Oof, 2018.
So many times this year, my wife and I looked at each other, reminiscing about something that happened to us, and said “was that really last week?”
I don’t know how a year can both feel like it’s whizzing by at 88 miles per hour, and be cramming in a month’s worth of events in every single week, but this one did.
So, to help me remember the sheer number of things that have happened this year, I’m going to set them all down. Well, as many as I can recall, anyway.
Writing
Since I started my new scoring system in February (which, again, thanks to Scott Sigler for sharing that with us at a Writers Coffeehouse), I’ve written 71,902 words.
Most of those were on the novel that I finished (finally!) in November. I did write one new short story, though, and edited four others.
I submitted just one story to three new markets, all of which rejected it.
Reading
Thanks to Goodreads' singularly bad UI, I have no idea how many books I read in 2018. It’s something north of 20, but that’s all I know.
Personal
I moved not once, but twice, in 2018. First move was from rental to rental, second was to the house we bought in July.
Neither one was easy, though the second put a bigger dent in our finances, not least because we had to completely redo the upstairs flooring and master bath in order to move in.
Here’s hoping there’s no more moves for me in the near future.
Oh, I also started an exercise routine (walking 3/week, yoga 2/week) and taking French lessons through Babbel. But I’m holding off counting those “for real” until I either drop a pant size or can read an Asterix comic in the original (preferably both).
Travel
I also traveled…a lot. Maybe more than I should have.
February was the JoCo Cruise, March was WonderCon, May was San Francisco (work), June was Downtown LA, July was the move (yeah, I’m counting it twice), October was Ireland (work), November was Boston and DC, December was Seattle (work again).
Tbh, I’m looking forward to January through March, if only because I know I’ll be sleeping in my own bed that whole time.
2019
So what lessons can I draw from these figures?
First, when writing a first draft, I need to be more aggressive with my weekly writing goal. It felt like I wrote a lot more than just 70K words this year, and that’s probably a function of how long I was working on the same piece. If I were to maintain the 2,500 words a week pace I had at the end of the year, I’d double my output next year.
Second, I need to submit more. There’s really no reason to let a story that’s complete and edited sit on the shelf. I need to get back into the habit of sending a story out again as soon as it gets rejected. No more dithering.
Third, I need to stop using Goodreads. There’s just no excuse for an interface that’s that bad. And I’m fortunate enough to know how to build my own replacement, so that’s what I should do.
Finally, I might need to actually travel less. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it interrupts my writing work, and given I’m also working a full-time job that requires a lot of my brain’s meager capacity, I can’t afford to lose that time. Unless I can find a way to keep writing, even while traveling, I need to cut down.
