I always say I focus more on looking back over the past year on my birthday than on the last day of December, but given how most people use this day to reflect back, it’s hard for me not to do so as well.  If I said I didn’t like how this past year went, I’d have plenty of bad stuff to point to.  Mom’s health problems over the past year were certainly difficult (and as if things weren’t bad enough, she dislocated one of her fingers earlier today), there were the problems with my maternal grandparents’ old home getting burgled (which we’re still sorting out), we lost Grandma Shannon, and I had to distance myself from a number of former friends.  Everyone has their own problems to deal with, but it’s felt like I had more than my fair share to deal with.

Looking back, though, I’m actually kind of happy with how 2010 turned out.  A lot of that started, ironically enough, on the first of January when I forced myself to sit down here and churn out the first 2,037 words of a short story idea I’d had percolating in my mind for most of the previous year.  That led to a whole lot of writing this year, by far my most prolific year in that regard.  I had an idea for a novel I wanted to write this year, but while I didn’t get to that, I wrote two and a half drafts of another novel, most of the rough draft of a second, the rough draft of a non-fiction book, two full screenplays, and lots and lots of short stories.  For too long I’d let previous bad experiences stop me from writing any more, but this was the year I finally let some old wounds heal and get 100% back into the work I love.  Although my writing output did slow these past few months, this was to take care of something even bigger than the writing I was doing — I’ve taken to calling this “The Plan” — and in the next few months I should know whether or not it was a success.

In addition to this, I managed to make two of the most special friends I’ve ever made in my life.  For the first time ever I’ll be making lots of calls tonight — New Year’s and birthdays are always family occasions for me — and I’ve made all sorts of plans for 2011 that will finally get me back to having a real social life, or at least the closest thing to a social life I can have when so much of my time is taken up with my writing these days.  This is a necessary sacrifice, though, as while I don’t dare to forecast my success with my writing projects from this past year, I still have a lot more work to do on them before they stand a chance to bring me professional success.

Although I never place too much credence in horoscopes, I couldn’t help but look at my horoscope for the coming year a couple of days ago.  In short it said that if I work my tail off in January, I should see great success in the spring.  This coincides with The Plan, but for all I know The Plan could fail and it could be that I sell a screenplay or the first novel then.  If the past few years have taught me anything, though, it’s not to take anything for granted.  Certainly I’m going to write my fingers numb throughout January, but I plan on doing the same in February and March and so on.  I hope 2011 is the year my writing finally brings me professional success, but if it doesn’t then I’ve got to do everything I can this coming year to make sure I break through in 2012.  Yes, the irony of that is not lost on me.