5-Year update

This December marks my fifth year writing and posting poetry online. As per tradition, here’s my yearly update on me, my writing, and where I’d like to go for the next year.

First of all, I would like to thank all of you for reading and supporting me this year.  It means a lot to me.  Y’all are awesome 🙂

I:  State of my writing now

This year I successfully published, or scheduled for publication, five poems per week for each of the fifty-two weeks of the year. That means I’ve publicly posted ~260 poems, of which ~156 were haiku and ~104 were another, longer style.  This is the second year in a row that I’ve set and met that goal.  This also brings the total count for my collection of poetry to ~1230 over five years.

I also had the goal to publish all my poetry through the end of 2013, and I am well on my way to completing that.  “2011:  The Year I was in Love” was published by the end of April and “2012:  The Year I Fell Apart” was published by the end of August.  The third book, “2013:  The Year I went in Circles”, is finished, and I will be announcing the links once they’re available.  I would like to publish a book of my 2014 work sometime next year, but that isn’t on the top of my priority list at this time.

II:  What’s up with me

First and foremost, I think I need a vacation.  I’ve been running a writing gauntlet with 5 or more posts per week since August of 2012 – nearly two-and-a-half years.  And I frankly feel burned out.  So, I’m taking a vacation during which I will not consider myself obligated to write.  I’ll still allow myself to write, but I won’t be posting anything to my blogs during that time period.  This write-cation will last at least the month of January, perhaps even some or all of February.  I will be back by March at the latest with new content.

But that brings me to the other side of the issue:  the schedule I put myself under to produce that much content burns me out and doesn’t leave much time for other work.  I’ve been writing poetry and nothing but poetry for the past few years.  And while I do enjoy it, I would like to expand into other areas of writing:  flash fiction, short stories, novels, and novellas.  I’m interested in working on visual poetry and other mediums than just text.  But I don’t feel my five-per-week schedule allows me to work on projects like that.

Additionally, I have important matters in my personal life that I’ve been neglecting while working on this blog and publishing my books this year.  And I need to get on them ASAP.  Because once they’re resolved, it should take several HUGE loads off of my shoulders and put me and my life in a healthier place.

III:  What’s next

I am announcing the official end of my “Shorties” haiku project with the close of 2014.  It was fun while it lasted, but it’s time to close the curtain on that project.  So shorties are done, and they won’t be coming back for a long while.

When I do return to the blog, I will only be posting poems one or two times per week – similar to what I did in 2011 and early 2012.  I will try to focus on quality over quantity though, so I will try to make as many of them sonnets or other longer-style poems as I can.  I may throw a few limericks or cinquains in there, but I feel like I have gained sufficient skill with those styles and don’t want to rest on my laurels.

I WILL be working on other writing content and methods in 2015.  I would like to complete several short short and/or flash fiction.  I also wrote a short story a few years ago which I’d like to expand into a novella/novel.  I’ve toyed with the idea of writing plays and screenplays to practice dialogue – a weak spot in my writing (5 years of poetry and not much dialogue lol).  I’ve also thought about doing a topical blog.  I used to do reviews of movies and series and I’m debating starting that up again.  But I’m not sure what I want to focus on, nor where I want to post the content.  I feel like posting movie reviews and/or opinion pieces to this blog would be awkward, but starting up a new site carries issues of its own.

Furthermore, writing blog or review content is something I would need to do on a regular schedule, and I’m worried about taking too much on and triggering another burnout.  I’m still mulling over the details, and I’ll share them as soon as I’ve made my decisions.

What I CAN say will happen is that I will definitely continue writing, in some way, shape, or form.  And I’m going to work on developing a pro-writing schedule what will encourage regular writing without triggering burnout.  Beyond that though, I can’t say much – those personal matters have to take precedence over starting new writing projects.

IV:  tl;dr (Too long; didn’t read / a summary)

I published ~260 poems this year; the grand total goes up to ~1230.  I met my goal to publish 3 books this year.  I won’t be publishing content in January and maybe February too, and when I do start again I will only post 1-2 times per week.  No more haiku, limericks, or cinquains – unless I think they’re extraordinary.  I will keep writing poetry and start writing prose content, but I’m not sure what, where, or on what schedule.

What do you guys think?