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On December 28, 2024, Kasie and Rex reviewed the year recognizing some themes and highlights. Here are the show notes:

Theme for the day

The Year in Review

Agenda

• Quick Catch Up
• Highlights from 2024
• What themes really stand out?

Segment 1

If you’re a Spotify subscriber you know that every December, Spotify generates “Wrapped” which is your personal snapshot of the year in listening. It counts how many times you listened to specific songs, identifies your top artist, and congratulates you on the hours you spent listening to Spotify.

My (Kasie) wrapped 38,394 minutes putting me in the top 5% of Spotify listeners. I streamed 3,200 songs with The Cure’s Just Like Heaven being my top song. I streamed it 71 times. On fact, The Cure has 3 of my top 5 songs. In February, I was listening to a lot of classical music as I worked. In April and May, I sunk into my Taylor Swift addiction and in the fall, September specifically, I jumped into Wild West, Slow Dance Country territory with Kacey Musgraves and Laney Wilson taking the lead. I listened to 1,408 artists this year, but Taylor Swift was my top performer. Spotify even sent me a little video of Taylor saying, “Thanks for being one of my top listeners.” TayTay and I spent 4,588 minutes together. But The Killers and Tom Petty also got their fair share of play time.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because I want to do a Write On SC Wrapped and it starts with you people knowing what Wrapped is. So here are some stats and some highlights of the year 2024 on Write On SC:

We started the year with a guest, Roger Jones, author of Final Victory, a book about Cancer survivors and boats. In all, we had just four guests this year, two of which appeared twice. Kasie’s kid, Hollie, joined us for a Star Wars episode on May the 4th. Then Anna Fitch Courie was a great pinch hitter for Rex back in September and with three visits, Heather Harris-Bergevin, is becoming a regular around here.

We did three Internet Grab Bag episodes this year, where we let the internet (specifically X with the #writingcommunity hash tag lead the discussion). In February, we talked about animals with magical powers and other internet silliness. In April, the grab bag discussion went from deep character development to writers’ personal lives and how to use those details in your story. Then we did a holiday-themed grab bag at the beginning of this month and got into a discussion around why people think they can do what writers do but why very few people actually can.

We had two series, one was a revisit of plot arcs which actually showed up a few times. We revisited them at the beginning of February and then named them in a second February episode (maybe we didn’t cover all the material?). In fact, all of February was about plot structure (see this nod to Aristotle and this use of a Kindlepreneur article to unpack snowflakes).Then we circled back in August to discuss writing non-boring plots. 

The second series was a summer trip through the Seven Deadly Sins. We love these episodes: Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath, and Sloth. A series is good because it creates continuity and some connectivity across all these weekly events.

We’ve also had some themes emerge this year:

• Structure – see the February list of plot structures and this random May episode on linear vs. non-linear storytelling which ended in a two-fer in June.
• Revision – partly because we had Heather, but also because Kasie was working the vampires (again) this year
• Work process – like organizing a project
• Craft – exposition pitfalls and thisness and AI

We had a disappointing Storyfest with the hurricane forcing cancellation but we’ve maintained our relationship with SCWA and still encourage folks to spend time on myscwa.org to learn more about the resources available for you as a budding or blooming author.

Finally, we received some fan mail this year from longtime listeners Larry and Peggy Gale whose first book, A Holy City Christmas, is available on Amazon and is an anthology of Charleston writers and includes “It Happened One Christmas” which Larry and Peggy wrote. Here’s the summary. Go take a look. Congratulations, Larry and Peggy!

It Happened One Christmas by Larry and Margaret McNab Gale: Post World War II Charleston is a city where social standing matters. A chance meeting of two people on the street at Christmas could lead to something more. But can they overcome the differences between their backgrounds and the prejudices of their families? It may all depend on the outcome of a life-threatening medical procedure.