2012 Thank you's and highlights

2012 was a year of changes for me. My personal life was a roller-coaster, something I'd rather not go into details about in public, but in the end I am in a better place, so it has had a happy ending. :) My writing life saw a great deal of change too and that's what I'm going to write about here. Here's what happened:

By the beginning of 2012 my in-person writing group fizzled out and I found myself able to be more disciplined about writing at home, whereas I had been frequenting our meeting place coffee shop to write even when no one else was there because I couldn't resist the distractions of home. I spent a lot more time planning out novel ideas and discarding them for new shinier ideas than I spent on any actual writing. My sole remaining partner in crime was Taliesin and we were both struggling to get any projects off the ground.

In March I think I must have gotten a spam comment or a "inactive deletion pending" notice on my defunct livejournal, because I got the idea that I was going to restart my livejournal as a writing journal. I honestly can't remember how I got from there to blogger, but I know it had something to do with Karen Mahoney's KazNo (a NaNoWriMo look alike happening in April) I decided I was going to participate, but when push came to shove I felt unprepared and fell back into my usual rut of planning and not writing. The important thing about that event was that it lead me to befriend my darling Jani Grey.

Jani had put a call out for a beta reader and even though I was still a dysfunctional writer, I was already a decent beta, so I volunteered. She appreciated my work and introduced me to the insane and wonderful world of Twitter. I was a bit shy of Twitter at first, it wasn't until my second go around that it really took off for me, in large part thanks to Cait and Kat who were lovely enough to include me in their conversations and before I knew it they were my friends too.

I can hardly say how influential Jani, Cait and Kat have been in my writerly life. They've dragged me kicking and screaming from my little safe bubble of always planning and never writing, and thanks to them I got a fair amount of writing done in 2012. I've become a better writer in large part thanks to them. And I've greatly enjoyed reading and critiquing their MS's. I can't wait until the day that I get to present them with something of mine and I'm convinced that it is going to happen in 2013! I adore you all!

Kat especially is my idol and I want to be her when I grow up. <3

Also from twitter came Marieke who has a passion for Doctor Who and David Tennant that even surpasses my own! I love her and she's another friend who let me crit her MS and I can't wait for her to read mine.

I can't make this post without mentioning Leigh Ann Kopans who is an inspiration to me and is constantly supplying me with new fuel for my writing journey. Just the other day her blog about fast drafting inspired me to try it and it's going better than any other writing method I have tried before. So, THANK YOU LEIGH ANN!!!

I also want to shout out to Juliana and Megan who are both sweethearts and brighten my day all the time. <3

Looking forward to a bright 2013 in Writer Twitterland.