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Year in Review 2021
Jan. 4th, 2022 12:39 pm2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 (limited-access appendix), 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007
I'm going to be less thorough/contemplative than usual, so I may forget some things.
1. What did you do in 2021 that you'd never done before?
- Chris and I finished the musical, The Lady Takes the Mic. We'll probably write some others eventually (we've sketched out a few) but at the moment are working on getting this one produced. We've recorded a lot of demos and have submitted to a few development programs. We're finalists for a couple but won't know for a while. A few times, we came close to doing a cabaret-style preview to run through the show in front of an audience, but Coronavirus kept surging and it never came together.
- cracked my phone screen - dropped it on concrete when it was very cold (slipped out of my very cold hands). It still works; I put a film over it. This is the first and so far only time I've cracked a screen.
- appeared on Twitch streams a couple times - once as a cross-promotion of the rpg Negocios Infernales and the magazine Strange Horizons, and once as a streaming test with Faith where we played the board game Dune (an Avalon Hill design from 1979).
- became CFO of an arts org (which is similar but not the same as being a producer of a movie - it's the difference between getting one project to the end and making sure there is funding to do indefinite future projects at a steady rate) [Strange Horizons is where I'm talking about.] Relatedly, figured out how to get a paypal account transferred to me.
- ran a kickstarter [Strange Horizons again]
- was a webmaster (as opposed to someone who jumps in and does a lot of coding but isn't actually the webmaster) [for the Winchester cub scout pack]
- switched to working part time, and relatedly used the post-Obamacare insurance marketplace for the first time; for the entirety of the existence of the affordable care act, I've either been employed full time or have lived in a country with a national health service (UK or Italy; Italy's model is based on the UK's)
- had two poems commissioned: "Death Opus," for the inaugural issue of The Deadlands, and "Clawing Through Mud as More Leaves Silt Down, as Plastic Bags, as Cast-Off Bottles" for an anthology called Misfits, which isn't out yet. I think they're the first two poems I've written that weren't on spec, that were editors approaching me instead of me pitching them.
- wrote a big essay/interview "Gender Expression and Exploration Through Gaming," which was once of the pieces we decided to submit for the Pushcart Prize this year; I've had fiction nominated before but not nonfiction. It won't make it and it's to some extent me being nominated by me, but it's still a first.
- drew a lot of concept art for Radiance, a short film I wrote, to help the producer pitch it. Relatedly, did a lot of other science fiction illustrations for my own amusement and to experiment with different drawing styles. I naturally gravitate toward very spare line drawings and have been challenging myself to play around more with line weights and shading, and to a lesser extent color. I also put together a feature treatment for Radiance, which was handy late in the year when it was suggested I apply for a screenwriting residency and I had all the materials already to hand (I won't hear back for months; my odds are good but not certain).
- got more in the habit of playing around with camera timers; to some extent, the main actor/model I have to work with right now is me, so if I want anything dynamic I can't have the camera in my hand.
- signed on as producer of a documentary that's already in postproduction, purely to help see it through the festival process. It's something I like very much and have been happy to cheerlead, an abstract and lyrical art film about the train system in Tokyo. Partway through the year, my producer saw it and was like "this seems like very much your thing and you should check it out" and I was like "it's funny you should say so." It's called "Locomotion/Murmuration."
- started work on a new novel. I keep being drawn to time travel stories that overlap with crime noir, and this is more of that. Progress is slow and I'm still in the outlining stage.
- experienced a coup attempt in the country where I live
- grew eucalyptus. Figured out leeks grow really well in a strawberry pot. I did this because I thought it would look cool to have a tentacle-y strawberry pot. But as it happened the leeks also grew better than the ones in ordinary beds.
- farmed mushrooms (specifically, lion's mane mushrooms, which are native to my region)
- garment construction clicked for me; I can just make stuff now. I could always do alterations and embellishments and could always work from patterns. But at some point this year I got to where I could think of the shape I wanted to make, sketch the pieces on fabric, and put them together to form the shape I was looking for in the size I wanted it to be. It's not like I've never tried this before, but now it works.
- something that shows up as a character trait in various fantasy books (and sourcebooks) is that there will be a character, usually a pirate, usually Mediterranean, who uses perfumed oils on his hair. I've started doing this in the more staticky months of the year; I'll put argan oil or whatever on my hands and run them through the bottom few inches of my hair, basically like how you'd use moisturizer on your hands. It's kept my hair healthy and manageable but does also make me laugh because of having encountered it so many times as a fictional personality trait. (Not as a description of a character's appearance or day to day tasks! Personality trait!)
