2021: My year in writing

2021 was an eventful year in my writing career. I published some stories, made some progress, endured some frustration, and learned, learned, learned. Such is the life of a developing writer. I hope you’ll indulge me in a little year-end navel-gazing. I enjoy these kinds of posts from other writers, because it helps me see behind the curtain of their careers and get a more realistic understanding of what a year in a writer’s life can look like. And as I mentioned in my last year-end retrospective post (State of the blog and most popular posts of 2021), I find it helpful to do some annual stock-taking to evaluate my progress and learn from my own work. So here goes:

Writing achievements

• “Finished” my first novel, Vanishing, Inc. and started querying (more info on that misadventure later in this post)
• Had 2 short stories published (“Open House” and “Woe is Me, Poor Child, for Thee“)
• Won first place in the Arizona Authors Association annual literary contest for my still-not-finished novel, Delta Dawn.
• Grew my audience for this blog
• Wrote and submitted a short story for the 2021 IWSG Anthology Contest. I haven’t heard anything back, and I think they’re going to announce the winners publicly on Wednesday, so I’m guessing that’ll be another rejection, but, hey, *I* like the story, and I may be able to find a home for it elsewhere.

Annual writing stats

I’ve mentioned before on here that I’m one of those nerdy people who likes trackers. I take orders from my FitBit (Usually. I’ve been so lazy this week, the poor thing probably thinks I’m dead.) and I track my writing. According to Online Writing Log, my favorite writing tracker, I:

• Wrote 64,598 words (not a lot, because I spent most of the year revising existing work)
• Logged 26,541 minutes of writing activity, which equals 442.35 hours. I also totaled up my writing from 2020 to see how the years compared. In 2020, I spent 14,398 minutes (almost 240 hours) on writing. So I increased my writing time by ~84% in 2021. That explains why I’m exhausted, and my house is a mess. But it’s also satisfying. I maintained a fairly consistent writing routine in 2021, and it’s nice to see that effort paying off.

Online Writing Log includes a dashboard with some cool graphs. Here’s how 2021 broke down by month:

And here’s a chart showing my cumulative totals on various activities since I started using OWL back in October of 2018.

As you can see, editing is the bane of my existence. I must be the slowest reviser on the freakin’ planet.

Progress on writing goals

I didn’t write out formal writing goals for 2021, but I had a few big ones in my head. Here they are, along with my progress on each:

• Finish Vanishing, Inc. and start querying. I did that. I paid for a professional edit, made some revisions based on that edit, and started querying. I got no bites, so I sought some additional feedback on my story opening, rewrote it, and then sought more feedback. I just signed up for a class from the Lawson Writers Academy called The First Five Pages: Reader Glue (taught by the wonderful Laura Drake), revise one more time as part of the class, then head back into the query trenches.
• Finish a full first-pass revision of Delta Dawn and share with beta readers. I didn’t achieve this goal. Not even close. I’ve revised this manuscript in fits and starts, but it’s still a hot mess. I’m working through Holly Lisle‘s excellent online course, How to Revise Your Novel, and making progress, but that progress is SLOOOOOWWWWW. Part of why that progress is slow is because I keep getting diverted to other projects, like revisiting the opening of Vanishing, Inc., writing short stories, and redesigning this blog (New look coming soon. If I can figure out the WPOcean theme and level up my web development skills to design a decent home page. The web has come a long way since I hand-coded HTML in the Unix Vi editor. In the snow. Uphill. Both ways.)
• Write a new horror story to submit to the annual Deathlehem anthology. Done! Accepted! Published! Yay! See My short story, “Woe is Me, Poor Child, for Thee,” is published! for details)

In conclusion…

2021 was a decent year for me, even though it often felt like a slog. And that’s why I like to do these annual retrospectives: I usually discover I accomplished more than I thought I did.

How about y’all? What were your 2021 milestones?

Happy New Year!