December 2021 Newsletter | Julie Vick

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Hello, Everyone,

I’m stopping in with the last newsletter of the year. I'm trying to spend the last few days of the year getting some downtime in and catch up on important shows like Emily in Paris, season two.

If you are looking for a virtual parenting writing class to kick of 2022, I am teaching one on January 22 and there are spots open if you can’t afford the fee. I will cover markets, pay, pitch examples, and the rabbit-hole of Twitter research I like to go down to learn about publications. We will also brainstorm and refine some ideas. Details are here.

Keep reading for my year-end submissions report and other recs.

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Books, humor, and other distractions:

• Cartoons: I enjoyed this wrap-up of Instagram’s favorite New Yorker Cartoons of 2021 including one by my writer/illustrator friend Ali Solomon.
• Book: I’ve been listening to Wintering on audio, which is a good seasonal read about embracing literal and figurative winters in your life. I also enjoyed this interview with the author on the hashtag authentic podcast.
• Shows: This month my husband wanted to watch The Alpinist, which was good, but spoiler alert, not very light!, so we followed that up with Jim Gaffigan's Netflix comedy special which was interesting because it reflected on the early days of the pandemic and made me once again realize how long we've been in it.

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Writing-related roundup:

• I put together a list of markets that accept parenting writing that you can find here.
• This article about book sales has made a lot of the rounds in writing circles I'm in this month (and I think created a new social media brag which entails declaring that your book sold more than Piers Morgan's book). I have been reading some of the "Does social media sell books?" debates for the past year and think that the basic answer of "it depends" seems correct. In any event, some of the responses to this piece were also interesting, including this one by Jane Friedman.
• I love reading writer end-of-year roundups and found this one where Alice H. Lahoda broke down all her submissions and rejections interesting.
• Speaking of year-end roundups, I wrote my own one for the year here. And since I find stats kind of fascinating, here are a few other bonus ones for the year:
  • This was my most viewed Instagram post of the year. A little while back, I switched my professional Insta to a Creator account that allows me to see stats and they are kind of fascinating, so would recommend doing the same if you have a professional-facing account.
  • I can't see view stats for most sites I write for but I can find Facebook social media share stats. Based on that, this was my most-shared non-humor piece of the year and this was my most-shared humor piece of the year.
  • I don't think I can look back past six months in Twitter analytics (if there is a way that someone knows of, hit reply and let me know), but this Tweet looked like it was the one that had the most impressions in the last six months. Fun fact: I think this is one of my highest viewed ever Tweets, which also appeared in a print edition of InTouch Weekly, thus making it basically a celebrity.

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More news from me:

This month there was a flurry of holiday and gift-related posts but if you happen to be a looking for a Happy new Year or "book for the latest lockdown" gift you can get some ideas!

• The Belladonna published an excerpt of my book and included it in a Holiday gift guide roundup.
• I talked to Psychology Today about introverted parenting.
• I rounded up some parenting books that make great gifts for Imagination Soup.
• My book was also included in this roundup of Colorado books on Momfari.
• My husband and I always joke about Festivus being a good holiday for kids, so I spun that into a humor piece up at Frazzled.

That's it for the month and 2021. Hope you have a happy new year!