2012: A Year In Review

Well, it’s that time of year again, when I take a look at the previous year and what I accomplished before launching into next year’s goals tomorrow.  I keep a spreadsheet (third year running) where I track word count and various and sundry other things, so that I can see how I improved from the previous years.

  • I read about 50 books this year.  There were probably a dozen more I tried to read and tossed for one reason or another.  This is approximately my usual book intake in a year, so I’m cool with that.  I also found a couple more contemporary romance authors to add to my like to read list: Jill Shalvis and Donna Kauffman.
  • I wrote 183,177 words this year (which will end up about 1k higher because I haven’t written yet today).  This is up from 126376 last year.  That’s a whopping 56,801 words MORE than last year.
  • This works out to a monthly average of 15,265, up from 10,531.
  • I wrote an average of 811 words on writing days, up from 735.  I averaged 500 words a day and met my WIP500 goal.
  • I wrote on 226 days, up from 172.  This is, perhaps, the biggest change I managed to make, which contributed to the higher word count.  Write more days, get more words.  That’s 54 more days of production.  I managed this because instead of expecting myself to write EVERY DAY, which I’d been trying to do for a few years, I told myself I’d write 20 of each 30.  I usually wrote more than that, but having the allowed days off seemed to unstick my brain.
  • I had 84 plotting days.  I’ve never tracked this before this year, but I thought it would be handy to know how many days I spent working on plot things that weren’t actual word production.  Considering I kept getting attacked by plot bunnies all year, I feel like this is probably up from prior years.

All those words were split between about 7 different projects.

  • Daughter of the Hunt: 1st in a YA trilogy.  Finished at 111,287.  It’s out to crit partners right now, and I expect to be working on revisions in January before the Magnificent Laurie McLean takes it off to the Powers That Be in traditional publishing to convince them of its awesomeness.
  • Riven: Another Mirus novella.  I’m about 13470 into this one.  It’s the project I’ll be knocking out early in 2013.  And though it is the kiss of death to issue a release date, I’m hoping for a March release.
  • Longest Night: Also a Mirus novella.  I had this one plotted out and started at a piddly 1277 words.  Not sure if it’ll get written or not.  I don’t like the characters as well as the ones in Riven.
  • Whisper of Shadow: This was a YA Mirus short story that was finished at 8,352 words.  It was published in the Magical Mayhem anthology that came out in October.
  • Plot Bunny: I started on a Christmas novella plot bunny during my break and am 7529 into it so far.  I’ll keep pushing through on it and expect to knock it out by end of January.   Which would be a weird time to release a Christmas story, so I’m going to sit on it until later in 2013, either for a proper holiday release or a Christmas in July kind of deal.
  • Contemporary Romance Short:  I also started recently a short story that I want to use to launch the contemporary romance series I’d like to self publish next year.  I’m not very far into it either, but I’m still working on plotting out the book it goes with, so I need to work out some details on that first.
  • There were also a handful of other bits and pieces of things.  A proposal for something that didn’t take.  A couple of other cold starts on the short story for the anthology that ultimately became WoS.  All in all, a very productive year, despite the fact that WoS was my only actual release.

I did all of this while working 2 jobs, moving, food blogging (need to get back to that), dealing with the aftermath of Daisy’s stroke (she’s doing great now, thanks for asking), and suffering through the Project from Hell at primary Evil Day Job.  I am QUITE pleased with all of that.

 

5 thoughts on “2012: A Year In Review

  1. Congrats on a great year! A highlight for me was getting to meet several awesome writers at DFW Con…including you, the marvelous Kait Nolan. Have a wonderful 2013!

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