Ahoy!
The past few years, I’ve been in the habit of writing a Christmas card here. I missed last year’s, and it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything at all on this blog. Fortunately, the main reason for that is not that I’m taking a break from writing, but that I’ve been making good progress on two book-length manuscripts that I’m excited to show you (more on that later). I’m returning to school from Christmas break this week, so I thought now would be a good opportunity to give an update, even if it’s a bit late to do a proper Christmas card.
2024 was a big year. In April, I graduated with my bachelor’s degree (B.A. Linguistics). I had to leave my job as an English as a Second Language teacher on campus due to new rules about the religious orientation of school employees, so over the summer I moved to a local adult education school and taught college prep English. Then in August, I moved to Flagstaff and started my master’s degree at Northern Arizona University. Moving to a new state by myself has involved all kinds of changes. I’ve lived in thirteen different apartments in six years, so I’m looking forward to finally staying in one place until I finish my degree.
This year I accomplished my longtime goal of teaching a college course! I had a section of freshman composition (writing) that was a blast to teach, and challenging in different ways from the ESL students I’m used to teaching. College freshmen tend to have a much higher English proficiency to understand what I’m saying but a much lower inclination to listen to it. My big soapbox is that literature is cool, rhetoric is important, and long-form writing isn’t old-fashioned, and sometimes it feels like a losing battle to get eighteen-year-olds to agree with me on that, but I was one of those eighteen-year-olds not so long ago, and you never know when someone’s world will get lit up by a killer poem or a new perspective on language rules and prescriptions.
The other highlight of this year was the writing. It’s a glamorless job, but I’m glad to be improving at it. In December of last year, I started a novel, tentatively titled Sparrow Song, and finished a first draft (60K words) in June. It’s a coming-of-age drama set in the eleventh century about a rural girl who falls in love with one of the most powerful men in the classical Japanese court. Then, over the second half of the year, I buckled down and wrote a draft (100K words) of a memoir I’ve been struggling with for a few years now, which has the working title The Prophet, the Queen, and the Whole Dang Book of Revelation: A Teenage American Missionary in Denmark. Both manuscripts still demand a significant amount of editing before they’re fit for human consumption with no danger of making anyone’s eyes bleed; I started revision work in earnest this December, and I expect to spend plenty of time over the next few months getting those manuscripts shaped up for my initial readers. I anticipate a print release for both titles, but for now I’m taking things one step at a time, and it will most likely be summer before I’m at the stage to hire an editor for either project.
Other highlights and shout-outs: At BYU’s Japanese immersion housing, Valerie continued to encourage my Fire Emblem fixation, Emily furnished much needed technical support and scribbled masterpieces on abandoned notepads, and George provided impeccable voice acting for the title character in I Love You, Colonel Sanders! at our Valentine’s Day party. Brandon was a real swæs gesiþ. Kelsi wrote a compelling argument on the virtues of knowing Green Day lyrics and passing out drunk. Merlin was an admirable opponent at Netrunner (despite never beating the Cheeky Weyland Deck™) and a generous sounding board for all ideas political, religious, and literary. Spin deserves my greatest thanks for adding me to the gamer girls Discord (and all our acclamation for her newfound fame and authority within the Genshin Impact fandom). Camryn was Camryn and I appreciate her for that.
Bleachers was my top band this year—no surprises there; I saw them in concert back in May, a show that was stopped four songs before the end due to a sudden salt storm but was otherwise excellent. My #1 song was their new release “Tiny Moves,” with Rosa Walton/Let’s Eat Grandma’s “I Really Want to Stay at Your House” from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners taking up #2. I also listened to the new-ish Killers album Pressure Machine a frankly ridiculous number of times, and it has joined The Airborne Toxic Event’s Hollywood Park as a favorite album I’ll listen to straight through without skipping a song.
My reading game was not up to scratch with my Spotify game, though a couple standouts were the first volume in Obama’s presidential memoirs and a big helping of classical Japanese literature—I’m still working my way through the hefty Tale of Genji and Tale of the Heike. I’ve decided to avoid making resolutions until the spring, since January and February usually turn out to be months for surviving not thriving—but if I have any resolution, it’s to read more. I’d like to hit some of the classics I’ve always wanted to read but have put off, like The Brothers Karamazov and Moby Dick.
Anyway, that’s my 2024 in a nutshell. I can’t wait for another trip around the Sun, and I hope you’ll join me on it—whatever it looks like!
Eric
