Author: D. A. Hosek
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Writerly resolutions: April Status—Quarantine Edition
April started off with some promise but quickly leveled off. There were only nine days that I wrote anything at all. On the good news front, I’ve settled Catan numerous times. My Submittable queue continues to drain, a little bit faster than last month, so now I’m down from 17 to 13 submissions. Half of this…
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My social media fast
Back at the beginning of March, I deleted the Twitter and Facebook apps from my phone, signed out on all my computers and began a Lenten fast from social media. Shortly afterwards, COVID-19 sent everything kiddlywumpus. It’s ben an interesting experience not being connected to the communities on social media that I had been for…
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Writerly resolutions: March Status—Quarantine Edition
So you’d think that with quarantine I’d be more productive as a writer. You’d think wrong. I made good progress on revising the last chapter I wrote in the first half of the month, but the new chapter has been coming a few words at a time. My Submittable queue has drained much more slowly this…
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Writerly resolutions: February Status
February continued to be a crappy month for me personally, although, unlike January, I actually made some progress on the novel. Chapter 19 is finished and Chapter 20 is nearly done with its first draft. I even managed to write a paragraph on a short story. My Submittable queue continues to drain, with its total down…
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Writerly resolutions: January Status
January was a crappy month. I did very little writing on the novel. I started a new project which I’ve since discarded as self-indulgent garbage. The lone bright spot was an acceptance for a story and the slow decline of the size of my submittable queue (down from 53 to 31). I can only hope…
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Writerly resolutions for 2020
2019 was a disappointing year on many fronts, so I figure 2020 can’t help but be better. My goals for the year Finish a complete draft of We, The Rescued. Rewrite and revise to get it in a state where I can have some other eyes read it. Cut way back on submissions. I’m not…
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Writerly resolutions for 2019—the post mortem
I had two goals for the year and failed on them both. I aimed to finish the full draft of We, The Rescued. This entailed writing some 50,000 words over the course of the year. I made steady progress (as the graph above shows), but not steady enough and I had more than a few…
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2019 in rejections (and acceptances)
2019 was a grim year for me publishing-wise. I had only two acceptances, one each of fiction and poetry, the worst rejection rate since 2012 and for the first time since I sold my first story, I went a year without any income (not even a token sum) for any of my writing. As the…
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2019 in reading
I had set a goal for 2019 of reading 100 books and nearly made it with 95 books. I’ll aim again this year. My favorite reads for the year, in alphabetical order, were: Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath The Best American Essays 2019 edited by Rebecca Solnit and Robert Atwan…