{"id":708,"date":"2018-12-31T14:51:14","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T14:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/?p=708"},"modified":"2018-12-31T15:02:05","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T15:02:05","slug":"end-of-year-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/31\/end-of-year-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"End of year – 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Look back on 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This was an interesting year, for sure.
I looked back on my goals for 2018, written around this time last year.
Embarrassing.
2018 was<\/em> going to be The Year Of Publishing Dangerously.
I was going to publish at least 4 (count \u2018em) novels this last year. I was also going to publish two collections of short fiction, too.
Hmm. That didn’t quite happen.
One of the problems with a huge store of Works-In-Progress is that it\u2019s difficult to decide what you should concentrate on. Which will have the most beneficial effect on my writing career? Which do I want<\/em> to publish first?
It\u2019s like the donkey in the desert scenario. A sad tale, for those who don\u2019t know, but it describes a donkey walking through a desert, hungry and thirsty. He comes across a bucket of food (whatever it is that donkeys eat) and a bucket of water. He can\u2019t decide whether he\u2019s more hungry than thirsty, or vice versa. He stands in the middle of the two buckets, indecisive, and eventually dies.
Yes, I know it\u2019s a sad tale, and it\u2019s not even true, but there is a dilemma when faced with a decision between choices when all have equal merit.
I went on a writing retreat with my lovely critiquing group (Frinton Writing Group) and presented the multitude of options to them. Having analysed what I\u2019d written, and where I\u2019d reached in the writing, they advised me to concentrate on my crime fiction.
I have two major threads to my novelling – crime (police procedural, with a series main character) and thrillers, mostly concerned with the end of the world as we know it. I call it \u2018pre-apocalyptic fiction\u2019.
So I worked on my crime fiction, and I worked on my thrillers. But, alas, none of them are at the \u2018publish\u2019 stage yet.
So, I suppose, you could call me a failure. And I\u2019m okay with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Away from writing, there have been other developments too.
I am working with two writing friends to set up The Novel Makers http:\/\/thenovelmakers.com<\/a> – a service which will expand upon the work we\u2019ve been doing as part of Frinton Writing Group. We will work with authors writing novels, whether they\u2019re just beginning, whether they\u2019ve begun and are now stuck, or whether they\u2019ve completed their manuscript and are unsure of what to do next. We will be offering online courses, one-to-one mentoring, manuscript appraisals and writing workshops and retreats.
And I personally have set up Writer.Support http:\/\/writer.support<\/a>, a service which begins the work of The Novel Makers, but extends the services sideways, into help with writing short fiction, ghost writing, author websites, and podcasting \/ vlogging.
Tomorrow, I shall be posting my goals for 2019. Yes. Ever the optimist, me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Look back on 2018 This was an interesting year, for sure. I looked back on my goals for 2018, written around this time last year.Embarrassing.2018 was going to be The Year Of Publishing Dangerously.I was going to publish at least 4 (count \u2018em) novels this last year. I was also going to publish two collections […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5y3CH-bq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":712,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions\/712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}