These Monday posts are usually about starting books, but I thought I would use it today to talk a little bit about closing out 2013 and starting 2014. And then I realized that there’s a parallel in there too.

Launching into a new year is always a reflective time. Somehow in adulthood, I lost the ability to look forward at a blank calendar and see only glittering possibilities. Do you know what I mean? I see everything through the filter of what I didn’t accomplish last year, and what I didn’t do as well as I wish I had.

Let’s start there. With my failures.

• Toward the end of the year, I failed miserably at critiquing several manuscripts that I wanted desperately to critique for friends. By the time I get through everything I have to do, I tell myself every night that I’m going to read them for an hour, and then the next thing I know, I’ve read the same words I read the night before and I’m asleep. The year has been one of complete exhaustion.
• I failed miserably at figuring out and keeping within my limits. Knowing I needed to spend less time on social media, I brought more people in to help with Adventures in YA Publishing, forgetting that that would also require more organizational and management time. And I organized and launched YA Series Insiders, which I love and love doing, but which still takes up a big chunk of time that I don’t have. I haven’t been able to keep up with the First Five Pages Workshop critiques the way I want to, and I haven’t even been able to supervise the coordination of it as I should.
• I failed to keep up with friends as much as I wish I could.
• I failed to understand the difficulty and the depth of the emotional journey of going through the editorial process on a full-length manuscript with an editor. The revision process with my CPs and Beta Readers and even my agent were a breeze. But facing the depth of what I didn’t know, and coming face to face with my own writing in the way that you see it as you go through the editorial process is astonishingly taxing. And time consuming. And draining. And ultimately uplifting. 

Yes. Uplifting.

via flickr

Because in all of those failures, so much has happened this year.

• I found an agent.
• I sold a book. Three of them. Gulp. 
• I’ve revised BEHOLDEN, faced my writing demons (painfully, I admit), and survived the editorial process stronger as a writer and a human being. Ouch. I learned more than I would EVER have believed possible.
• I’ve beta’d and/or critiqued eleven manuscripts, not counting the First Five Pages entries.
• I’ve been to eleven countries, not counting the U.S. Eleven. (Turkey, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, India, Oman, The UAE, The Bahamas, The Czech Republic, Austria.)
• I attended SCBWI NY and did the fabulous, week long Breakout Novel Intensive workshop with Donald Maass, and YALLFEST.
• I gave my first half-day workshop on Social Media in Dallas.
• I launched YASeriesInsiders.com and found some AMAZING friends in my fellow members.
• I wrote a discovery draft for a version of Book 2 that I ultimately will not use, but WILL use for something else because it was the most powerful thing I’ve ever done.
• I wrote a discovery draft for a version of Book 2 that I will use. And that I love.
• I realized I have a deadline. Six months from now. To actually write Book 2, go through my usual 8 drafts of it, and turn in in while struggling to apply all that I’ve learned through the editorial process I went through on Book 1.
• I realized I will have to do the above with a new editor, because mine has moved to a position of greater responsibility at another publishing house.
• And somewhere in there, I’ve adjusted to all the family upheaval we’ve had this year, adjusted my business life, and adjusted to Jan being on the blog less, getting new blog partners, and all the training and sorting and so forth that involves.

Maybe that doesn’t sound like as much to you as it does to me. Boiled down to a bullet point, each item doesn’t begin to convey the hours and hours and hours involved, but the truth is, that is only the beginning of this incredible journey I embarked on when I signed my book contract.

Every author, every author, who is in this business of ours does all of this and far more. They may not do it all in the same way, or in the same order, but it’s all part of the process. The more of that process I see, the more I am inspired and bowled over by the sheer talent, organizational skill, energy-level, and life-skill shown by the authors whose books I loved even before I realized what all is involved in getting those books not only written but presented to the world.

One of the things that amazes me is that I had no idea of what was coming. I thought I knew. I thought I was ready.

I wasn’t.

There will be more milestones next year: ARCs and trade shows and book launches and book reviews and deadlines. My book will be out in the world, and I hope that readers will like it, but that will be out of my control. Sales will be out of my control. So many things will depend on chance, as they have throughout this process. So far, I’ve been beyond lucky. I keep waiting for the axe to fall.

I don’t know what any of 2014 will look like. I’ve never done gone through a launch like this before.

I’m scared. I don’t want to fail anyone, not my publisher, not my agent, not my family, not my friends and cps and readers. Most of all my readers.

2014 is going to be new, uncharted territory for me. The pages of my calendar are–literally–blank because I don’t know my schedule and I don’t know what to expect, except in the vaguest possible terms. I can look at that with fear, or I can look at it with wonder and see the glittering possibilities.

1. I love to write. I love the process. When I’m writing, everything else falls away.
2. I am beyond lucky to have the team at Simon Pulse put their faith in me and in BEHOLDEN and shepherd me through this process. 
3. One of the highlights of my year was standing in book signing lines at YALLFEST talking to fans and being infused, and overwhelmed, by their pure love of books. It was a great reminder that no matter what happens this year, I am going to be sharing it with book people. And book people are fabulous.

via flickr