Here we are again, another year come and gone. It’s time to look back, see what I accomplished in 2017, and lay out the plan for 2018. It’s been…quite a year.
A lot happened in my personal life, which heavily affected my writing. I lost my grandmother, and then my grandfather eight months later. Grief is a hard thing to work through, even knowing both of them are no longer suffering. Harvey came, and he was a jerk, as anyone living in Southeast Texas knows. I have several friends still dealing with the repercussions of that particular asshole. There were other things going on in my life as well, all of which made it difficult to stick to schedules. It always felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
All of that to say, I’m trying to be kind to myself, to celebrate the victories and let the other stuff go. It’s hard (especially when I have so many plans and not enough time), but one of my intangible goals this year is to stop comparing my writing life to the lives of others and do what I can do, while still making time for myself. I’m really bad at that.
Anyway, let’s take a look at my goals from 2017!
Overall goals for the year:
Edit and(Finished, Q1/Q2/Q3)Publish “The Stars Are Fire” (now titled “Doubt The Stars”)(Finished Q4)Write(Finished, Q2), Edit, and Post “Good Intentions”;Finish Writing “Double The Baggins, Twice The Took”(Finished, Q3); Finish Writing “Wonderland Reclaimed”;Write first draft of Tempest in Space novel (tentatively titled “Such Stuff As Dreams”)(Finished Q4)
The big thing to take away from this is that I finally published my first book!
It was a lot more work than I anticipated, and the next one is looking to be even more work (I finished the first draft, but I still need to add a lot of words to it in editing), but I learned a lot and I feel much more prepared to repeat the process.
Everything else, well…
“Good Intentions” grew into a monster that got away from me, and I’ve decided to put “Wonderland Reclaimed” aside for the foreseeable future to focus on my Shakespeare in Space series. So, all in all, I didn’t do too bad.
There weren’t too many surprises this year, but there was one other notable highlight:
- Finished Fading Flower, Broken Stone (DBTT sequel)
This took way more work than I had anticipated, and I think I’ve burned myself out of the Tolkien universe for a while. I still have plans for this series if I get some free time, but I really want to focus on my Marvel fics, which I’m falling farther and farther behind on.
And a few stats, just for fun!
- Total WordKeeperAlpha (2017)- 414,437
- New words written– 244,614 (59% of total, across six stories)
- Editing completed- 126,000 (30% of total, across two stories)
- Fanfiction chapters posted– 28 (6% of total, across two stories)
- Stories Completed– 3 (one original, two fanfiction)
What’s Coming Up in 2018
Overall goals for the year
- “Such Stuff As Dreams”- Self-Edit, Beta-Edit, Pro-Edit, and Publish
- “Good Intentions” (an Age of Ultron fic)- Self-Edit, and Post
- “Broken Parts” (a Winter Soldier fic)- Finish first draft
- King Lear in Space (tentatively titled “Gilded Butterflies”)- Write first draft
- Beat my WordKeeperAlpha total from 2017- 418,000 goal
I’ve broken out the different parts of the editing and publishing process for my original novel this year since I know that it takes a bit more time, and this should make it easier to track. I’ve also added a goal to beat my WordKeeperAlpha progress from last year. I really like adding these numbers to my monthly and quarterly goals, it gives me a little bit of flexibility, while still motivating me to get shit done.
So here are my goals for the first quarter!
January
- WordKeeperAlpha- 50,000
- “Such Stuff As Dreams”- Add 15k-20k words to draft
- “Good Intentions”- edit 30-35 scenes
February
- WordKeeperAlpha- 50,000
- “Good Intentions”- edit 30 scenes
- “Broken Parts”- write 20k words
March
- WordKeeperAlpha- 35,000
- “Such Stuff As Dreams”- 1st Pass edit (30k)
- “Broken Parts”- write 5k words
I’m already not sure if these goals are going to work. Adding words to “Such Stuff As Dreams” is putting me behind for the year, and sort of messing with my schedule. I’m going to work on it as quickly as I can and hopefully get back on track. “Good Intentions” is also going to take much longer than I would like, so I might try to speed that along somehow. We’ll see how it goes!
Until then, Happy New Year, everyone! See you guys in a month!
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