decade in review: part 1

Now look I don’t TECHNICALLY know or really even care when the decade began or ended/will end but we’re gonna go with 2009–2019.

2009

• I started my first year of my Arts degree at Deakin uni. I was very obsessed with the idea of being a ~great writer~ whatever that means. I read a lot of classics and Literary Fiction (again, whatever that means) and was obsessed with making sure all my grammar was correct. I was one of those people who would correct other people’s spelling online!!! Smh.
• I was writing a lot of fanfic at this time, it was really fun.
• I started writing my own original short stories. I made up some characters.
• I did Nanowrimo for the first time and made it to 50k — this was also the first book I wrote.
• I got my first short story published — it was about a girl who turned into a flock of birds. It was published in an anthology called Cursive Scripts, which was made by NMIT students.

2010

• I was still very into grammar and the classics
• My two main projects now were writing two big things: a multi chapter fanfic (that I didn’t finish) and an original novel (which I did finish)

2011

• I took a screen writing class at uni and wrote some short movie scripts
• I took a very serious editing class at uni and this is where my care for grammar started to wane I think
• I turned one of the short scripts into the book Ida for Nanowrimo

2012

• My last year of my Bachelor
• I did a unit on Shakespeare and a unit on Greek tragedies, and this is where my love for classics died RIP
• I read a terrible queer YA book for a class at uni and decided I was going to do better, and really leaned in to writing YA
• I figured out I was genderqueer, which explained a lot, and this started to inform my writing

2013

• I did my Honours degree and my thesis was on queer YA (specifically bisexual + nb identity). My thesis was a short story (10,000 words) and I wrote a lot of non-fiction that, looking back, was incredibly binary. But this was the start of me really understanding how gender works, I guess.
• I worked much much too hard and developed depression as a result
• I stopped writing fanfiction because I was too busy and too in love with my own characters
• I did nanowrimo and wrote Highway Bodies

2014

• I went overseas for the first time, to Europe (Germany, Czechia, Switzerland, Austria) and caught a loooooot of trains.
• I wrote one of my favourite short stories I’ve written, Wolfskin, and I wrote a lot of other short stories
• I wrote my first novella, Long Macchiatos and Monsters
• I discovered Melbourne’s zine community and fell in love!!!
• Me and Katherine Back decided to make a zine called Concrete Queers where we could show off our talented friends’ artwork

2015

• I moved out of home
• My second novella, We Go Forward, was published (and printed! wowow)
• I thought perhaps I could be a romance author
• I realised that I could not, or at least that I didn’t want to be, YA is where my heart is
• We kept making Concrete Queers and people we didn’t know submitted work!

2016

• I started my PhD. I was really hoping for a scholarship, which I didn’t get.
• I did my first panels as an ~author~, NYWF was my very first time.

2017

• I dropped out of my PhD (I was unsuccessful in applying for a scholarship again; I requested a leave of absence or whatever but was denied; I was sick of reading transphobic academic texts)
• My first YA book Ida came out
• I had a launch! People reviewed the thing! I met so many other authors who I loved and so many wonderful readers! #loveozya mate!!!!!
• I met Joni, my wife (tho she wasn’t my wife just yet)
• I wrote Euphoria Kids
• Michael Earp asked me to be in Kindred

2018

• Ida won a VPLA, was shortlisted in the Aurealis awards and longlisted in the Gold Inky awards
• I started a Patreon and wrote a lot of short stories
• I got a contract for Highway Bodies and an unwritten book which made me feel very #valid
• I got my first permanent part-time job — I could take sick leave finally for the first time!!!

2019

• Highway Bodies was published
• … and was shortlisted for the Readings YA Prize, and highly commended in the VPLAs
• I taught my first workshops
• Kindred came out and i felt truly #blessed to be a part of something so important
• I stopped doing Patreon because I realised it was taking too much of my energy
• I kept writing short stories, but I wasn’t churning them out like I was for Patreon. These ones were more slow, more careful. I put my whole heart into them again, like I used to when I was studying at uni.
• I started writing fanfiction again and realised how much I missed it, and how much I would like to keep writing it again.

Ok so yes, that is eleven years. But it’s really nice to see how I’ve gone from my first short story being published in 2009, to having two award-winning or at least award-adjacent books under my belt.

So often I feel like I’m not doing enough, that I’m an imposter. So I guess this post really is a reminder for myself, to be kinder, and to know that I am working hard.

Part 2 is where I talk about money. I never knew how much money to expect when I was starting out, so I hope that this will help some people have a realistic idea of finances.