{"id":6093,"date":"2018-12-28T08:30:06","date_gmt":"2018-12-28T13:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/?p=6093"},"modified":"2018-12-18T10:46:01","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T15:46:01","slug":"2018-the-year-that-was","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/2018-the-year-that-was\/","title":{"rendered":"2018 &#8211; The Year That Was"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-41\" src=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/r-avatar-e1443983880436.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"81\" height=\"81\" \/>To the shock of both of us, <a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/forecasting-2018-in-which-jen-tries-to-keep-her-expectations-realistic\/\">last year&#8217;s forecast<\/a> for 2018 was spot-on. We wanted to finish up the Science Novels, outline the middle Music Novel, and begin talking about the Ghost Novels, and that&#8217;s pretty much what we did. The one place we missed the mark was in predicting (or hoping) that the first Science Novel would be released in 2018. It wasn&#8217;t. But we have the best excuse! 2018 was the year we got an agent! And that put our self-publishing plans on hold while we talk to him and figure out what makes sense in this new landscape.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s how we spent 2018 on the blog:<\/p>\n<p><strong>January<\/strong> and <strong>February<\/strong> were devoted to writing Grandson of Science Novel, whining about missing self-imposed deadlines and target word counts, a brief break to <a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/whered-that-come-from\/\">clean our desks<\/a>, and an update to our chain story&#8217;s cast of characters.<\/p>\n<p>In <strong>March<\/strong> we mused about whether a protagonist should learn of ALL of the villains evil doings <a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/dont-go-there\/\">(&#8220;No.&#8221;)<\/a>\u00a0And we had the joy of setting up new computers.<\/p>\n<p><strong>April<\/strong> brought several rounds of <a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/critique-group-advice-part-1\/\">critique<\/a> group <a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/critique-group-advice-part-2\/\">advice<\/a>, and we finally reached the end of the first draft of Grandson of Science Novel. <a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/its-about-fucking-time\/\">Break out the champagne<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p>But don&#8217;t drink too much, because we still had some work to do before the Science Novels could all be considered Done Enough. We spent <strong>May<\/strong> plugging holes and strengthening descriptions. Oh, and we got a <a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/weve-made-a-huge-mistake\/\">puppy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>On <strong>June<\/strong> 1 we declared ourselves done for <a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/pop-that-champagne\/\">realsies<\/a>, and hit the ground running on that Music Novel <a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/since-were-too-lazy-to-invent-a-time-machine\/\">outline<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>July<\/strong> and <strong>August<\/strong> were devoted to brainstorming, outlining, and <a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/jack-and-jill-of-all-trades\/\">research<\/a> for Sibling of Music Novel.<\/p>\n<p>In <strong>September<\/strong> we pulled back from Music Novels and dove straight into the Science Novels again, <a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/you-are-now-free-to-move-about-the-cabin\/\">reading through<\/a> all three of them in preparation for edits and <a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/good-things-come-in-threes\/\">cover design<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Science Novels remained our focus in <strong>October<\/strong> as we <a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/reweaving-the-very-fabric-of-time\/\">worked<\/a> to get them ready for our beta readers. Plus we passed a major milestone: <a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/1000-down\/\">1000<\/a> blog posts!<\/p>\n<p>When the Science and Music Novels are done, our next project is going to involve ghosts. We spent <strong>November<\/strong> taking various <a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/mystery-science-road-trip-3000\/\">road trips<\/a> and using the time on the road to lay the groundwork for this whole new story universe. Plus we tossed some old audio equipment outside during a blizzard and took <a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/stereos-in-the-snow\/\">pictures<\/a> of it. As you do.<\/p>\n<p>Which brings us up to the present. <strong>December<\/strong>. We GOT AN AGENT! And since he&#8217;s going to be selling the first Music Novel for us, we really need to turn our attention back to that series and get the middle book done. We were a bit <a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/how-do-these-pedals-work\/\">rusty<\/a> when we sat down to our brainstorming, but with a little bit of WD-40 and a couple of jumper cables we&#8217;re now purring along like a vintage muscle car.<\/p>\n<p>We hope your 2018 went well, and your 2019 goes even better. Happy New Year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To the shock of both of us, last year&#8217;s forecast for 2018 was spot-on. We wanted to finish up the Science Novels, outline the middle Music Novel, and begin talking about the Ghost Novels, and that&#8217;s pretty much what we did. The one place we missed the mark was in predicting (or hoping) that the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[326],"tags":[515,494,430,289,410,288,484,418],"class_list":["post-6093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-as-a-team","tag-brainstorming","tag-editing","tag-grandson-of-science-novel","tag-music-novel","tag-outline","tag-science-novel","tag-sibling-of-music-novel","tag-son-of-science-novel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6093"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6113,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6093\/revisions\/6113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}