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Year in Review: 2017
Jan. 12th, 2018 11:09 am2016, 2015 (limited-access appendix), 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007
1. What did you do in 2017 that you'd never done before?
I inherited money. I wrote a screenplay in which most of the (sparse) dialogue was not in English. I produced a short film in Italy. I dyed my hair black, which is the only color it hadn't been yet. I was interviewed on New Hampshire Public Radio. I began a tradition called Cocktail Friday to mark the end of my workweek, since I work from home. I reached out to Arab League diaspora poets to commission work for a Strange Horizons special issue, which is unusual since I normally pull from the submissions pile. It involved a lot of research and networking.
Songs:
"The Legend of Ed," not currently available online, a Western ballad about a truck-driving Texan sculptor who is a dear friend. It's the first thing I've written for ukulele specifically and involves a fair amount of whistling.
Screenplays:
"Tick Tock Toe," a wizard's duel which is a precursor to the Urban Fantasy Feature that keeps getting pushed back, and "Unidentified Objects, or Somewhere, Something Incredible," a sci-fi short which is a collage of conversations about alien first contact.
Shoots:
"Tick Tock Toe" and a music video for Chris Blacker's "Thread to Thread." Both of those are still in editing/postproduction, and I'm the producer and editor on both of them.
Nonfiction:
"Social Trust in a Cash Economy" and "The Opportunity Cost of Moving 23 Times in 36 Years" at The Billfold, collections of personal anecdotes about doing money in Italy and about having the sort of lifestyle where you move to, and from, Italy.
However, most of my nonfiction work was conversational, politically-focused news gathering and punditry published to facebook, where I felt it would have the most immediate reach. I mirrored some of it onto wordpress, but I fell behind on that at around the time of the Italy-Boston relocation because there aren't enough hours in the day and I couldn't work out how to automate it. I'll catch up someday, maybe. The strongest piece is the one on Crispus Attucks and Black Lives Matter.
Fiction:
"Outlaw Story" in Grasslimb issue 15.2, a short feminist Western which involves board games. And I did make a handful of additions to postorbital.
2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Yes, with the exception that I decided not to write the Siege feature because it's an idea for a European production and I'm back in the U.S. Instead, I'm working on a novel that lays the groundwork for a feature set in the U.S. There is no way I get said feature greenlit unless I can show through book sales that there's an audience for it. My plans for this year:
- finish the novel and submit it for publication. It's currently around 26,000 words and I expect it'll finish somewhere just above 100,000. It's about King Arthur and about contemporary art.
- edit and do postproduction on "Tick Tock Toe," which probably involves me or Ciro learning After Effects. Ciro is on the tail end of building a powerful computer that we're going to need for some of the rendering.
- deliver "Thread to Thread," which still needs a color grade
- paint my office
- go to my high school reunion
- read a book in Italian and just in general try not to lose my already-limited command of the language. I don't think I'm going to have the time to get better at it, but I aim to not get too much worse.
( Read more... )
1. What did you do in 2017 that you'd never done before?
I inherited money. I wrote a screenplay in which most of the (sparse) dialogue was not in English. I produced a short film in Italy. I dyed my hair black, which is the only color it hadn't been yet. I was interviewed on New Hampshire Public Radio. I began a tradition called Cocktail Friday to mark the end of my workweek, since I work from home. I reached out to Arab League diaspora poets to commission work for a Strange Horizons special issue, which is unusual since I normally pull from the submissions pile. It involved a lot of research and networking.
Songs:
"The Legend of Ed," not currently available online, a Western ballad about a truck-driving Texan sculptor who is a dear friend. It's the first thing I've written for ukulele specifically and involves a fair amount of whistling.
Screenplays:
"Tick Tock Toe," a wizard's duel which is a precursor to the Urban Fantasy Feature that keeps getting pushed back, and "Unidentified Objects, or Somewhere, Something Incredible," a sci-fi short which is a collage of conversations about alien first contact.
Shoots:
"Tick Tock Toe" and a music video for Chris Blacker's "Thread to Thread." Both of those are still in editing/postproduction, and I'm the producer and editor on both of them.
Nonfiction:
"Social Trust in a Cash Economy" and "The Opportunity Cost of Moving 23 Times in 36 Years" at The Billfold, collections of personal anecdotes about doing money in Italy and about having the sort of lifestyle where you move to, and from, Italy.
However, most of my nonfiction work was conversational, politically-focused news gathering and punditry published to facebook, where I felt it would have the most immediate reach. I mirrored some of it onto wordpress, but I fell behind on that at around the time of the Italy-Boston relocation because there aren't enough hours in the day and I couldn't work out how to automate it. I'll catch up someday, maybe. The strongest piece is the one on Crispus Attucks and Black Lives Matter.
Fiction:
"Outlaw Story" in Grasslimb issue 15.2, a short feminist Western which involves board games. And I did make a handful of additions to postorbital.
2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Yes, with the exception that I decided not to write the Siege feature because it's an idea for a European production and I'm back in the U.S. Instead, I'm working on a novel that lays the groundwork for a feature set in the U.S. There is no way I get said feature greenlit unless I can show through book sales that there's an audience for it. My plans for this year:
- finish the novel and submit it for publication. It's currently around 26,000 words and I expect it'll finish somewhere just above 100,000. It's about King Arthur and about contemporary art.
- edit and do postproduction on "Tick Tock Toe," which probably involves me or Ciro learning After Effects. Ciro is on the tail end of building a powerful computer that we're going to need for some of the rendering.
- deliver "Thread to Thread," which still needs a color grade
- paint my office
- go to my high school reunion
- read a book in Italian and just in general try not to lose my already-limited command of the language. I don't think I'm going to have the time to get better at it, but I aim to not get too much worse.
( Read more... )
