Unabashed

2007 was a major year in my life as a writer. I went from being “Unpublishable” Matt Mitchell, to “Published,” if not “Imminently Publishable” Matt Mitchell. When I got notice that my first story was accepted I almost cried. Almost. Since then I’ve had four other stories published and finished my book.

In March a short story of mind, “The Ghost of Tom Johns,” will appear in Down in the Cellar.

As for the blog, well, my Technorati rating is up to 10 and I’m averaging about 40 hits per day. Not staggering, but this blog hasn’t been around very long and the stats are steadily climbing. And besides, I don’t have a lot of time for this, I have a job to work at and any time I spend blogging saps away from my scant but beloved fiction writing time.

As for 2008, I’m very excited and positive about it. 8s have always been good to me, so it’s pretty much a lock that ‘08 will resound with greatness. Things I’ve got to work on:

• The blog. Because I enjoy it. I feel like I’m settling into a little community of bloggers and I like reading them and reading their responses to what I write, even if they are doing it out of a feeling of obligation to keep me reading theirs. Rest assured, guys, I read yours because I like it :-) Links to those blogs are in the right hand column. Additionally, better blog stats might help with publishing the novel, so it’s useful from a business perspective as well.
• Rewrites. How many rewrites I have to do: many. I write down first drafts and then stuff them in a folder to wait for refinement. But refinement happens rarely because I work on first drafts so much.
• New novel. My next novel is all but written, with hundred of pages of drafts and character bios. I’ve got to get that going now.
• Publishing the novel. Who knows how I’ll end up doing it? It will one day be published though, that I can guarantee. Even if I have to go with POD. Either way I’ll work be working on that in ‘08.
• Subs. Getting more stories published. Preferably in SFWA markets.
• Revitalizing the novella format. More on that later, but I really love the format myself, and I believe there’s a market that would read a good novella, but there aren’t any publishing houses that I know of that will even consider something that runs less than 90k words. Besides, some of my best work is in novella format :-)

written by Matt Mitchell