It's 2010 (say it with me, TWENTY-TEN) and nothing seems to have blown up yet so I feel like we're probably set for our fair share of amazing discoveries, tragedies, delights, horrors, celebrity deaths, and whatever the hell else awaits us in this yet young year.

Juli and I spent our New Year's Eve at home since she was ill enjoying Sci-Fi Channel's Twilight Zone Marathon and District 9. Both were awesome. There was not a single woo on our New Year's Eve, but that's all right. Next year.

The next morning we broke our 2010 fast with cranberry orange muffins and coffee from my favorite coffee place on earth.

So, what does 2010 mean?

It means to me that the Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories is officially over and that the Year of 3 Music Videos and 12 Finished Short Stories has begun. Expect a wrap up post within a few days.

It also means that the Hunter application is due at the end of this month. Don't think I've not been thinking about it.

But, most importantly, it means we're officially less than a decade away from Blade Runner, which means flying cars, androids, giant corporate pyramids in downtown LA, and battles in space. I am totally ready for it. How about you?

After much thinking, I've decided on my theme for 2010 (twenty-ten, say it with me). It's a hybrid of two themes I discussed in my previous post on the subject. I hereby announce that 2010 shall be...

The Year of 3 Music Videos and 12 Finished Short Stories

I figure that I will be better served by endeavoring on a cross-disciplinary path, much as I was this year by making photos and writing stories. It allows me not to get too caught up in just one mode. If I am feeling stuck I can switch over and work on something else for a while.

I picked music videos because it's something I've been thinking about for a long time. I think it's going to be fun and challenging and I'm pretty excited about it. It will give me an opportunity to flex some muscles I haven't used in a while. I intend to pick three songs I like and make low to no budget videos for them. The songs can be anything since these are spec videos and using them like this is covered under my fair-use rights. The videos can feature anything at all, only limited by my ability to plan and my technical skills.

Astute readers will notice a change in the language regarding the short stories between the original conceptualizing post and this announcement post. Specifically, I added the term "finished" to differentiate the scope of the short stories for 2010 (twenty-ten) and the scope of the stories for 2009. This year, the point was just to write a lot without revisions or thinking too much about what I was doing. Just getting things did. Next year is about creating things that have real thought and effort behind them. The scope is grander, so the output will be lesser, but in terms of having finished work to share, the ultimate effect is much more significant. 12 solid, finished short stories is a collection at the very least, and, if they all work together, a book. That would be a nice thing to have.

Keep your eyes peeled for the remainder of my 5000 photos and 50 short stories for this year followed by a wrap-up post in the first week of January. Then it's time to get the next year's work going.

December is upon us and about to crest, leading us into the descent of 2009. This means the end of the first decade of the 21st century, an utterly meaningless metric, but one that has provided me with no fewer than four "Greatest Metal Albums of The Last Decade" lists. Not bad. Everyone seems to like Mastodon's Leviathan, which I've never really listened to. I'll have to give it a go.

And with the fading of 2009 another year's theme comes to an end. The Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories, though not yet through, has been a success as far as I am concerned. With the express purpose of getting me to be consistently creative and come out of the year with some work done, the year has been a resounding success. While I am not yet at my quota for either task, I am confident that within the next few weeks I should be able to make it. 50% of the stories are finished at 92% of the photos. Pretty good. I have a lot of writing to do and a few photos to take, but we're in the home stretch and I feel good about it. Let's not also discount the film I am cutting right now and all the time and effort poured into this site for my 10 readers. I love all of you.

With three weeks left in the year, it's time to think of my theme for 2010. In my statement for the Theme of 2009, I discussed some previous years and the efficacy of those choices. I'm not going into it again here, but I'll sum it all up and say some were hits and some were clear misses. Last year I described a good theme as being "broadly applicable with recognizable short term goals". I still think this is a good way to evaluate a potential theme, but I'd like to add that the theme should have demonstrable results, that is, I should be able to show something for my efforts. The best way to improve myself is by doing. All the thinking about something in the world won't make you better at it. You have to get out there and get your hands (proverbially) dirty. It's old wisdom, but true.

Another aspect of my yearly theme is that once complete the theme should continue into the next year. I intend to take another 5000 photos and write 50 more short stories next year and to keep a counter of those on the right hand side. But since they're a secondary goal, I won't be killing myself to get them done. My primary focus will be the Theme of 2010, of course.

But what is the Theme of 2010? I don't know yet, but I have some ideas.

