What a year. It’s been a shitshow for the world, and my own country too: Finland’s current government is awful and seems to oppose pretty much all the things I hold important. The past autumn ended up being difficult for me on a personal level, too. Haven’t been that anxious and close to burnout for an age. I’m glad I weathered it, though, and a week’s holiday has given me back some energy and hope. Still, on the whole 2016 has been pretty horrible.<\/p>\n
Yet: on the writing front, things have been good for me. Very good, in fact. Thinking about 2016 gives me a weird dissonance: on one hand, terrible things have happened worldwide and bad things have happened to people I care about. On the other, in 2016 my first pro publications came out – making me eligible for the Campbell Award – and I revised a novel. <\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
Here were my writing goals for 2016 (from this post<\/a>): <\/p>\n How did I do with them, then?<\/p>\n *** POEMS (5) FICTION (2 short stories, 1 flash) I’m really proud of everything that I’ve had published this year. Poems and stories written with all my heart in them. <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n My writing goals for 2017<\/b>:<\/p>\n Those might be somewhat manageable goals. (I have a hard time proposing manageable goals for myself.) I hope that 2017 will be less awful than 2016, world-wise; although it’s possible we’re actually headed for darker times. But then again – those are precisely the times when we need art most. So I will do my utmost to keep arting in 2017, to write stories and poems with hope at their heart. <\/p>\n Happy new year, Dear Reader. May 2017 treat you with compassion and mercy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What a year. It’s been a shitshow for the world, and my own country too: Finland’s current government is awful and seems to oppose pretty much all the things I hold important. The past autumn ended up being difficult for me on a personal level, too. Haven’t been that anxious and close to burnout for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,75],"tags":[33,12],"class_list":["post-908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discussion","category-year-in-review","tag-lists","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nMy 2016 publications are all included in my award eligibility post<\/a>, but let’s recap them here for the sake of completionism:<\/p>\n
\n02\/2016 “Village Woman”<\/a> in the Winter 2016<\/a> issue of Goblin Fruit<\/a>.
\n03\/2016 “Witch’s Lens”<\/a> in Polu Texni<\/a>.
\n06\/2016 “After Selling Your Soul to the Trickster God”<\/a> in Issue 59 of Abyss & Apex<\/a>.
\n09\/2016 “Taboo”<\/a> in Strange Horizons<\/a>. (Podcast version here<\/a>.)
\n09\/2016 “Bird People”<\/a> in Volume 1<\/a>, Issue 4 of Remixt<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\n07\/2016 “The City Beneath the Sea” in the anthology An Alphabet of Embers<\/a>, edited by Rose Lemberg. Short story.
\n07\/2016 “Water, Birch, and Blood”<\/a> in Strange Horizons<\/a>, the special issue Our Queer Planet<\/a>. Short story. (Podcast version here<\/a>.)
\n08\/2016 “Creation”<\/a> in the August 2016<\/a> issue of Flash Fiction Online<\/a>. Flash fiction.<\/p>\n\n