My paying work: I quit my full-time job and went freelance in Spring 2019. I've been seriously struggling to make ends meet but finally seem to have enough teaching and proofreading work to continue on as a freelancer. Most recently, I had a job teaching English and Math to junior high school students who will be studying abroad in Australia. I had a two-night stay at a hotel in Shinjuku for the job, and the work was enjoyable. I also have accepted a position as a voice actor for a travel guide start-up. I am still interested in minor acting roles and possibly DJing out again, but neither of those have panned out very well. Only one job each this year, and the DJing one didn't pay.
As for my writing, I've recently joined a group on the Writers of the Future forum, the Wulf Pack and joined Moon's Super Secret Bonus Challenge!, which is Wulf Moon's encouraging group of writers who are all aiming at winning the Writers of the Future contest while also producing enough quality work to submit to other paying markets as well. The leader of the group is a WotF winner and has published work elsewhere. He's full of wisdom and practical advice. The main challenge is to write two fresh stories every quarter and submit one to Writers of the Future and the other to the paying market (aiming at 5-10 cents a word). I'm also taking on the flash fiction challenge: write 1000-word stories in response to weekly prompts, then take some of them and cut them down to 500 words then 250 words, in order to find the most valuable treasure within. It should help me increase my efficiency and skills, and hopefully get even closer to producing pro level work.
I also just joined Deep Magic as a first reader. It should be interesting to read through the opening pages of their submissions and see if I can manage to spot any gems.
Regarding Writers of the Future, I submitted to every quarter in 2019. Q1, Q2, and Q3 were all rejections, but at least I was submitting. The result of Q4 is pending. I didn't submit in 2018 as I was trying to handle a massive issue in my life which required lots of time and was mentally and emotionally draining. Thankfully, that has since been solved as best it could be, and I am back to getting more writing time into my life. Now to prepare my submission for Q1 of 2020.
I marked myself down as participating in NaNoWriMo, which is from November 1st to November 30th. As I'm a NaNo rebel this year, I won't be doing novel work. I've been writing lots of flash fiction and short stories, making use of prompts provided by Wulf Moon, so I decided to focus on that. My plan is to produce and edit 50K of short stories, flash fiction, and a novelette, then submit one story to Writers of the Future by the end of December, and the rest submitted elsewhere from January. This will depend on what further motivation and assignments are given by the Wulf Pack as well.
Anyway, happy writing everyone. Hope you're well. I'll post an update again soon.
