January in Review

January 2012 was a kind month.  Kind.  It isn't often a person thinks of January as kind.  Here in Portland, Oregon, January is typically a long rainy month of long nights.  Fortunately, the nights at the end of the month are shorter, significantly so, than the nights at the beginning of the month.
What did January mean for me?  If I can rehash the month:
8 blogposts.  Committing to a blog is serious.  Trying to focus my work in this forum has proved successful.
2 short stories.  The writing of short fiction is important in that it provides a platform for digestible pieces of writing that others can enjoy.  These two short stories, as well as all the others I've ever written, I have endeavored for readers.
2 Chapbooks.  I can't really explain the need I have for this chapbook process.  It began last March and I just can't seem to let it drop.  Being a goal oriented writer, I'm grateful to construct more and more of these projects. Both When Walls Speak and 13 Miles begun in the fall, and I completed them in January.  I don't really understand how these projects will work into my portfolio or where I'll find them venues for publication.  In the meantime, I just keep writing them.  Since March 2011, I have completed 23 of them, and my goal is 25.
4 Publications.  The short story "When It's Cold in December" ran on WordPlaySound.  "The Escape from Recess" has been accepted for issue 7 of Red Lightbulbs.  Sophia Ballou and my dear friends over there have graciously run "A Recollection of a Memory of Anna," a chapbook and the essay "The Quest."


And 
The Errors of Fabric, the tenth novel I've endeavored to write is coming to fruition.  I've got nearly half of it written.
In short, January has been kind.
As writers, we must write.  When you write, the way I do, as a habit, a compulsion or a need, how else do you get things done?  I spend most of my days with my notebook and my thoughts.  I work daily, thankfully, because I'm afraid of the alternative.  And oddly, when I'm working, I'm simply holed up in my southwest Portland apartment completely unaffected by the criticism that will someday ensue.  I write as if there will never be a criticism.  I write one word, one phrase, one page at a time.  It's only a retrospective account that makes the yield so high. Perhaps that is the way a writer builds a volume of work.