listened to) more fiction this year than usual, finding some new authors I really enjoyed (Chris Whitaker) and tried again in vain to like some authors that lots of people seem to and I just can’t get into (Sally Rooney). I read a LOT of poetry collections. I spent time making visual art, even taking a collage class in July. I had some of my artwork appear in journals (Pithead Chapel, Black Lily, and Thimble Lit) and had my first piece in a gallery show at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago as well as a little one-woman show at my local library.
Some fun things were also a result of hard work—publications. I always feel as if I haven’t done anything writing-wise compared to the others when I get to the end of a year. Then I scroll back and see what has actually happened and surprise myself. This year, I had 25 pieces published. Thank you to these journals who saw fit to share them:
Jet Fuel Review (Pushcart Nomination)
Gone Lawn
Rogue Agent
Tinderbox Poetry
Atlas + Alice
Sho Poetry Journal
Milk Candy Review (flash)
Psaltery and Lyre
After…
Fahmidan Journal (Best of the Net Nomination)
Poetry is Currency
Moist Poetry Journal (Best of the Net nomination)
The Account
Cease, Cows
Porcupine Lit (Best of the Net Nomination)
Elysium Review
The Shore
Major 7th
Postcard Lit
Poet Lore
One Art
I also won my first poetry contest, the Helen Shaible International Sonnet Contest. It came with a monetary prize AND the poem was not published so that it could still be submitted elsewhere. (It will appear in 2025 in Crab Orchard Review.)
I also wrapped up year three of A Hundred Pitchers of Honey online reading series. It has been quite rewarding to keep this going and bring more writers to a wider audience.
VERY EXCITING THINGS
My fourth collection Unrivered, after being a finalist in multiple contests, was accepted for publication in 2025 by Sundress Publications. I’m thrilled to be working with Sundress again, and I’m looking forward to promoting this book in the world (as my last collection came out during lockdown).
Also, I said yes to most excellent friend and writer Rachel Bunting to being co-founder/co-editor of a new online journal Asterales: A Journal of Arts & Letters, which launches in less than a month! It has been a wild ride to build things from scratch, so we solicited our first issue to keep ourselves sane, and we can’t wait to share the results with you!
NECESSARY THINGS
According to my Garmin watch, on which I record dedicated workouts, I put in 987 miles of fitness walking this year, 146 miles of running, and 438 miles of biking. I’m trying to stay healthy as I age, and some days I just don’t want to do anything, but I do anyway. And I usually feel better, albeit a little more achy, than before I did it.
I think this will be my compass for going into the new year —if I’m afraid or or I don’t want to do/try a certain thing, I’ll do something. I’ll begin. Even if every day is another beginning.
A WRITING PROMPT
Consider the three categories I used above: fun, exciting, necessary. Make lists for things that fall under each category for you. Then try to write a four-stanza poem (or four paragraphs), one stanza/paragraph focusing on each list and one that somehow threads them together in some way.