Home Geek Confessional Geek Confessional: An Authorial Bucket List

Geek Confessional: An Authorial Bucket List

  1. Geek Confessional: I’ve got (a lot of) game
  2. Geek Confessional: I’ve written for Deep Space Nine, Lois & Clark, and The X-Files (sort of)
  3. Geek Confessional Update: I have the scripts!
  4. Geek Confessional: I once gave a wedding toast in Klingon
  5. Geek Confessional: The Hair
  6. Geek Confessional: I Have a Dream, Disney!
  7. Geek Confessional: I did the fanfic thing
  8. Geek Confessional: I’m a Gilmore Guy
  9. Geek Confessional: Fus Roh Uh-Oh
  10. Geek Confessional: I was brainwashed by Jar Jar Binks
  11. Geek Confessional: I’m a professional wrestling fan
  12. Geek Confessional: I wrote storylines for two wrestling companies (sort of)
  13. Geek Confessional: My First Screenplay
  14. Geek Confessional: My Second Screenplay
  15. Geek Confessional: My Third (and final) Screenplay
  16. Geek Confessional: I’m a Found Footage Junkie
  17. Geek Confessional: I’ve Never Played Dungeons and Dragons
  18. Geek Confessional: I didn’t read C.S. Lewis until I was an adult
  19. Geek Confessional: I’ve only been to one comic book convention
  20. Geek Confessional: I tried writing for dinner theatre
  21. Geek Confessional: My first “book” was a poorly drawn comic series
  22. Geek Confessional: My “second book” was a horrible YA adventure
  23. Geek Confessional: My High School Manuscripts
  24. Geek Confessional: My First Christian Fiction
  25. Geek Confessional: The Return of the Christian Fiction
  26. Geek Confessional: When Dreams Die Hard
  27. Geek Confessional: When the Time Comes to Stop
  28. Geek Confessional: When It All Goes Off the Rails
  29. Geek Confessional: A Super Conference
  30. Geek Confessional: When One Becomes “Three”
  31. Geek Confessional: Time to Get Numb Again
  32. Geek Confessional: An Honor to be Nominated
  33. Geek Confessional: The Ironic Origins of The Hive
  34. Geek Confessional: An Authorial Bucket List

I’ve been spending a lot of time on my blog talking about where I’ve been as an author, telling all sorts of embarrassing stories about what I’ve worked on at various points in my writing life. And I usually talk about what I’m working on in my Wordcount Wednesday posts.

But where do I want to go in the future?

To be honest, I’ve never really given it much thought. But once I got started, I realized that I’ve actually been crossing things off my list at a surprising rate.

So let’s see what was on my list and the stuff I’ve yet to achieve:

  1. Go to a writing conference. Been there, done that, doing it again this year. This was a big thing for me. There have been a lot of times when I’ve “gotten serious” about my writing, but things really didn’t take off for me until I actually ponied up the dough and went to an ACFW Conference. That’s when things really started gelling. Which, if you’ve been reading my series about my road to publication, you’ve seen for yourself. In other words, if you’re wanting to take your writing career to the next level, this is a good step to take.
  2. Have editors and/or agents express interest in my work. Again, this wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t gone to a writing conference. But this was a big deal when it finally happened.
  3. Sign with an agent. I knew this one was optional, but I’m still so happy that I signed with Amanda Luedeke. She’s awesome.
  4. Get published. Well, duh.
  5. Write something that caused someone to miss an airplane flight. Okay, this might seem oddly specific, but many years ago, I read a story about a woman who bought a Stephen King novel in an airport and was so engrossed in it that she completely missed her flight. When I heard the story, I was naturally horrified, but in the deep, dark recesses of my brain, I said, “I wanna do that someday.” Well, ask and ye shall receive, I guess. A friend of mine was reading an early version of Failstate in an airport and he nearly missed his flight because he was so wrapped up in the story. So yay me for almost stranding a friend far away from home, I guess.
  6. Teach at a writing conference. I’ve had a few times when I’ve been able to share my wisdom (such as it is) with others: at my local ACFW chapter a few years back, at the national ACFW conference, and at the One Year Adventure Novel conference. And hey, I’ll be doing that last one again this year.
  7. Self-publish something. I’ve kind of done this twice with my Failstate novellas. But I’ve been kind of curious about doing this for reals. I’ve got two projects that I think I could maybe do this with, but I’m a bit intimidated by the financial and time investment that would be needed to do this correctly. And I don’t want to do this incorrectly. I want to get it right. So for now, this is remaining as a dream.
  8. Write (and publish) a Star Wars novel. I’ve talked about this before. I’ve even written a few articles in the past couple of weeks to try to drum up support for this dream. Have you tweeted at Disney yet? Could you please? Seriously. This is one of my top dreams.
  9. Have one of my books turned into a movie. Okay, I know, this is kind of narcissistic. But hey, I think it would be cool to see something I created transformed for the big screen. I even shared some casting notes on Numb in the past. And maybe someday it will. But for now, this is just a dream.
  10. Create something that’s good enough to get invited onto Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop. Have you seen Tabletop? It’s a YouTube show that Wil Wheaton hosts in which he invites people to join him and play tabletop games. Like nerd games. The kind of games that I enjoy playing too. A few weeks back, he had Andy Weir (the guy who wrote The Martian) on to play a space-based game. And when I saw that, I was like, “Hey! I write things! I like to play games! Let me on too, Wil Wheaton!” But I know, I haven’t done anything deserving of an invite yet. Although a few weeks ago, I had my picture taken with Wil Wheaton at Planet Comicon in Kansas City and I quickly told him that this was a dream of mine. He said something like, “That’s something worthy to aspire to,” and that was it. But someday! Someday!
  11. Get invited onto the Writing Excuses podcast. Are you familiar with this gem? It’s Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler. Fifteen minute episodes about writing and craft and all that. I love this thing. And I’d love to be one of the special guests who gets to chat with these giants of storytelling. Although truth be told, if I was ever on this, I’d probably just sit in a corner, star-struck and quiet.
  12. Be invited to collaborate on a project with a writing hero. If I had my choice, it’d be Brandon Sanderson or Neil Gaiman. Because that’d be interesting and a lot of fun, I think.
  13. Just be allowed to keep telling stories. This is one that will never fall of my list. Even as I check off the others, this one will always be here. It doesn’t seem to matter how many stories I actually get out of my head and onto the page. More just keep crowding in there. And that’s a good thing. I want to keep writing. I want to keep telling my stories. And hopefully, I’ll be able to do just that.

But what about you? What’s on your bucket list, authorial or otherwise? Let me know in the comments.

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