A Week in Writing #279 - 2019: The Year in Review

The end of the year is a good time to look back at everything you've done and all that you haven't. It seems for everything I have done there must be four or five things that I haven't.

Let's begin with writing novels. I always feel like I'm working on something at all times, though I always don't feel like I'm getting anywhere. As an example, I finished my own rewrite of Broken People and while I did send out a few queries but after being rejected, or in this case, ignored, I stopped. I had other things I needed to do so I stopped sending out queries on that book.

I did start a new rewrite, The Runaway, and have been working on that pretty much ever since finishing Broken People. I keep going back to the beginning as new ideas come to me. It's not advice that I would give out to others; the idea is to get through a draft first but in this case, it works for me. I had pretty much the same experience with every book I've written.

And I have officially given up on ever hearing from the guy who was supposed to edit Familiar Stranger. He very much flaked out on me and I'm closing the door permanently on him ever helping me again. Sometimes, you've got to cut bait and move on.

Looking forward, I need to query Broken People more and finish The Runaway. Those seem like pretty straight forward goals, so I'll stick with them.

As far as Powers Squared is concerned, I believe we did a lot: we had our first signing, attended our first convention, set up a mailing list, started a newsletter, started a weekly Podcast and ran a successful Kickstarter campaign. The only thing we overlooked was putting out new issues, though if you count the ones we sent out per the Kickstarter, issues #8 and #9 did get some distribution.

While I enjoy working on the newsletter and believe it is a necessary thing to do, I am happy that we've decided to cut it back from weekly to monthly. We'll still send out emails on a weekly basis, they just won't be a full-fledged newsletter, which takes time every weekend to write. I'm hoping that with a less frequent schedule we'll be able to make what we do send stand out more.

Our goal for 2020 is to distribute more consistently, so rather than releasing whole story arcs at a time, we're planning on releasing one issue at a time on a more regular basis. We want to do more signings and conventions. And most of all, we want to keep making Powers Squared, which means we need to find a new colorist since ours is leaving us.

As far as Trophy Unlocked goes, I ended up publishing 30 reviews this year. I really enjoy working on the blog and I'm already working on ones that may not show up for a year or so. (You got to do Christmas movies when you see them.)

Early in 2020, the blog will reach 1000 reviews, which is pretty exciting.

Well, that's about it for now. Keep writing and see you next week.

A Week in Writing #262 - Fifth Anniversary Post

Not really sure if this is worth a celebration but this is the Fifth Anniversary of this blog. Five years ago to the day, I published my First Post on this blog site and I've been doing one every week since. While this has never had a huge following, I'm doing it as much for myself as anyone else. I certainly hope there are life lessons and writing lessons included here, I started doing this to keep myself honest. 

A lot of people call themselves writers but don't always actually practice the craft. I wanted to show myself, and the world, that I was actually writing. I've sat down here every Sunday since to re-examine myself and to think about what I have or have not accomplished in the past seven days.

I'm still pretty much working on the same three projects that I was five years ago: writing mystery novels, writing film reviews and trying to get a comic book off the ground. Let's begin with writing mystery novels, which I had hoped would be, at some point, my main focus. I've worked on several in the past five years and I've gone through spats of querying as well as writing and editing. 

At present, I have six queries out for Broken People, a novel I've rewritten while doing this blog. As I've written before, I don't want to have already hit up every agent I could find as I like to prolong the torture, I guess. Querying is perhaps my least favorite part of the writing process. I'm not someone who likes to wait and that's pretty much all you do after sending your query letter is wait, oftentimes in vain. Most of the time, you're supposed to realize on your own that a particular agent isn't interested as they provide no guidelines on getting back to you. I'm using six weeks unless otherwise noted, as the cut-off. The drag is you oftentimes never know why the agent rejected you. Is it the story? The query letter? Did they even get to it? I mean you want to improve but without feedback, it's hard to know your deficiencies. 

Working on my rewrite for The Runaway, though I didn't get much done this past week. Other projects and a bit of ennui. I have been thinking about it and I will work on the next chapter this week.

Still waiting to hear back from the editor on Familiar Stranger. We made a connection and I was led to believe he would be actually editing it or parts of it in August. I promised to refrain from bugging him until September, which is now! Hopefully, my patience will be rewarded.

