There is a way of looking at this year that is triumphant, at least personally. But while I achieved some substantial and long-term goals, as I face the end of the year, my primary emotion is exhaustion.
This was the first year that I haven’t published anything since 2012. While I know that gaps are normal and healthy even, there’s some panicked part of me that feels like it was a year when I lost ground, but I know that’s just the 2021 speaking.
So in the last twelve months:
- I finished writing and then revised Chick Magnet.
- After that, I started querying agents. In April, I signed with Sarah Younger, and I can report that she’s AMAZING.
- I then revised Chick Magnet again, and Sarah took it out on submission over the summer. In October, we announced that we had sold it (and another standalone contemporary romance) to Montlake. The expected publication date is early 2023.
- Over the summer when I wasn’t frantically refreshing my inbox, I wrote about 15K for a novella. I also wrote proposals for Montlake, and, once they selected one, I began writing that book. I also worked to revise some things for rerelease (more news about that soon). All told, I wrote about 50K words in the last twelve months.
- I read 58 new-to-me books.
All together, it was a year of sporadic triumph and daily struggle, which makes it pretty much par for the 2021 course. Here’s to hoping that the balance will shift in 2022, and we can all lean harder into the celebration side in the coming year.
(I’ve been producing some version of this post for as long as I’ve been blogging my writing. You can read about my 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013 respectively.)
Emma Barry 