2013 in a nutshell

I keep a spreadsheet and enter in how many words a day that I type up. It was last year’s resolution. My target was 2,000 a day; some days I miss that by a mile, some days I obliterate it. Some days I look at my scrivener total and say, ‘whaa… no way.’ Other days my PC auto-restarts before I got to write the total down.

I hate those days.

I would love it if Google docs could make a session target word count or a running count like scrivener. I keep asking; maybe, one day. There is some hideously complex way to write program commands for it, but me Luddite… don’t know how… yet?

So what did I work on in 2013?

·       I finished ‘Swan’s mate for life’ (217,071 words),

·       I wrote nine Twilight one-shots (29,000 words) plus a few more anonymous competition entries.

·       I started expanding ‘I’ll be home for Christmas’ and finished it (187,764 words).

·       I posted 48 original short stories on the blog (and wrote a few more that I haven’t posted yet).

·       And I rewrote Bluebeard as my nanowrimo project (50,521 and counting)

plus I worked on some fanfic (my Nov total was 78k) I did work on some other original stories, and

·       I finished an erotic novella.

My total words written for the year, according to that spreadsheet is 487,374. That sounds like a lot but it isn’t 2k a day; it’s about 1400. And dammit, I won’t crack the half million. Ah well, that can be my aim for 2014, right?

So, here were my resolutions for 2013:

1.         I will write and publish one novel (approx. 100k words) and a novella (20-40k).

2.         I will reach 500 likes for my Facebook author page.

3.         I will write 2,000 words a day.

4.         I will write less fanfiction.

5.         I will improve my writing, grammar etc.

So how did I do?

1.               I wrote that novella (YAY) and half of two more novels (which sadly is not a whole novel - grin). I sent the novella out but forgot to send it to other publishers when the no reply time period was up. I think I need a literary agent who can do that for me, but I can’t get one until I finish something big and can wave it at them.

2.               I have 152 Facebook likes. I don’t know how to use FB properly and it annoys me asking me to pay for ads to contact people who have already liked me. It’s not advertising; it’s extortion. But I must remember to post there more frequently. Sorry FB fans.

3.               I wrote about 1400 words a day. I almost did Nanowrimo every single day of the year. Wow.

4.               oopsies. Still maybe two thirds fanfic.

5.               I didn’t read any more of the grammar books I bought after July. But I still think I am doing okay on this one. I did try to follow better story planning setups but there are so many of them that it confuses me sometimes. And I fell in love with Scrivener.

Basically it was an epic fail.

As MTR, I won six awards and was nominated for a few more that I have honestly lost track of. Bad mtr.

I did manage to finish the Goodreads challenge and read 80 books (21,382 pages) for the year. I did 50 last year, and set 75 as the target for 2013, so that is a big improvement. I don’t think I can do 100 but might set it at 80 and see how I go. That’s one and a half books a week.

So, I think I just have to try to be more organised; not easy for a scatter brain like me.