(The first 2/3 of this post are backdated from my notes in early January.)

Seeing as this is a brand new year and all – I’m going to use Ray Bradbury’s method of writing one new short story per week. (I’m less sure of his other method – reading 1 story, 1 poem, and 1 essay per day – but I will try.)

Potential downside: my to-be-sold story pile will balloon from 18 to 70.

Potential upside: multiple publications. Fame. Glory. Fans. Immortality. (Hey, I like to think big, okay?)

Onward, y’all. Ever onward.

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My self-imposed Bradbury challenge, week 1: I wrote a multilayered solarpunk story! Wasn’t easy… It took a lot of drafting and brainstorming – I hadn’t tried that subgenre before. Once I polish the final draft, it’ll be ~5K-6K words, possibly the longest story I’ve ever written. My longest thus far has been 5,300 words, with most others falling in the 1,000-2,500 range, and usually closer to 1,000.

Gonna try a simpler, less solarpunk-y story for next week.

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Self-imposed Bradbury challenge, week 2: last week’s story was wayyy outside my usual framework, so this week, I returned to my favourite subgenre: funny time travel! Wrote another story set in my connected storyverse and got great feedback from my beta readers, woo! Once I finish polishing the draft, the wordcount will be somewhere around 1,300.

In other creative news, I finally got a few film festival acceptances. Been a while, eh. One is the Big Bear, Little Festival in California. The other is Fargo Film Festival in North Dakota, for which I’d submitted the same film (“Please Don’t Send Help”) but squished from 2:46 to exactly 2 minutes. (That was a fun editing challenge!)

Big Bear is a small, first-time fest, and though I won’t be able to attend, I hope it goes great! FFF is famous for their hospitality, and there’s a possibility I’ll get to attend in person, though that’d be just before my as-yet-unconfirmed Pacific Crest Trail thruhike’s starting date. I’m currently waiting on a few rather important emails to help me finalize my summer plans… (A Finnish film festival; a Montreal university; the Quebec art grant bureau.) (My life is very strange.)

Onward. Ever onward.