2023 Review and 2024 Writer Resolutions
New Year’s Resolutions for Writers and Authors
Photo credit: Unpslash
2023 In Review: Writing Highlights
Looking back, 2023 stands out as ‘the year of the print anthology or journal.’
Don’t get me wrong. This past year, I was lucky enough to work with some gracious and competent editors to also publish a number of online essays and poems.
Are digital publications better than print anthologies or publications? No. Of course not. But after our three-plus years of COVID-safe Zoom calls and virtual writing workshops and colleague meetings, it feels great to be back in the land of print—as in, a book we can hold in our hands.
One of those books happened in February (2023), when I joined 39 other women writers for the launch of “Who Am I Today,” an anthology of women’s writing from the Center for Women's Health and Human Rights at Suffolk University. My essay, set in Joppa Flats along the mouth of the Merrimack River, is a contemplative piece about the experience of being a family caregiver or a bystander to a loved one’s illnesses.
Speaking of the Merrimack Valley, I was thrilled to travel to the city of Lowell to join the founders and other contributing writers for the launch of “The Lowell Review.” My braided, memoir essay combined two of my lifelong loves (knitting and writing). It’s a coming-of-age piece about being a teenager in rural Ireland.
Oh, and while we’re in rural Ireland, my poem, “I’m From” was selected for publication in “The Mid Atlantic Review.” The poem showcases my family’s ancestral farm and the thatched-roof house I grew up in. Just over a month from now, on February 4th, 2024, I will travel to Washington, DC to read my piece at the launch of this print anthology. There’s a Facebook event, too.
More recently, before Christmas, my memoir piece, “The Emigrant Shipping News: An Irish Pocket Guide to London after Brighton” was accepted for publication by New Hibernia Review, a multidisciplinary and scholarly journal of Irish studies that always features one, first-person piece.
Now, back to those online publications. Thematically, they ranged from the anxiety of packing up in a vacation hotel, to how the media and Hollywood depict my native Ireland, to an instructional piece on how to write about tough or sad topics. This last piece, which also offers writer tips, earned some love from my fellow writers. One author voted it her top tweet of 2023.
In 2023, I was proud to publish two narrative medicine essays at Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine; and KevinMD.
Takeaway Lessons and 3 Writing Resolutions for 2024
Enjoy the process: Whether my work appeared online or in print or is still just a messy draft in my Google docs, it’s not as much about the publications themselves as the creative process of writing. Stephen King said it well when he wrote that writing is about “getting happy.” On my 2024 “blah” days, I need to remember this.
It really is about human connections: Last year, I led some creative writing workshops at venues such as The Irish Writers Center, The New Hampshire Writers 603 Conference, and The Gloucester Writers Center. Plus: I facilitated expressive or health-writing workshops at a number of venues, including Massachusetts General Hospital, Seattle Children’s Hospital and the Justice Resource Institute. I love teaching creative and expressive writing, and it’s such a thrill to get heartwarming notes from students and event hosts.
Aging is good for writing: Over a year ago, I celebrated a certain “big birthday.” I’m not proud to admit this, but this “big birthday” made me fear that I was now too old to write for a contemporary, 2023 readership. Then, I reminded myself that publishing tastes and trends change. Ultimately, nobody respects a writer who chases the trends or shushes what’s in their soul in the name of book sales or bylines. Instead, aging teaches us to evaluate and value our past experiences for what they have and can teach us. Or, as I write about in this blog post about the late Seamus Heaney, we just need to do our own work and be ourselves. For me, this ‘just be yourself’ approach is much easier as I age.
Writing and being yourself is a good New Year’s resolution. So here’s to you, yourself and your writing in 2024.
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