• The Year of 3 Music Videos - In September, I wrote about building a body of motion work. Amongst my various bodies of work, my film & video work is easily the most poorly represented. I have plenty of photos to share and fewer but still ample stories, but how many pieces of motion work have I posted here that I have done? If you answered "Zero", you'd be correct. And it's clear I like music videos and the music that supports them. The only real drawback to this theme is that each video is a big project in itself and to get behind would certainly spell doom for this theme. There are a lot of steps involved though, so perhaps it could still fit the pattern of work posting I've established with The Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories which would help me stay on task and stay honest.
• The Year of 12 Short Stories - "But, Joe," you say, "didn't you just do The Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories? What's with cutting the quota down so much? Are you lame or something?" No, I'm not lame. Instead of writing 500 word chunks, these 12 short stories would be much more finished pieces, actually receiving—GASP!—revisions. These would be multiple-sitting efforts. I think the one per month pace would allow for some breathing room, and let me think about the work more. In terms of length, let's call them somewhere in the range of 5,000 to 15,000 words. This year the longest thing I've written is about 3000 words. It was the first thing I posted for this year's theme. The Biker Kills a Mexican. That one took me a few nights at the computer, but received no revisions. I'm proposing 12 stories of at least double the length. It's a good amount of work, I think, but manageable.
• The Year of the Novella - Here the idea is to write the longest single thing I've ever written. I like the novella, it's like a long short story, or a baby novel. I suppose it depends on which direction you're coming from. It would be an exercise in developing something more thoroughly than I ever have before and sticking to it. The SFWA defines a novella as a piece between 15,000 and 40,000 words, but other definitions go as low as 10,000 and as high as 70,000. That's certainly a fairly broad range and suitable for work throughout the year. Maybe this could evolve into The Year of 2 Novellas in order to keep me busy. If I wrote 500 words a day, my current per-day volume of work, then 70,000 words would take 140 days. Average in some days without writing, and we're still looking at barely half a year. Just something to keep in mind.
• The Year of 3 Screenplays - It has been a long time since I've written for screen, but that doesn't mean it's not something I still care about. Writing is writing. Writing 3 feature length screenplays of roughly 120 pages each would be a great way to get back into it. I've got some ideas boiling around the back of my brain that would be great for films. I just need to get them out and onto (electronic) paper.

I think that in those suggestions, somewhere, lies the theme for 2010 that will make the year a great one. Perhaps I combine Short Stories and Music Videos, or Music Videos and Novella, or Music Videos and Screenplays, or Short Stories and Screenplays? The cross disciplinary approach worked well enough for me this year. When I didn't write, at least I could take pictures. When I could take pictures, at least I could write.

Anyway, food for thought. I need think about this a little more. What do you all think out there in Black Laserland?

Last night, as many of you who keep tabs on the goings on in my life outside the professional realm know, was the open house for the 2010 applications to Hunter's Creative Writing MFA program. After the disappointing results of last year's application, I am ready and primed and pumped and revved about this year's round. It was not nearly as severe of information-overload as last year, which is nice. Many of the things I wrote about here were confirmed by faculty and student alike. I need to allow for the natural tendencies and rawness and voice in my writing to "jump off the page" as they were fond of saying last night. The Black Laser provides plenty of evidence that this is not a problem for me. On a(n almost) daily basis I write for you, my loyal legion of followers and well-wishers, in a voice that I think rather adeptly echoes the way I speak. Probably fewer "fucks", but whatever. The trick—not that it's a trick, more of an approach, really—with my fiction will be not to work it so hard that I end up neutering the natural cadence and flow of the words. I need to edit for clarity and mistakes, but not worry that something might come off as too TOO, you know what I mean? See that sentence? I probably need to edit it for clarity, but fuck it. My writing needs to be functional and raw and exciting; polish can come later.

Last year I imposed hiatus on myself and then worked exclusively on one piece for months—thinking, writing, rewriting, and revising an idea I'd had while sitting at brunch with Juli some months before. It ended up being a very limiting process for me and didn't allow me to play around with the piece as I ought to have. And I think the piece suffered for it, as I described in my previous post on the topic.

This year I intend to approach this creative submission process differently. I also have a number of things going for me this year over last year. First, I'm freelance, meaning I have more flexibility in deciding my schedule if I need to. Of course, if works comes up, I'll take it, because The Black Laser can't live off lightning and fear. Even he needs to eat. Second, I have the experience of the process last year to inform the decisions I make this year. Third, I don't have to worry about getting my transcripts and letters of recommendation again. If I have to apply a third time, I will, but let's think about that if that happens, yes? Fourth, and most importantly, I have the perfect venue for trying out ideas for my final piece—The Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories.

Oh, right, remember that? A quick check in the right hand column will show that I've made admirable progress on my photos, but my poor stories have languished. Poor stories. And, with fewer than 60 days left in 2009 (where has it gone?!), if I'm to live up to my end of the bargain, I need to get going.

From here on out, I will be writing every night, at least 500 words. If I can do more than that, I will, but 500 will be my minimum. I often get stuck thinking, "Man, I have nothing to write about. Where are the ideas?" and I get all hung up and stupid and don't do anything. For the rest of the year, if I have nothing new to write about, I will rewrite old ideas or someone else's ideas or ideas I thought were dumb, just to keep my fingers moving. If I am not working, then I will try and do two rounds of 500 words, one first thing in the morning, followed by a walk, and then another 500 hundred. Quality is less important than producing regularly. If I am able to crank out 47 more short stories this year, then somewhere within that body I will have something worth editing or turning into something more for the purpose of the application due February 1, 2010.

Come the new year I am going to turn my attention toward getting the personal statement finished and whipping the creative submission into shape. I haven't forgotten my idea of reading the first 20-25 pages of books either, mind you, but I might have to push that back until after 1/1/10. January will be a busy month for me trying to get all this stuff done, but I can do it. I can DO IT. I mean, the one student last night has two children, 3 and 6 months, a full time job, a husband, and still manages to get her MFA work done. Impressive. I'm not even committing to CLOSE to that kind of schedule. I can do it!

Don't forget that I have to fit The Frontiersman's Wife in here too. At the very least, baseball will be over soon and that time sink won't be around to distract me anymore.

We have embarked on an exciting end-of-2009, Black Laserites! Keep reading!