Well, here we are on the final day of 2012, and I find I’ve
been sorely overdue for a blog update, so I thought I’d do one in the form of a
year-end progress report.
My word totals this year finished out at just over two
hundred thousand, about half of what I did last year. I attribute this to several factors: Spending more time researching and world
building for the novel, reading more, and a bit of burnout that set in toward
the end of the year. But I’ve had a good
rest over the holidays, and I think I’ll be ready to hit it hard again the
first of the year.
I still think I’ll try to get back to my thousand words a
day goal, at least for the foreseeable future, as it is doable, and tends to
keep me sharp. I do think I need to come
up with some new story/plot generators, as some of the older methods that I’ve
mentioned here in the blog have started to falter.
Other than writing, as I mentioned, I did start reading
more heavily in the last couple months of the year. I’d decided that I hadn’t been reading
enough, and a writer really needs to be a reader as well, practically
constantly, so I knocked out twelve novels as of today, including a reread of
some old favorites like Tolkien and Crowley’s Little, Big, as well as some new
stuff and some Kurt Vonnegut that I hadn’t read before. I think in the new year I will keep up the
reading, trying to allow an hour or two each morning so I can knock out 50-60
pages or so. Then I’ll spend the
afternoon writing.
My submissions also dropped off in 2012. In ’11, I pulled off 100 subs, but of course
I had a pretty large back catalog I was drawing from, and I also had a lot of
flash and shorts from the 400K words I wrote last year. In 2012, I managed 27 subs, with eleven sales,
so a pretty good ratio.
One thing I did a lot of this year was flash fiction,
which I enjoy, and will continue to do, but I really want to try to get more
work in the 4000-6000 word range in 2013, and with these pieces try to crack
more pro markets. So the sales may fall
from what I’ve been doing, but ultimately I think it will be more satisfying in
the long run. I think a good plan will
be to devote a week or so a month to writing a short of this length, and the
rest of the time I can work on the novel.
That should give me a shot at twelve decent length stories for the year,
as well as progress on the novel.
So, that’s about it.
Time to hunker down and try to add at least a thousand more words or so
to those 2012 totals. Happy New Year!
