The Word of the Year

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Photo by chromatika/iStock / Getty Images
Photo by chromatika/iStock / Getty Images

So we're two weeks into 2015 and I still haven't chosen my word of the year. Usually I at least have a list of candidates before the previous year ends. Often, I have the word chosen before midnight on New Year's Eve. This year, nothing. Not a clue.

Most years, I have an idea of what lay ahead, a list of specific goals to accomplish. The challenge is to come up with a word that fits those goals. When I look ahead at 2015, though, I see nothing. I have no idea what the year will hold, no goals demanding my attention. Sure, I have a list of things I'd like to do eventually, but none of them is a pressing need.

If anything, 2015 looks like it will be a year of waiting: waiting to see what happens with the dog, waiting for the townhouse market to improve so I can sell my place without losing my shirt, waiting while I build my savings so I can afford a down payment on a new townhouse, waiting to hear back on short stories I sent out on submission, waiting, waiting, waiting.

““There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
”
— Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Given that, I seriously considered wait as my word for the year, but it didn't sit right. Wait feels passive, sedentary. I want a word that's active. I want a word that will inspire motion but not require a destination. I want a word that will inspire me to do things this year that will result in a clearer vision and specific goals for next year.

I want to spend the year moving forward.

So I guess that's it then, isn't it?

My word for 2015 will be:

forward

 

(Picture Jacques Louis-David's painting of Napoleon Crossing the Alps here.)

 

 

 

 

The Story Behind the Story: Boy Trouble

Literary agent Janet Reid is an invaluable resource to aspiring novelists, such as myself. I thank the day I discovered her online presence. I follow her on Twitter, I read her blog, and I subscribe to her Query Shark blog, in which she ruthlessly dissects queries. She is strict, but she is also a writer's biggest cheerleader. I bow at her feet, and I soak up her wisdom like a sponge.

The Sharkly One, as she is often called, periodically runs flash fiction contests on her blog, contests in which her readers are challenged to write a 100-word story that incorporates five words related to whatever topic or book she's chosen. Talk about putting the flash in flash fiction!

I've participated in a couple of these contests. Let me tell you, as hard as it is to write a 1,000-word story, writing a 100-word story is exponentially more difficult.My Fiction First story for this January 1st is one of those entries. This one is from 2012: a 100-word story that uses the words double, trouble, bubble, twin, and spin.

It's probably a sign of my age: I saw the words double, bubble, and twin and immediately thought of the Double Mint Twins from those old gum commercials. That's where my story begins.

Click here to read "Boy Trouble."

What a Year

Every year, on or around January 1st, I choose a word for the year, a word that serves as a theme for the year or that sums up my goals for the year. It's a testament to the kind of year I had that when I sat down to write this annual recap, I could not for the life of me remember what word I chose. I had to look back in the blog archives to find out.

Turns out, my word for 2014 was seek. Apparently, I believed wholeheartedly in the concept of "seek and ye shall find." But that's not quite how the year turned out. I spent a disproportionate amount of the year seeking payment from a delinquent client. I spent that interim time between being owed the money and finally receiving payment seeking ways to make ends meet. And all of that redirected my energy from what I wanted to seek to what I had to seek. So by the time I started thinking about writing this reflection, I was feeling pretty frustrated with my year.

The more I thought about it, though, I realized my year was actually more successful than I remembered:

I finished Drafts 3 and 4 of The Novel and entered it in a couple of contests. The feedback I got in those contests was mixed, but the experience helped clarify for me the type of writer I want to be. So The Novel is on the shelf, and I'm plotting The Next Novel.

I learned how to write query letter and found out I'm actually pretty good at it.

I learned that filling the empty-feeling parts of my life takes some addition (volunteering at the animal shelter; joining a book club; joining a new writers' group) and some subtraction (distancing myself from certain people and patterns; purging my house of stuff I don't need).

I finished last year convinced by my vet that my dog wouldn't survive the winter. Nobody told the dog. He's still kicking. In fact, he's curled up next to me right now, and even though he's moving slowly these days, he's not showing any signs of going anywhere any time soon.

So, on the whole, I'm feeling pretty good about my year, and that feels like a good way to start the next one.

Happy New Year!

The Story Behind the Story: Faith in Victory

Quite some time ago, in the early days of my editorial career and light-years before I began freelancing, I worked on a series of books about twentieth-century Japan. The project forced me to go back to many of the books I had read while working towards my Master's Degree. One of them stuck with me: Japan at War by Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore Cook.

A newer edition of this book is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

A newer edition of this book is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Japan at War was, and remains, one of the most unique books about World War II I've ever encountered. It tells the story of the war through chronologically arranged first-person accounts from all walks of Japanese life. It's a perspective that's missing from many sources: what was it like to be an ordinary Japanese citizen during the war?

There were details from those accounts that I couldn't shake: the naval intelligence officer who'd known nothing about the attack on Pearl Harbor until after the fact, the school boy who built balloon bombs at school, Tojo's announcement of the Pearl Harbor attack. Those details shaped themselves into a story.

As I researched even more, I stumbled across another gem: a short film from 1941 called "Children of Japan." (You can watch the video from the Prelinger Archives at the Internet Archive by clicking here.) Given the year of the film, it is a remarkably objective picture of the life of a middle class family in Japan, and it gave me more details to add to young Sato's story.

 

As I reread "Faith in Victory" now, many years after writing it, I can't escape the idea that it can be so much more. It has the roots to become a novel, and I hope to make that happen someday. Right now, though, that kind of magnum opus seems beyond me in both time and skill.

 

Click here to read "Faith in Victory."