( Read more... )
I'm going to be less thorough/contemplative than usual, so I may forget some things.
1. What did you do in 2021 that you'd never done before?
- Chris and I finished the musical, The Lady Takes the Mic. We'll probably write some others eventually (we've sketched out a few) but at the moment are working on getting this one produced. We've recorded a lot of demos and have submitted to a few development programs. We're finalists for a couple but won't know for a while. A few times, we came close to doing a cabaret-style preview to run through the show in front of an audience, but Coronavirus kept surging and it never came together.
- cracked my phone screen - dropped it on concrete when it was very cold (slipped out of my very cold hands). It still works; I put a film over it. This is the first and so far only time I've cracked a screen.
- appeared on Twitch streams a couple times - once as a cross-promotion of the rpg Negocios Infernales and the magazine Strange Horizons, and once as a streaming test with Faith where we played the board game Dune (an Avalon Hill design from 1979).
- became CFO of an arts org (which is similar but not the same as being a producer of a movie - it's the difference between getting one project to the end and making sure there is funding to do indefinite future projects at a steady rate) [Strange Horizons is where I'm talking about.] Relatedly, figured out how to get a paypal account transferred to me.
- ran a kickstarter [Strange Horizons again]
- was a webmaster (as opposed to someone who jumps in and does a lot of coding but isn't actually the webmaster) [for the Winchester cub scout pack]
- switched to working part time, and relatedly used the post-Obamacare insurance marketplace for the first time; for the entirety of the existence of the affordable care act, I've either been employed full time or have lived in a country with a national health service (UK or Italy; Italy's model is based on the UK's)
- had two poems commissioned: "Death Opus," for the inaugural issue of The Deadlands, and "Clawing Through Mud as More Leaves Silt Down, as Plastic Bags, as Cast-Off Bottles" for an anthology called Misfits, which isn't out yet. I think they're the first two poems I've written that weren't on spec, that were editors approaching me instead of me pitching them.
- wrote a big essay/interview "Gender Expression and Exploration Through Gaming," which was once of the pieces we decided to submit for the Pushcart Prize this year; I've had fiction nominated before but not nonfiction. It won't make it and it's to some extent me being nominated by me, but it's still a first.
- drew a lot of concept art for Radiance, a short film I wrote, to help the producer pitch it. Relatedly, did a lot of other science fiction illustrations for my own amusement and to experiment with different drawing styles. I naturally gravitate toward very spare line drawings and have been challenging myself to play around more with line weights and shading, and to a lesser extent color. I also put together a feature treatment for Radiance, which was handy late in the year when it was suggested I apply for a screenwriting residency and I had all the materials already to hand (I won't hear back for months; my odds are good but not certain).
- got more in the habit of playing around with camera timers; to some extent, the main actor/model I have to work with right now is me, so if I want anything dynamic I can't have the camera in my hand.
- signed on as producer of a documentary that's already in postproduction, purely to help see it through the festival process. It's something I like very much and have been happy to cheerlead, an abstract and lyrical art film about the train system in Tokyo. Partway through the year, my producer saw it and was like "this seems like very much your thing and you should check it out" and I was like "it's funny you should say so." It's called "Locomotion/Murmuration."
- started work on a new novel. I keep being drawn to time travel stories that overlap with crime noir, and this is more of that. Progress is slow and I'm still in the outlining stage.
- experienced a coup attempt in the country where I live
- grew eucalyptus. Figured out leeks grow really well in a strawberry pot. I did this because I thought it would look cool to have a tentacle-y strawberry pot. But as it happened the leeks also grew better than the ones in ordinary beds.
- farmed mushrooms (specifically, lion's mane mushrooms, which are native to my region)
- garment construction clicked for me; I can just make stuff now. I could always do alterations and embellishments and could always work from patterns. But at some point this year I got to where I could think of the shape I wanted to make, sketch the pieces on fabric, and put them together to form the shape I was looking for in the size I wanted it to be. It's not like I've never tried this before, but now it works.
- something that shows up as a character trait in various fantasy books (and sourcebooks) is that there will be a character, usually a pirate, usually Mediterranean, who uses perfumed oils on his hair. I've started doing this in the more staticky months of the year; I'll put argan oil or whatever on my hands and run them through the bottom few inches of my hair, basically like how you'd use moisturizer on your hands. It's kept my hair healthy and manageable but does also make me laugh because of having encountered it so many times as a fictional personality trait. (Not as a description of a character's appearance or day to day tasks! Personality trait!)
( Read more... )
