taking stock

I'll be turning forty this month, and I've decided it's time to take stock of my life and look at what I've achieved so far and what else I want to achieve and to consider carefully the organizations I'm part of and how essential these are to my future goals.

Three years ago, I joined fantasy-writers.org. Fantasy-writers is a fantastic community with lovely and friendly writing people. My most memorable people from fantasy writers are Joanne Hall, Fran Jacobs and Nyki. Not only are they generous writers, they also write excellent fiction and are no nonsense about wanting to be their best. I'm not surprised that Joanne and Fran have been able to land publishers for their books. 2005 was a tumultous year and through fantasy-writers, I went on to The Sword Review (Double-Edged Publishing). There, I've stuck for the past three years, and I don't foresee leaving DEP because even when I have a shortage of time, I believe in the vision of this publishing company, and I made a promise to me to do my best to support them as much as I could. Through DEP, I landed my interview column which led me to look for the FLIPs community. FLIPS being my connection to the Filipino writer anywhere in the world. Even if I'm not stateside, it's good to know and to support these fabulous writers who are driven by passion for their art.

Being on Flips, made me decide to write for Munting Nayon. From DEP, I discovered Notebored, didn't stick on Notebored that long due to limited time frames, but I did stick to Liberty Hall.

To date, I maintain two blogs. My livejournal writing blog and this blog which I moved to after the Raindancer blog.

Analyzing my organizations, I'm glad I took my time deciding which ones to join. It's easy to join too many orgs and end up burning out. And I'm convinced that if I join something it should be something I believe in and which I can contribute to in an effective way.

Breakdown of my current orgs:

Bayanihan -- org for Filipina Women in The Netherlands
Munting Nayon -- The Dutch-Filipino paper
Liberty Hall -- where I flash, and get challenged to write and polish and submit
OWW -- I'm not so active on OWW anymore. I think the bulk overwhelms me and I'm rather time-limited at present. I do enjoy lurking on the mailing list.
DEP-- I edit for Haruah, and lurk around the DEP forum whenever I can
Flips -- this is a filipino writers list based in the US
Villa Diadoti -- hopefully I'll finally get to go to a live one soon as I am eager to meet fellow writers in the flesh.

blogs:

this minimalmax blog for ramblings and inner searching stuff and struggles and working out of thoughts...and rants and whatever else cultural and opinionated

livejournal which is basically for writing updates and non-ranty stuff

This year, I would like to join the Broad Universe Organization. I've announced this to hubby and so I'll be making an application to join sometime soon. I've been nosing around the site, and I'm hoping I get accepted.

This year looks like the year we'll finally get a writers group together and be able to finally put on paper ideas for literary stuff and participation which includes book launchings, get togethers, readings, workshops and the entire thing. I'm excited about this as well as pretty nervous. It will mean more time.

Who said 40 meant slowing down? Looks like, life does begin .

Next time, I'll take stock of achievements since I launched out on this writing journey in 2005 and I'll make a listing of my projects and my goals for the coming year.