January is almost over. Is it too late for a blog post on setting intentions? I would venture not! The pandemic and being a new parent (do I still get to say "new" now that my child is one?) is a constant reminder to be gentle with myself and find the right level of ambitious that I find fulfilling without giving myself a migraine.

What soldiering through a migraine feels like?

So what are my writing and publishing goals for this year? With my second novel releasing from Lanternfish Press in late September, I have to be mindful of the marketing and publicity work just around the corner. I learned with my first novel, Daughters of the Air, that marketing and publicity can be ::e n d l e s s:: I do like it! But I also need to keep space for work-work, creative writing, and life.

I started writing my second novel two days after I began submitting my first novel—with a haiku workshop as a palate cleanser in between. I started writing my third novel, my current work-in-progress, just a year after starting my second novel. It's a long story as to why that I won't get into here, but I was heartened to learn that Jess Walter juggles multiple book projects simultaneously, and I'm sure many other writers do as well. Welp! The big hope for this year is I "finish" that third novel. (NB: Here's my silly essay "How to Finish a Finish a Novel in Only 15 Years"; I love that this essay landed in The Nervous Breakdown.)

My other writing goal is write two more essays for the collection that I began the same year as Novel #3. I'm taking an essay writing class through Atlas Obscura, where I've been having a great time teaching fairy tale writing. It'll be my first time as a student since taking a wonderful Hugo House class in 2016 with Alexander Chee on making fictional characters of historic figures, and I'm really looking forward to it. My plan is to write one piece arising from the class and one essay after finishing reading A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays, which I have ordered from one of my favorite Chicago bookstores, Exile in Bookville, which is located in one of my favorite buildings in the city.

That's it for my writing. I think those are plenty of goals for the year, given what I've got on my plate. I stopped aiming for 100 rejections per year a few years ago, though I do think it's a good goal to have if you're starting the submissions process and need to develop a callous against rejection. By my calculations, I had a 17% acceptance rate in 2021 so I do need to aim a little higher as my general goal, per advice from Creative Capital, is 10%. But I'm not going to tear my hair out over this one. As I say to my son, "Gentle! Gentle!"

My last goal is to continue to help emerging writers stretch their craft and hone their approach to getting their work out in the world. If you have short stories or a novel you're working on and if you'd like to work one-on-one with me, you can check out my coaching and consulting page at Hugo House here.

What are your goals for 2022? Any special plans for writing, reading, publishing? Or maybe you want to learn to cook something special this year? My cooking is toddler-centric now, but I've been dipping in and out of Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. I love her opinions: "Powdered rosemary must be shunned." Onward & upward & twirling, twirling, twirling!

A fun little sprite in the window of an architecture firm in Edgewater, Chicago

Back in December 2016, I remarked that world affairs were horrendous but that I would take a moment to celebrate some bright spots in my life. I'm not surprised that in the intervening years, I didn't write a similar end-of-year post, and I know we're not quite out of the dark yet, but I'm feeling hopeful for the future, nonetheless. Some reading, writing, and cooking highlights, forthwith!

According to my Goodreads Year in Books, the most popular book I read this year was War and Peace*, which in truth was a partial re-read during Yiyun Li and A Public Space's TolstoyTogether pandemic book club (which continues on as APSTogether). I first read War and Peace the summer between my first and second years at the University of Washington MFA program, as a way to counter my tendency toward sparse detail. It was quite pleasant to return to it this spring, but, alas, my reading life was too over-committed to stay the re-reading course with such a tome. The "least popular" book (for now!) I read won't actually be released until April 2021; please add my college friend Julian Mortimer Smith's wonderful collection The World of Dew and Other Stories to your to-read list!

Speaking of speculative short story collections by people named Julian, my one book review this year was of Julian K. Jarboe's Everyone On the Moon is Essential Personnel. I am sad The Seattle Review of Books went on hiatus, as it has been a wonderfully thoughtful venue for book reviews. My "Dispatch from a Pandemic" in Another Chicago Magazine might be another "highlight" from 2020 except for the whole pandemic part! At least I got to fall in love with the art of Belkis Ayón, profiled in my ACM piece. My last writing highlight of the year is my first short fiction published since 2018 (!), "Hinges" in Gordon Square Review. I had a lovely time at their virtual launch party getting to know a segment of the Cleveland literary community, which I wouldn't have been able to do under normal circumstances. This also gets me to closer to a side-goal I've had for several years, which I picked up from Seattle poet Susan Rich: get published in each of the 50 states. Still have quite a few states to go!

I am currently revising two novels, and between that, the pandemic, and writing 200+ "please vote" letters and postcards before the election, I think I'm going to cut myself some slack on "only" publishing three things this year. I think my biggest accomplishment, however, is learning how to make soup! I've made soup before. But it was always lacking the oomph my grandmother's boasted, even if I knew the secret ingredient in her chicken soup is beef. I've started collecting vegetable scraps in a big tub I keep in the freezer. And, at least once a month this spring and fall (not so much in the summer), I have had a cauldron bubbling, and my, what a comfort that has been.

My winter break plans? Chinese BBQ, baby bok choy, rainbow cookies shipped from Brooklyn (courtesy of my sweet MIL); Robert Altman's film Kansas City via our artsy cinema subscription, Metrograph; and, of course, the necessary trifecta of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, currently: Anne Tyler's The Accidental Tourist, Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns, Michele Bombardier's What We Do.

Have a safe, happy, and healthy holiday season!

*NB: Links to books go to my Bookshop.org affiliate page. If you click through and make a purchase, you're simultaneously supporting independent bookstores, other authors, and me, via a small commission. (Want to make sure the commission goes to me? It should say "Anca L. Szilágyi" in the top left corner of the screen.) Thank you!