I saw this going around Twitter and Mastodon yesterday: lots of the writers I follow listing things they’d accomplished in 2017. I was happy for those who had a good year career-wise. But I didn’t want to try and compile anything because I was sure that I wouldn’t measure up by comparison. (Note to self: writing is not a zero-sum game. You don’t have to compare yourself to others in that way).

But then I made a quick spreadsheet, did the math, and had a moment of pleasant surprise. Turns out I wrote way more words in 2017 than I thought I did.

So inspired by Alex Acks’ format, here’s what I wrote/did in 2017.

Writing This Year

Novels: 2

I finished a draft of Red Magic* and Terraviathan. Both need to spend some time in the trunk, but they are finished drafts. They’re the first drafts I’d finished since mid-2015.

*Title subject to change

Total words: 257,500

This total was much higher than I thought it was going to be! I was barely expecting to break six figures. Considering everything that happened this year, I managed to put more ink on the page than I expected. It wasn’t until I started going through documents and adding them all up that I realized Holy dang, you wrote a lot of words! Is it the biggest total out there among all the writers I follow? Absolutely not! But that doesn’t matter. This word count total is mine, and I’m damn proud of it.

Publishing This Year

Queries: 0

Rejections: 0

Acceptances: 0

I didn’t submit anything in 2017, so no surprises there. Basically I knew I needed to finish new material before I could start the agent search again. Kace Alexander had some good advice on that front, in between trying to navigate floating platforms in Destiny 2.

Works Published: 1

I touched up The Exile’s Violin and my wife redid the cover (so good!!). And I put that thing back up on Amazon.

Life This Year

Jobs Changed: 3

I quit the job I’d been at for the past two years in March 2017. I started a new job in April and was laid off from that in September when the company got rid of over 10% of its workforce. I was unemployed for about a month and a half. Finally, I started my current job near the end of October.

 

Despite 2017 being a shitty year, I wrote more than I thought. And I’m going into 2018 with some very clear goals:

Finish this Song of Siya sword and sorcery book
Replot book 1 of aforementioned sword and sorcery book
Submit to agents again
Write a sci-fi novel. (It’s been too long since I’ve written about space ships n’ shit)
Stop being scared and go after what I want

That’s pretty much it. See you all in 2018.