My 2024 Vocal Wrapped

My 2024 Wrapped

2024 was such a strangely wonderful year. It felt both like a culmination and a filler for my journey as a writer, and I don't hate the feeling!

Last year was a reminder that I indeed can still finish big projects, and that I am more than capable of generating new ideas just when it feels like I have nothing new to offer. It also cemented my love of telling dark and honest tales that don't shy away from the ugly and terribly beautiful heart of human nature.

To celebrate the new year, I wanted to share some of the work that goes on behind the scenes for my stories before they are published. From drafts, to research, to random dribbles, you're going to see it all!

So, let's peel back the published gloss of this year's work and take a peak at the magic...beyond the desk!

2024; First Quarter

2024 started off with a bang ( in my opinion ) with a free form poem called "Into My Grave", inspired by a song: "Like That" by Sleep Token.

It was one of those pieces that I knew I was eventually going to write, as at the time Sleep Token had soared to the top of my Spotify wrapped for the previous year. Obsessed would be a light term for the feeling I had, as the lyrics would constantly be swirling around in my brain whenever I sat down to write new poetry.

It felt like a huge weight off my shoulder just to get THIS piece out. And it still stands as one of my favorites!

The first quarter of 2024 was also home to the last few poems of RE:SURGENCE, my poetry collection ( that you can download for free btw! : D ) that I finished. Both "I've Learned to Watch them Drown" and "The Other Side" splashed into Vocal with vast differences in the drafting process.

"I've Learned to Watch them Drown" was an easy draft. As you can see above, it all came out in one go, with little changes.

"The Other Side" however was a HUGE PAIN.

It was submitted for Vocal's "Inverse Challenge" as I realized that the format would be perfect to round off the collection as a whole...but my goodness it was a struggle. Lots of research into inverse poems went on behind the scenes that I never wrote down - rather I just consumed as much inverse poetry as I could to determine the best way to go about my own attempt.

You can see above how much I was crossing out and changing - doing my best to stick to the pattern I had chosen but struggling to keep it.

But, somehow, I pulled a miracle out of my chaos and it came out pretty good! I had shocked myself, and it seemed to resonate as it placed as a runner-up in the challenge!

In February I had a shooting star of inspiration ( haha, see what I did there? ) that just wouldn't let me take my eyes ( and brain ) away. I was having a romantic streak in both my writing and reading habits, so I decided to draft together something that blossomed into a very precious poem!

I really wanted to incorporate astrological terms to help heighten this poem into the stratosphere ( I know, this is getting old ) so I combined what I remembered from my education and what research I had done for an older novel project ( sorry, top secret!! :'P ) and came up with "My Aurora".

It recieved a surprising amount of love, and honestly it's grown on me. It may or may not have spawned a whole new collection...( ALSO TOP SECRET! )

The First Long Piece of 2024

Eleven minutes...that's how long it takes ( according to Vocal ) to read my short story: "Voice of the Forest".

The read time definitely lives up to the time spent working on it, which isn't always the case for my longer pieces. I don't write a ton in one world/concept unless I'm REALLY in love with it.

But whose not in love with From Software's Bloodborne??

In many ways this is almost like a fan-fiction of the game, just with everything re-named to make it more..."foresty"? Nope, that's not a word.

But anyways, it was a very fun project that got my world-building gears rolling. There is more to Vex's story, but it's been put on the shelf for now!

2024; Second Quarter

Summer 2024 was WILD, both writing wise and personally!

I was very active outside of my desk, which led to different kinds of inspiration for my work. Firstly came the surprise hit: "And the Sun Came up Tremendous."

This story was fully spawned thanks to Netflix's documentary, Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War directed by Brian Knappenberger. It was VERY eye-opening, especially for someone with a history buff for a father.

It was impossible to stop the idea of sharing this particular story with the wider world by using a modern day setting. There was research for both the physics and psychological affects for nuclear bomb victims. What came out of it was a scary depiction of what might happen to someone caught in the blast.

Now, you might be noticing the other picture next to the above draft...yes, that is a single sentence followed by a unfinished second sentence. What do you mean that's not enough to write a nearly 2,000 word short story with??

"Vore" was, once again, a surprise, especially for how long it came out to be. I really wasn't sold on the idea of writing more prequel material for my novel, but whoopsie, guess I actually was.

Like "Voice of the Forest" before it, "Vore" was a long, multi-day project that dragged up my world-building brain to the fore-front. All I had was these two ( mostly ) complete sentences and some world-building for a project set hundreds of years into the future...how the heck was I supposed to write this in a way that felt like it belonged while holding onto the concept of a nightmare turning into reality?

Easy: go really, really dark.

Poetry also became an even stronger medium for me during 2024. Without RE:SURGENCE poems to keep me going, I had free reign to explore other themes, both positive and negative.

"Loneliness" was spawned after a lengthy break from Vocal with very minimal draft time, while "Who are you to say I am too much?" came about from a decently long brainstorming session. There was a lot of shuffling of the individual stanzas and messing around with the diction to make it feel seamless. The work paid off for both of these, despite the vast difference in time spent drafting, as they both became Top Stories!

2024; Final Quarter

The final few months of 2024 were a mix of quiet and chaotic as I continued exploring different ideas and joining in on various community run challenges for the spooky season.

Seen above, both "The Curse Beneath" & "The Shadow in the Hall" were both written independently, and yet both winded up fitting into the "Spooky Season Bingo Writing Challenge" that was run by Marie Sinadjan. It's always nice when something written purely for fun becomes a piece that can be submitted into a challenge!

And we can't talk about holiday season 2024 without mentioning my favorite Unofficial Challenge hosted by JBaz!

The Twisted Unofficial Challenge was such a fun idea: take a famous quote and turn it on it's head ( preferably in a funny way! )...and I had a lot of ideas to throw at it.

"Winter is Coming" ultimately won out, but other quotes that I considered were: "Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me", "Do one thing every day that scares you", and "There is only thing we say to death: not today!"

I think any one of the ones I looked at would have been hilarious in their own right. (:

And then of course, rounding out 2024, were two BIG fantasy stories that I am insanely proud of!

I can't tell you how TEMPTING it was to just write something from one of my already established worlds. Sometimes when I do that it feels like cheating because I have so much written for those worlds; so many characters, history and DRAMA!

But I really, REALLY wanted to prove to myself that I didn't need to fall back on material that was old & established. I could write new and exciting worlds that were distinct from anything else I had written.

And I did exactly that!

Looking through my drafts for the year, I was surprised how little I wrote down for these two beefy stories. There were some brainstorming sessions were these two concepts were chosen, but nothing too far past that. It was, again, another accomplishment that I no longer felt the need to write down everything and just trust my own writing process to carry me through!

And That's a Wrap!

Congrats, you made it to the end! Thank you for joining me on this little journey through time, and I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the work I put into for my stories.

It's something I always liked seeing from my favorite authors, as you can learn a lot about how certain concepts came about. Not too sure my notes are THAT detailed, but I hope it was intriguing nonetheless. (:

Here's to another fantastic year on Vocal! CHEERS! <3

Don't forget you can browse through my library of work here: