This is my third year continuing my writer in review tradition. I don’t know if these are valuable to anyone else out there but me, but I really enjoy the forced opportunity to reflect back on the work I’ve been doing. Sometimes in the thick of it, I don’t see any progress, but then you look back on a whole year and can see real changes. So without further ado, a summary of last year.
Creative Work
This year, I had two fiction pieces accepted. “Reclaiming the Desert” was published this summer by Wayfare Magazine. It’s a story about a future Utah and two sisters reuniting after being divided by religion, and falls into the solar punk genre, which is like climate fiction except more optimistic about humanity’s future chances. I wrote a brief author’s note about the story, but make sure you read the story first so you don’t get spoiled. My fantasy mystery story “Birthright” is forthcoming from Inklings Press as part of their genre detective anthology duo. I’ll be in the fantasy volume called Tales of Mystery: Murder and Magic, which has an anticipated release date in April.
My creative nonfiction year started off with a bang as my essay “Knit Together” was awarded second place in the 2022 BYU Studies Essay Contest. This essay was a vulnerable one for me about the concept of Paul’s doctrine of being knit together and knitting with my sister. In the fall, “Turning the Corner” was published by Exponent II in their fall issue. I got to participate in the issue launch party, so go listen there (starting at 34:45) to hear a bit of this piece on being sick at Christmas and entering a different stage of motherhood. Finally, my short hybrid essay and scriptural fiction piece on motherhood “The Cost” won the Judge’s Choice Award in the 12th Annual Mormon Lit Blitz. All the pieces this year were really excellent and made almost an anthology on one theme, so I highly recommend reading them all together.
Scholarship
I wrote and presented two papers on LDS speculative fiction this year. “The Evolution of Stereotypes in Genre Fiction: Learning from Modern Portrayals of Latter-day Saints in The Expanse and Stranger Things” was presented at the Latter-day Saints & Media Studies Symposium in Las Vegas and won the second place student paper award. “One Great Whole: An Exploration of the Alien as the Self in Mormon Science Fiction” was presented at the Association for Mormon Letters Conference.
I also managed to help put out 17 episodes of Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree this year in spite of grad school. The five most popular episodes from this season were on Les Miserables, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, The Chosen, Barbie, and season 3 of The Mandalorian, but really, they are all my favorites.
Personal Life
Obviously, you’re probably tired of hearing about the biggest change in my life this year: going back to graduate school at BYU to get my MA in English. The new semester is just getting started now, and I’m both excited to ramp up into my classes and having a bit of anxiety and dread about the workload. There are just so many interesting opportunities that I have a hard time saying no to!
What else? The kids are all doing well and adapting to having me gone during the day–I almost don’t have to remind them to ask Dad to sign permission slips anymore. George is still doing well at his start-up and playing enough video games for both of us.
Checking in on 2023 Goals
Complete at least 6 new creative pieces this year. Probably only 4 new pieces this year, though it’s hard to say since some pieces started in 2022 were finished in 2023. At least part of the lack of production is due to starting grad school which (surprise) takes up a lot of free time. I hope to set aside some time this summer to write new work.
Grow my tolerance for daily writing to regular 1000-word sessions. I’m still struggling with this goal. A long writing session takes a lot out of me and tends to make it impossible to write the next day.
Submit at least 40 times. Not even close, but the happy reason that almost everything I’ve written has been accepted somewhere, so I started running out of pieces to submit. A good problem to have.
Double the listenership of Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree. This one did happen! Our subscribers on YouTube doubled and Apple nearly so. Spotify finally added a subscriber count this year, so now I can keep track of that in the future, but the overall number of plays is more than double last year, so I’m happy with that. It’s so much easier to justify the time it takes to make an episode when I know y’all are out there listening, so thanks to those listeners who’ve reached out this year.
Gain some editing skills by working on Irreantum’s genre issue. This one happened, and I’m so happy with the resulting stories. I really enjoyed the process of helping an author’s story reach its potential and will definitely be looking for more editing opportunities in the future.
Make at least 24 posts to this blog. Only made it to 18 posts last year, but I was really happy with a few of the non-book review ones. I hope to continue posting more articles and thoughts this year.
Goals for 2024
Keep up on blogging and book reviews by setting aside time for them and keeping it absolutely sacred. I’m looking at book reviews and blogging as a way to get in some writing each week about topics I’m interested in writing about academically. I’m setting aside two hours each week to do this writing and not letting anything invade that space.
Finish my Inklings reading project. I only managed to finish half of my ambitious project to learn more about the other Inklings last year. What I did read was extremely valuable, so I’m extending that project into this year.
Attend a major conference every semester. This is kind of cheating as I’ve already been accepted to ICFA in March and MHA in June, so I’ve really only got to find a conference for fall. But I do think attending conferences is one of the most valuable ways to meet people and open up more realms of academic opportunity, so I’m committing to it. I will probably also attend one smaller conference each semester that doesn’t require traveling.
Write at least 3 creative pieces during the summer. These could be either essays or short stories. While my primary focus right now is on academic writing, I do want to keep up the (small) skills I’ve gained in creative work as well. I don’t have time during the semester, so summer is the right time to spend some focus on it.
Make a list of possible PhD programs. I’m still not sure whether I will go on for a PhD, but the first step is investigating what programs might make sense for me (and my family). This is another summer project.
