Year in Review: 2015

Numbers

36 stories published:
23 originals
13 reprints

33 acceptances:
1 short story collection
14 original stories
17 reprints
1 non-fiction essay

13 new stories written (45k words*)

* I don’t track my daily wordcount, so my yearly wordcount is based only on finished stories. My actual wordcount is probably somewhat higher. But definitely not high enough. Generating more words is really something that I need to work on for next year.

Year in Review

2015 has been big for me in a lot of ways. I had 23 original stories out this …

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May Summary

I spent the first half of May completely and miserably stuck on my novel. There was something fundamentally wrong with it, and I couldn’t figure out what that something was. So for the first week of May, I tried to push through and continue writing. The words came slowly, and they were awful. Then, on the suggestion of tinaconnolly I spent several days not writing. This had a much better result, in that I figured out what was wrong with my novel:

It isn’t actually a novel. It is a collection of stories centered around a common theme. …

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April Summary

10433 / 100000

Total words: 15,530
Total usable words: 10,433

Badges earned (since the last post):

Gold Star – For completing the April Challenge of 12k words in the month of April.

For completely scrapping at least 1,000 words and redoing them.

For mentioning a duck, goose or other waterfowl somewhere in your novel.

For completing a chapter that’s a prime number (Ch. 3)

For writing 500 words and working out for 30 minutes every day for a week.

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Novel Progress

6444 / 100000

No progress report last week, because I spent a lot of time re-writing Chapter 1 and posting my wordcounter bar with a decreased word count would feel too much like going backwards. I think spending a lot of time on the first chapter was worth it though — the early versions were so far off what I wanted that they likely would have thrown the whole trajectory of the story off. The version I ended up keeping (the 5th version) is far from perfect, but it’s close enough that I feel I can move on. (Yay!)

This …

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Novel Progress

3338 / 100000

April 1st – April 5th

Wordcount: 3338

This week’s word count is all on Chapter 1, which I am still tinkering with. The total wordcount is a bit deceptive, because I abandoned a couple partial drafts of Chapter 1, and haven’t counted those towards the total. I’m still working out details about the characters/setting/plot as I go, so I’m okay with the low wordcount. Hopefully things will eventually click into place and I can pick up the pace.

Badges Earned:


For sitting down and cranking out 500 words when I didn’t …

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It Begins…

Someone told me that April 1st was a bad day to start a novel, so I started today instead. I wrote one word :) My goal is to write one chapter a week, for however many chapters it takes for the book to be finished.

I’ve located a progress bar:

1 / 100000

Sadly, my one word is insufficient to show up on the progress meter.

Several other members of Codex are also writing novels at the moment, and as further motivation, I will be trying to earn badges, like the one shown below (unlike this sample, most of …

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Short, but done

I thought this morning I had two additional scenes to write in this chapter, but I think there will be more tension if I save the last scene for later. So…Chapter 2 winds itself up at 2,800 words, a bit on the short side, but I’m reasonably happy with it.

Today’s wordcount: 1000 words
Week 2 wordcount: 2800 words
Total wordcount: 6200 words

* * *

Since my first few Clarion stories were quite short, my wordcount for the two weeks roughly parallels my weekly output for the workshop. Though I have to say, I’m getting much more …

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Miscellany

I’m making slow and steady progress on my latest WIP…averaging maybe 700 words or so a day. It’s at 4000 words now, and has about a scene and a half left on it, I think. It’s a bit longer than I originally envisioned, but I think I can keep it under 5k (or trim it back down to 5k once it’s finished). This particular project is an attempt on my part to stretch as a writer and do something a bit different — it’s a lighthearted action story involving dragons. So far it seems to be going pretty well, at …

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Notes, notes, and more notes

Outlines, character development, and other miscellaneous notes for the novel are finally coming together. Things are looking good to start writing at the beginning of May. I’ve also made another attempt at breaking off a chunk of the story to do as a short story (or it may end up being more of a novelette). Anyway, the bit I’m thinking about breaking off comes right near the start of the novel, so even if it doesn’t work on it’s own, I can convert it into chapters or something after the fact. Hopefully I’ll be able to write the story/novelette version …

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