Trophy Unlocked, Paul's review blog that I write for, is coming up on nine years and 1000 reviews, though it will be sometime next year before the latter milestone will be achieved. Most weeks, I work on a review with this week being no exception. In addition to publishing one this week, The African Queen, I wrote another one for another Humphrey Bogart film, All Through the Night (1942). Not sure when that one will see the light of day but its always better to have ones in reserve rather than trying to pump one out every week.

And, of course, there is still Powers Squared, which has so far released seven issues. Issues 8 and 9, as well as 10 and 11, are done but we're wanting to do a Kickstarter to hopefully alleviate costs and grow interest. We keep pushing it off trying to get all the pieces together and set but we should get it going next month. 

While there is not that much actual writing week to week with Powers Squared, it certainly has kept me busy. Over the past year, in addition to looking at every page that comes from artist, colorist, and letterer, I've also developed a website, started a weekly newsletter, doing a weekly video on YouTube and this past Friday did the first On the Air with Powers Squared Podcast with Paul for PodBean.com. You can't say we're not trying.

Five years have been fun and I hope the next five are both fun and profitable. Keep writing.

Each week in the past five years has been different and I hope others who read this either appreciate the struggle and are learning from reading these posts. 

A Week in Writing #249

Okay, this seems to be sounding like a broken record but didn't get to everything I wanted to this past week. Now, in this case, I was sort of under the weather with a cough and a bad back (I know, poor pitiful me). I know, neither was really that bad, just enough to slow me down.

I did manage to do some writing on The Runaway. Like I did with Familiar Stranger, I'm sort of going back through the manuscript, rewriting what I had already rewritten in an effort to get a running start back into the book. I know where I want it to go, it's just getting it back on track is all. As I know you know, it's a very interesting process to go back through what you've written. It's actually my favorite part of the writing process, making it better. There are little things that I'm changing so far that I think are improving the writing.

No new queries for Broken People this week and no new contact with the editor on the above mentioned Familiar Stranger. I guess he's still alive, at least he's still listed on the company where I think he works. As I mentioned in last week's post, my mother actually called the guy but never heard back from him. While that's sort of embarrassing on a certain level, my mommy fighting my battles and all, she is the one who introduced us. She thought he would at least call her back. I'm wondering if he's changed his cell number, which is all we have. Now the big question, do I call him at his place of employment? I'm reticent to do that but it has been over a year since I've heard from him. That might be my only recourse. I'll have to weigh that for a bit.

Published my first non-Batman review in a month with Blondie Johnson (1933) on Trophy Unlocked. I'm still working on my review of Sabrina, but I did finish and publish one for Rocketman, the new Elton John bio/fantasy film that just came out.

I'm writing this all down a day earlier than I usually do since on June 2nd, Powers Squared will be attending our first Con, San Fernando Vally Comic Book Convention. I'm a little apprehensive as I'm not sure how much the Free Comic Book Day signing prepared us for this. I'm hopeful that this will be a good intro into Comic Book Cons. We are not ready for anything major like WonderCon or Comic-Con; we're not even ready for the Long Beach Comic-Con, which is pretty costly.

The goal is to get signups for our mailing list, though we will have books to sell. I feel like we're such newbs going in. But that means we have a lot to learn, which is actually a good thing. I'll be sure to write more about this experience in next week's blog post, so there will be something to look forward to.

We did get some inked pages from Rachel this past week, jpegs, not tiffs. We asked for one small change to one panel. We did pass along to her some positive comments we received when we posted her thumbnails on Instagram, as part of our Peek-of-the-Week we started with our newsletter. While we first publicize it in our newsletter, we do post it on Instagram later in the week to be sure. The comments were pretty positive and we thought she should know.

Trevor finished his pages for Issue #10, so that's in its last steps. Paul and I need to review those as well. But that will have to wait until next week as well.

Because I wasn't 100 percent, I didn't listen to any of the ComixLaunch ListLaunch podcasts, so I've got to get back to that this next week. I hate to say it, but I really seem to wrangle with the homework, as in I don't want to do it. Some things never change, I guess.

So much to do and so little time.