One of my New Years’ Resolutions was to keep track of how many words I wrote per day. This proved a little difficult when I was editing, but I still kept a rough idea of words written, plus also noted which chapters I’d edited that day, etc. I track both fiction written, blog posts like this, and guest blogs/other work, like the few Impossible Things I’ve been applying for because hey, why not try for the impossible?
The simple act of writing down what I do each day has proven really motivating. Even if it’s just 200 words, to see it add to the total helps drive home that any forward momentum is good. Also, word count isn’t everything. Some of those 200 word days were about 4 hours of editing, and some days the best work I did was staring out of a window and thinking. As of today, I’ve written around:
41,200 words of fiction
6,300 words on this blog
5,100 words of guest posts/Impossible Things
Combined: 52,600, or 906 words per day. (58 days)
Considering I work full-time and had the launch of my second book in January plus a holiday in California, I am very pleased with those numbers. If I can maintain this consistency, I think I’ll be able to get a lot done in 2014. But if I don’t maintain that consistency, I’m also not going to beat myself up about it.
So far this year I’ve done a significant edit of Bonkers Book, which as of yesterday is finished and with my agent. This book was really interesting to write and edit. It’s probably the most fun I’ve had while writing, and it was very out of my usual comfort zone. So far it’s had really good feedback from my betas, so I’m cautiously excited to see what happens with it. And that’s the last I’ll talk about Bonkers Book for awhile, since now everything is pretty much out of my hands.
I’ve also made headway on a few of my Vestigial Tales, announced a few weeks ago, as well as doing a lot of research on self-publishing. I kinda feel like I’ve walked into a war – there’s so much discussion of self-publishing versus trade publishing. And I’m now Switzerland – I have no allegiance! I think long-term trade publishing will be able to do more for me than I ever could, but I also like the idea of having side projects that I have total control over.
I wanted to commission artwork for my Vestigial Tales but it turns out the costs were too high considering I have no idea how many copies these will sell. The short story market is naturally smaller, and while I don’t mind not making a huge amount of profit on the books, the idea of going into debt just to publish doesn’t make much financial sense, either. So between my friends, I’m confident I’ll be able to come up with striking covers, but ones that won’t eat too much into my paltry budget. If these do well, I might commission artwork for a collection edition, which would also be in print rather than just e-book.
I’m actually going to take a few days off, and get back to the short stories in March. After those are done, I have another short story for an anthology to work on (see a post in a few days detailing more), and then I’m going to get back to writing the book I’ve been pretty desperately been wanting to write since last April. So I’m looking forward to it.
Forward momentum. Keep on keeping on.
If you’re a writer, what are your goals this year, and how have you been doing so far?
