{"id":1091,"date":"2018-12-21T11:34:38","date_gmt":"2018-12-21T09:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/suchwanderings.wordpress.com\/?p=1091"},"modified":"2018-12-21T11:34:38","modified_gmt":"2018-12-21T09:34:38","slug":"award-eligibility-2018-in-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/2018\/12\/21\/award-eligibility-2018-in-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Award eligibility & 2018 in review"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had one piece out in 2018. My short story “Birch Daughter”, appeared in\u00a0Fireside Magazine<\/a>\u00a0in November (and was included in the October issue of Fireside Quarterly<\/em>): it’s eligible for your consideration.<\/p>\n

Read “Birch Daughter” here!<\/a><\/p>\n

My father told me that the spell was too strong to break, that I should never trust the forest-folk. But the thought of my mother trapped within a gnarled birch tree in the far north was too much for me to bear. I had to go, even just to see her.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This story is inspired by Finnish folklore; it features forests, bears, and queer women. It’s the only thing I had published this year, and I’m very proud of it.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

This is also a good time to reflect a bit on 2018 in terms of my writing. I used to do rather detailed year-in-review posts, outlining writing goals for the next year, &c. I think, this time, I’ll keep the writing goals within my bullet journal and just reflect more generally on this year.<\/p>\n

My main goal for 2018 was to finish novel revisions and to start querying agents. Well: I did that, although due to mental health issues, I was not able to get properly into querying. A lot of my other goals, I did not really succeed at — but the problem was, my goals were too ambitious and I also didn’t realise, at the end of 2017, how rough 2018 was going to be.<\/p>\n

But all in all, the main thing is: I kept writing. I took a bit of a break in the summer, when I was healing my poor brain, but I returned to writing again when it felt good. (Writing longhand in a nice notebook, outside in the warmth of the summer sun. I wrote a whole story longhand for the first time in years.) And after that, writing has<\/em> felt good. After my healing beak, I’ve written a couple of short stories and a Nanowrimo novel draft, and am finding joy in writing. Really, that’s what matters.<\/p>\n

In 2019, I hope above all to be more gentle to myself in terms of writing goals and ambitions. I’m working on a PhD; I have anxiety issues; I need to look after myself and stay clear of too much perfectionism and achieverism.<\/p>\n

I’ll end with by quoting myself from last year’s year-in-review post:<\/p>\n

No matter what, I will keep writing words of hope and kindness in the face of hardship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had one piece out in 2018. My short story “Birch Daughter”, appeared in\u00a0Fireside Magazine\u00a0in November (and was included in the October issue of Fireside Quarterly): it’s eligible for your consideration. Read “Birch Daughter” here! My father told me that the spell was too strong to break, that I should never trust the forest-folk. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,19,75],"tags":[211,12],"class_list":["post-1091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-babble","category-short-stories","category-year-in-review","tag-fireside-magazine","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}