By way of a holiday greeting, I thought I would share a bullet-point list of items that I call my 2011 Year in Review.
In 2011, I…
- Bowled in the New Year with a new pair of bowling shoes;
- Published Haiku for Haters as a mini-book in both print and digital formats;
- Wrote and revised a bunch of online continuing education classes for a local real estate company;
- Joined a writing group;
- Pondered getting back into writing sex columns for a friend’s blog, but decided against it;
- Paid someone to do my taxes early, for a change;
- Considered starting an online writers’ salon for southern writers, but decided against it;
- Worked a day job at a culinary school and wrote for their blog;
- Bought a manual typewriter;
- Successfully avoided the circle jerk that is SXSW for the second year running;
- Participated in an awesome anti-SXSW reading event with my writing group (which was ironically covered by my nemesis);
- Took the bus more than I ever wanted to, and rode the train to work on odd mornings;
- Met a super-accomplished, awesome writer who has also been struggling to make ends meet, despite her obvious talent and skill, and enjoyed some conversation and iced coffee;
- Took part in a day-long “Anticrastination Scribproductivathon” (aka a writing marathon) with my writing group;
- Quit my writing group when they decided to start working on an anthology I wasn’t interested in, instead of just being the good, fun, supportive critique group I’d originally joined;
- Joined the National Amateur Press Association, and later became their Director of Publicity;
- Celebrated my cat’s 1st birthday on April Fool’s Day;
- Kept plugging away at my novel;
- Pondered going back to school (again) for my MFA, but decided not to;
- Read and accepted and rejected hundreds (thousands?) of short fiction and poems for my literary magazine;
- Continued blogging about Austin and the budget lifestyle for Shoestring Austin;
- Celebrated my three-year wedding anniversary to the world’s greatest guy (who is still, incidentally, content to be known as “The UnGooglable Man”);
- Joined WriteByNight as a writing coach and manuscript consultant;
- Started using car2go to get around town when the bus just wouldn’t cut it;
- Co-edited a kick-ass anthology of noir fiction with my pal Jimmy Callaway;
- Joined a local food blogger’s group;
- Participated in the 3-Day Novel Contest;
- Read a TON of books;
- Applied for a TON of jobs;
- Completed a TON of transcripts;
- Published several “quickies” on Amazon and Smashwords;
- Turned another year older and celebrated by—how else?—bowling (and consuming delicious Thai food);
- Volunteered at the Austin Chocolate Festival and got to sample lots of delicious free chocolate;
- Joined the Professional Writers of Austin and started blogging for them on a monthly basis;
- Attended the Texas Book Festival but missed the inaugural Lit Crawl thanks to Austin’s terrible bus system;
- Attended my sister’s wedding and served as the Matron of Honor;
- Thought I would work more on my novel during NaNoWriMo, but ended up too busy to do so;
- Ate a lot of tasty breakfast tacos;
- Started a weekend ritual of hitting the library every Saturday with my husband, checking out a ridiculous number of books and DVDs, and gorging ourself on media for the rest of the day;
- Took a gig writing book reviews at the U.S. Review of Books;
- Took a gig writing book reviews for Kirkus;
- Took a gig writing news articles for a company that shall not be named;
- Attended a few holiday parties;
- Renewed a few domains;
- Wrote this list and felt a little better about my accomplishments.
What did YOU do in 2011?
