2018: A Year In Review: The Writing

Well, barring an unprecedented run, I will likely not be finishing anything in the next few days, so it's as good a time as any for everyone's favorite time of year: my review of my writing failures and successes.

Looking back at my end of 2017/looking forward to 2018 post, I read that my goal was to basically work on craft instead of some unobtainable word count for the year.  So, I reached my goal. I worked on my craft, not only working on big writing projects like novels but smaller ones like this blog. I'm happy with the work that I've done this year. I wrote enough to just about fill this year's writer's notebook, which has never happened before. What else did I actually accomplish this year? Let's see.

1. Finished THE GIRL IN THE PICTURE: I'm really happy with this book. It turned out better than I expected, especially considering it was like nothing else I'd ever written. I think this has a ton of potential, but it needs a pretty thorough once over before it's ready for even a beta read. 
2. Started and shelved LAST PERSON STANDING: My attempt at a town wide game of tag while trying to cash in on the FORTNITE/PUBG craze didn't quite catch for me. I still believe in the idea, I'm just not ready to write it. 
3. Rewrote THE LOST SCIONS: I wrote about this before. I'm still waiting to hear back from the agents but these are the waters. 
4. Started RETURN OF THE PRINCE: I hate the title of this. It will change once I figure out a new one, but as a placeholder, it's okay for now. I like this story and it's moving forward. 

All told, I wrote a little over 200k words, not including blogging. It's not as much as I've written in other years, but I really worked on my craft this year, so I wasn't going to have a massive volume of writing either. The disaster that was LAST PERSON STANDING took up a huge chunk of post-GIRL IN THE PICTURE time. I should've listened to my buddy Mike on this one. I did blog quite a bit but not as much as other years. I think, again, it was quality over volume.

I'm really proud of what I've written in the blog this year. It's some of the best personal writing I've been doing and I'd like to do more. My favorite pieces from this year were:

1. EARNING TURNS
2. A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME
3. THE SUNDAY PAPER: IN THREE PARTS
4. PAPERBACK READER
5. WHERE'S MY BARRY MANILOW WARDROBE?

What about 2019? Every year I talk about my plans and intentions, so why should this year be any different? Instead of worrying about word counts this year, I'm going to measure the amount of time I spend writing. Another writer I met through Twitter, Mike Headley, uses a spreadsheet to track his time and productivity. It's a terrific system that I'm going to use this year. I'm not going to worry about word counts. I need to think about time spent writing. And that means ANYTHING to do with writing, including editing, planning, rewriting...EVERYTHING...even daydreaming about a project.

First, let's address the elephant in the room: the BIG DAMN BOOK I talked about. I want to write it, the plot has gotten a little clearer in my head. I'm not putting a hard start date on it. I feel like that's too much pressure. Plus, there are other things I want to work on. Things that are more plausible and salable for an unpublished author. But the BDB isn't going quietly into the night. It's niggling. What DO I want to work on? It's a mixed bag.

• Finish RETURN OF THE PRINCE
• Rewrite GIRL IN THE PICTURE
• Rewrite THE SEVEN LABORS OF NICK JABLONSKY
• Write BDB
• Blog more

There are other ideas, nebulous right now, that I'd like to do, but for now this is what I want to concentrate on. 

As I said, instead of worrying about word count, I'm going to concentrate on time spent writing. I'd like to average one hour a day writing. That's doable. But what about BDB? In that post I said that even if I spend a half an hour a day on it, I could reach a pretty high volume of words/pages. That would leave me with a half an hour a day for other projects. That doesn't make sense to me. Instead, I've decided that I want to average 90 minutes of writing a day. One hour for the "main project" and thirty minutes for the BDB. I have some other thoughts on how to keep up with the BDB, but I'll talk about them when I get to it. 

These are the things I can control in 2019. Everything else related to writing is out of my hands. So bring it 2019, I'm ready.