Writing plans for 2021

Another year has come and gone. And good God, what a year it was. I didn’t finish 2020; 2020 finished me.

I’ve said it enough times, but I’ll say it again: 2020 sucked hard for me. I can’t remember a worse year for me since 2014 when my father died. Everything that I was hoping for just crashed and burned or was totally upended. COVID-19 pretty much forced me to become more of a hermit than I already am, my mother suffered a nasty heart attack that put her in the hospital, and my country pretty much went into complete meltdown socially and politically. It wasn’t the apocalypse, but it sure as hell felt like it.

The one good thing that came out of this year for me was my very first horror story, Welcome to Wakeford (henceforward abbreviated as WTW), which I’m happy to say has been well-received so far. Even that came with an asterisk, since I pretty much had to scramble to get it out after some trolls came back out of the woodwork just to shoot me down when I asked for what people wanted in terms of upload schedule. Not to mention that Fictionpress crapped out on me and I couldn’t upload the finale until days after Halloween. A lot of the anger, depression and frustration I felt this year made it into that story, for better or for worse.

Frankly, 2020 left me drained, not just physically and mentally, but also creatively. The most I can do at this point is try to plan for next year. That brings me to the main subject of this post, namely, what I plan to do for writing projects in 2021.

I’ll be honest. As far as writing goes…I don’t know for certain if I’ll be writing a new story in 2021. The only thing I know I will be doing is continuing to edit my World War II novel series American Now Departed, with this year’s focus being on the gargantuan-in-length Volume 3, Fight for the One You Love. I figure that editing my older work will give me some ideas for newer stories down the line. As for what those stories would be is anyone’s guess.

This is not mentioning the fact that 2021 will be a year of transition for me. I am currently working at a military base in Tampa, Florida, but my rotation here is scheduled to end in July. By that time, my hope is to have a new assignment lined up back in the Washington D.C. area so I can return home and be closer to my mother and my friends. If that happens (which I’m rather confident it will), much of my time will likely be spent preparing for that transition and then easing into my new assignment, wherever that happens to be.

For anyone who has thought of asking: no, I don’t plan to write about my real-life work. To be honest, the nature and details of my job wouldn’t make for very exciting reading. I have, however, given thought to venturing out of my established genre (i.e., historical fiction) again and writing something else, much like when I wrote WTW.

At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, WTW was a watershed story for me, and I loved every minute of it. Even when things were getting tough for me near the end and I was starting to suffer burnout, I still enjoyed writing it. To answer the question you didn’t ask, I have given thought to writing a sequel, but quite frankly, I am not really sure if I want to. That story was a diversion from all the BS 2020 threw at me more than anything. Like I said, a lot of the anger and depression I felt this past year made its way in. With that in mind, I don’t think I’ll be writing a sequel for WTW, at least for the time being. I’d rather just learn from my experiences with this and apply them to the next horror/mystery story I write (yes, I will write another one. I had way too much fun with this to let it be a one-off).

One genre I have given thought to writing is fantasy. I know, I can’t think of anything more diametrically opposed to the gritty, realistic historical epics I wrote before. The reasons for being drawn to this are twofold: one is I’ve been watching a lot more fantasy-themed anime and TV shows recently (namely pre-shark-jumping seasons of Game of Thrones, The Witcher, etc.) and reading up on the Napoleonic Era. I know, odd combination.

However, the more I watched and the more I read, I couldn’t help but notice that the time period was, in many ways, reminiscent of classic fairy tales and epic fantasy stories. Dashing princes, beautiful princesses, and great battles. One could even say that Napoleon’s life was an epic poem in motion. A man who came from a provincial backwater and rose to be the most powerful man in Europe (for a short amount of time) sounds like something straight out of a fantasy novel.

I can’t really say at this time what my fantasy story would look like, but I think it would bear a heavy resemblance to that period of history. Also helps that the Brothers Grimm wrote their stories during that time period, so nice synergy there!

At the moment though, my priority is to work on editing the next volume of my World War II series. It feels like it’s time to go back to it (as I have been editing my works off and on since I finished the series back in 2017) and some time away has given me a better perspective on how to properly pace the third volume. Seriously, reading through that can be exhausting as it is almost constant combat, fighting, and dying. My aim is to better space out battles and insert some much needed slower-paced breathers in-between. That, and some characters I neglected when writing initially need some love and revision.

I can’t say for certain when I’ll update this blog next. It will likely come when I find a new anime or movie to review, when I start my next writing project (whenever that is) or just a major life update. Either way, I’ll let you guys know when that happens.

Until the next blog update,

Historyman101