I have been inactive as a writer for the last year. I was busy. We moved from Minnesota to North Carolina. We had lived in the same area of Minnesota for 47 years; we had a handle on where things were and how things worked. Just moving broke more habits than I have time or energy to list. Then, handling the cultural and political differences sucked up the rest of my creative juices. But, after a full year of making adjustment after adjustment, we seem to have achieved a new stability.

One thing that I was able to do was read widely: 132 books during 2018. If you are interested, look at my Goodreads page for details: https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/10558442.

All of this is leading up to a plan to return to serious writing in 2019. Probably the most important factor for success is to publicly declare what my plan is:

Short Stories

1. Identify resources regarding mastery of the short story format, specifically for the science fiction genre.
2. Put together and execute a plan for acquiring/accessing these resources.
3. Identify outlets for science fiction short stories; understand the characteristics of each outlet.
4. Write and submit six short stories for publication (to multiple outlets as needed)

Novels

1. Revise the first novel of The Shepherd trilogy.
2. Draft the second novel of The Shepherd trilogy.
3. Outline the third novel of The Shepherd trilogy.

Status Sharing

1. Publish detailed status of what is happening, at the beginning of each month.
2. Learn to accept some degree of failure. This is not life and death, just something to keep my mind from turning into (liver) mush; it’s a thing down here but I have not tried it.