Happy New Year 2022
It's been ages since I've done a retrospective of the year, and I guess the first day of the New Year is as good a time as any.
The last year had its ups and downs, as they do.
New Zealand was going along okay, then we had Delta rear its ugly head in August, so we ended up in lockdown. Most of the country came out of lockdown after a couple of weeks, but Auckland remained in lockdown until early December. Which sucked. Not that I live in Auckland anymore, but I felt bad for the people who do.
The anti-vaxxers seemed to come out of the woodwork, and some of them were talking very dangerous talk. One who shall go unnamed threatened to blow up a mobile unit and has been causing trouble all over the place. The guy is making himself look like a goddamned fool and he's just inciting others. We had anti-vaxxers also target one of my company's offices, which got our head office basically telling us to shut down access to the public. Which had me a little worried, since the office where I am, there's only me staffing it four days a week.
Now, of course, we have the threat of Omicron, and while we've only had a few cases at the border, no one thinks it'll be long before it gets out into the community.
To be honest, all of us are sick of the whole subject and as much as I wanted to not say anything about it, this is a retrospective of my year, so ...
Writing wise, I've really backed off the fanfics. I haven't been updating those much. I still have five works in progress, but frankly other things have taken priority.
This year, I published one novel, which was The Greatest Love. I started working on a new book series, called Seasons of Change. The first book in the series is done, but I'm not intending to get it edited or published until I have almost all the books in the series ready. I started working on the fifth one. I know it's out of order, but it kind of helps so I can sort of work backwards.
I'm also working on a non-fiction book. This one's about a woman who was adopted at birth and went looking for her family. I'm not writing it as a narrative. It's meant to be informative as well as telling her story. She had a very troubled life in her teens.
Word count for the year was just over 95,000 in terms of RL writing. I haven't kept up with the fanfic word count, so I don't know where I'm at with that.
The word count is definitely a lot lower than it has been in other years, but of course the reason for that is I've been working full-time since June. As I've already posted earlier in the year, I got a job as a reporter for a small community. My stories get published five days a week in a page in a daily newspaper, which publishes six days a week.
While the praises are few and far between, I've been told I've revitalised the page and that the stories I write are 'full of heart'. I have a different approach to articles in that I write from a personal angle. So if it's a story about an education programme, for instance, I'll go talk to someone who's been a part of it and write it from that angle. While there are the 'just the facts ma'am' stories, people relate to it more when they read about someone who is involved. The feedback I've had from the community is that they like my approach, which is good.
I'm living in a very small community, population roughly 5000. So it's a lot smaller than I'm used to, but since I tend to keep to myself, it kind of suits me. It's a nice community, about an hour's drive away from where my mum lives, so it's all good.
So, anyway, Happy New Year everyone. Here's to a new year and maybe we'll see better things this year.
The last year had its ups and downs, as they do.
New Zealand was going along okay, then we had Delta rear its ugly head in August, so we ended up in lockdown. Most of the country came out of lockdown after a couple of weeks, but Auckland remained in lockdown until early December. Which sucked. Not that I live in Auckland anymore, but I felt bad for the people who do.
The anti-vaxxers seemed to come out of the woodwork, and some of them were talking very dangerous talk. One who shall go unnamed threatened to blow up a mobile unit and has been causing trouble all over the place. The guy is making himself look like a goddamned fool and he's just inciting others. We had anti-vaxxers also target one of my company's offices, which got our head office basically telling us to shut down access to the public. Which had me a little worried, since the office where I am, there's only me staffing it four days a week.
Now, of course, we have the threat of Omicron, and while we've only had a few cases at the border, no one thinks it'll be long before it gets out into the community.
To be honest, all of us are sick of the whole subject and as much as I wanted to not say anything about it, this is a retrospective of my year, so ...
Writing wise, I've really backed off the fanfics. I haven't been updating those much. I still have five works in progress, but frankly other things have taken priority.
This year, I published one novel, which was The Greatest Love. I started working on a new book series, called Seasons of Change. The first book in the series is done, but I'm not intending to get it edited or published until I have almost all the books in the series ready. I started working on the fifth one. I know it's out of order, but it kind of helps so I can sort of work backwards.
I'm also working on a non-fiction book. This one's about a woman who was adopted at birth and went looking for her family. I'm not writing it as a narrative. It's meant to be informative as well as telling her story. She had a very troubled life in her teens.
Word count for the year was just over 95,000 in terms of RL writing. I haven't kept up with the fanfic word count, so I don't know where I'm at with that.
The word count is definitely a lot lower than it has been in other years, but of course the reason for that is I've been working full-time since June. As I've already posted earlier in the year, I got a job as a reporter for a small community. My stories get published five days a week in a page in a daily newspaper, which publishes six days a week.
While the praises are few and far between, I've been told I've revitalised the page and that the stories I write are 'full of heart'. I have a different approach to articles in that I write from a personal angle. So if it's a story about an education programme, for instance, I'll go talk to someone who's been a part of it and write it from that angle. While there are the 'just the facts ma'am' stories, people relate to it more when they read about someone who is involved. The feedback I've had from the community is that they like my approach, which is good.
I'm living in a very small community, population roughly 5000. So it's a lot smaller than I'm used to, but since I tend to keep to myself, it kind of suits me. It's a nice community, about an hour's drive away from where my mum lives, so it's all good.
So, anyway, Happy New Year everyone. Here's to a new year and maybe we'll see better things this year.