Year Overview

2019 was my first year delving into the crafts of storytelling and writing. I set out that year with the goal of writing twelve short stories by the end of the year. Ideally, I was shooting for finishing one short stories per month. When the year started, I had no idea if this was an achievable goal or not. It seemed reasonable, though.

Spoiler alert, I did not achieve my goal. I got close, though.

By the time the year ended, I had taken my first steps into a new world and I had learned a great deal. I had begun to learn the basics of story and character, of prose and short fiction, and of the writing process. For me, personally, it was a successful and fulfilling year that I am very proud of, even is most of the writing was . . . well terrible. ^_^

As with most new authors and storytellers, my first batch of stories are not good. They have small nuggets of interesting ideas or well-written prose, but for the most part the stories are just terrible.

So why am I posting these examples of my early poor writing abilities? Because I have always been interested in the messy process of improvement. Very few people are just good at something out of the gate. They have to go through an arduous and messy process of failure before the creation of anything good can be achieved. Talk to any illustrator out there and they will tell you about the stacks and stacks and stacks of sketchbooks they own that are filled with terrible sketches and drawings. But those thousands of poor illustrations were all in service to improving their abilities and getting them to a point where they can create fabulous illustrations.

These stories from 2019 can be seen as stories in my sketchbook. These are the stories I wrote to better my abilities as a storyteller and writer.

Year Postmortem

The sections below detail out my writing accomplishments for the year of 2019.

Summary

Short Stories Completed (included vignettes)	10	33,819 words at 116 pages
Short Stories In-Progress (included vignettes)	3	7,087 words at 28 pages
1st Drafts Written	3	17,878 words at 61 pages
Abandoned Stories	1	14,795 words at 33 pages
RPG Adventures Completed	1	–
RPG Adventures In-Progress	1	–
Total Words	–	73,579
Total Pages	–	238

Short Stories Breakdown

Completed (7)

The following short stories were written and revised to completion. Each story was either self-published online or submitted for publication.

The Monotony of Science

• 5,924 words at 21 pages
• Released online

Summer of Competition

• 3,176 words at 12 pages
• Released online

Independence of Mars #2: Precious Cargo

• 3,267 words at 14 pages
• Being submitted for publication

Independence of Mars #3: Coup d’etat

• 7,448 words at 18 pages
• Released online

Where Were You When You Learned Aliens Were Real?

• 5,640 words at 18 pages
• Being submitted for publication

Ride Towards the Story

• 3,337 words at 12 pages
• The first story submitted to Critique Circle
• Unpublished

Pop-Pop-Pop

• 1,350 words at 6 pages
• Plans to submit for publication

In-Progress (2)

The following short stories are in progress with every intention of being completed and published in one form or another.

Cemetery of the Forgotten (working title)

• Currently on Draft 5: 4,146 words at 16 pages

D&D Art Vignette #1: Apples

• Currently on Draft 4: 2,280 words at 9 pages
• Submitted to Critique Circle for feedback

1st Drafts (3)

The following first drafts were written.

Sunless Citadel: Prequel

• 13,334 words at 44 pages
• Turned into a novelette
• No plans to pursue the story further

Visiting a Companion

• 2,909 words at 11 pages
• No plans to pursue the story further

Walking Down the Street Seeing Genitals

• 1,635 words at 6 pages
• No plans to pursue the story further

Unfinished (1)

The following stories were started but were never finished for one reason or another.

The Tale of Calcryx

• 14,795 words at 33 pages.
• Turned into a novelette…the change in scope was the reason for abandonment in favor of working on a short story.
• No plans to pursue the story further

Other Projects Breakdown

The other writing projects were worked on this year.

DMing a D&D Campaign

I wrapped up a D&D campaign composed of 2.5 adventures started back in Summer 2018.

D&D Vignettes (exercises)

These short stories were written as fun little exercises that had a short deadline (one week each). None of them were submitted for critique or feedback as there was not enough time to do so and was outside the scope of the exercise. None of them have currently been published, but I intend to self-publish them to my personal writing website whenever that is stood up.

Vignette #1 – The Pleasant Cemetery [COMPLETED]

• 950 words at 4 pages

Vignette #2 – The Game [COMPLETED]

• 1,499 words at 6 pages

Vignette #3 – UNTITLED [COMPLETED]

• 1,228 words at 5 pages

Vignette #4 – UNTITLED [IN-PROGRESS]

• Currently at 661 words at 3 pages

RPG Adventures

Blighted Grove [COMPLETED]

• D&D One-shot
• 6 scenes (encounters)

Research Station [IN-PROGRESS]

• Mass Effect mini-adventure
• The premise was explored
• The initial backstory was written