2023: my year in writing

I covered the highlights of my year in writing in my last post, but I’ll add more detail here, in my first post of 2024 for the Insecure Writers Support Group. My IWSG posts attract a different audience from my routine weekly posts, so I think it’s OK to repeat a little. If you read my last post, feel free to skip to the memes (I’m pretty sure half my readers skip to the memes anyway, but don’t tell me that–you’ll hurt my delicate writer fee-fees.)

Before we proceed to my authorial navel-gazing: The first Wednesday of every month is Insecure Writers Support Group day, on which we insecure writers share our doubts, fears, struggles, and triumphs. Our awesome co-hosts this month are Joylene Nowell Butler, Olga Godim, Diedre Knight, and Natalie Aguirre. Please stop by their blogs and leave them some comment love.

Each month, the IWSG provides an optional question for us to answer in our posts. This month’s optional question: Do you follow back your readers on BookBub or do you only follow back other authors?

This month’s question is easy for me: I don’t use BookBub. I do use Goodreads, though. I created my Goodreads account years ago under my real name, and I use it only as a reader. I have a separate Amazon account under my pen name, and once I have actual books out, I’ll use that account for interacting with Goodreads as an author. The writing world is small, so I’d prefer to keep those functions separate. Also, I no longer post reviews on Amazon or Goodreads unless they are five-star reviews with only praise. I know, I know, authors need reviews of all kinds, but again, the writing world is small, and some authors don’t respond well to any feedback that isn’t glowing.

Now, back to the primary topic of this post: my year in writing.

Publications and works in progress

As I whined in my last post, I didn’t make nearly as much progress as I’d hoped to make. I spent most of the year feeling burned out and pulled in too many different directions. Still, I got a bit of writing done.

• “Adam Carmona and the Saguaro Ripper,” a thriller short story I wrote in 2022, appeared in Trouble in Tucson, an anthology published by the two Arizona chapters of Sisters in Crime in conjunction with the annual Left Coast Crime conference.

• “Mourning Doves,” won best in category for poetry in the Arizona Authors Association annual literary contest and was published in their literary magazine.
• “The Fourth Man” won second prize in the Arizona Mystery Writers annual short story contest.
• I got back on track with revising my second novel, Delta Dawn. Progress is SLOOOOWWWWWW but happening. I’m about 25% of the way through a massive revision.

Other writing-related activities (education, networking, promotion, appearances)

• I attended the Left Coast Crime conference, which was held here in Tucson, and met a bunch of my fellow crime writers. I also appeared on a panel called Packing it All in a Short Story.

• I was a guest on 2 podcasts: Big Blend Radio and Mysterious Goings-On.
• I attended the virtual Write Now conference, including a pitch session with an agent that resulted in a full request. I got my form rejection a couple of weeks ago. *sigh*
• I was elected president of the Tucson chapter of Sisters in Crime.

Writing stats

I like to review my progress at the end of each year to see how I did and how it compared to previous years. The info in this section wasn’t included in my last post. I use a tool called Online Writing Log to track my writing sessions. Here’s what 2023 looked like:

Yearly totals

• Words written: 45,318 (note that I didn’t start tracking word count when revising until recently, so I actually wrote a bit more than this). Not great, but then I didn’t draft anything new this year other than one 2500-word short story. Last year I wrote 70,797, so yeah, 2023 wasn’t one of my better years.
• Hours spent writing: 204.5 (again, not great. Last year’s number was 320 hours.)
• Blog posts published: 52

Blog stats

• Views: 3602
• Visitors: 1899 from 42 countries (!!) (Thanks to each and every one of you! You’re the reason I keep clacking away.)
• Comments: 1001
• Top referrers: Inlinkz (source of several link parties I participate in regularly, Weekend Coffee Share, What’s On Your Bookshelf, and What’s Been On Your Calendar) and Facebook.

Most popular posts of 2023

I included this information in my last post, but it seems like it belongs here too, so…

• Snow in Tucson and the monthly book round-up
• Farewell, February
• More snow in Tucson!
• A walk in the garden on a spring morning
• Finding balance as an author (my only IWSG post to crack the top 5)

The memery

A shoutout to all of us who cackle gleefully at our keyboards while killing our characters:

Pity our poor readers who end up like this:

Of course, writing isn’t all fun and games:

More authorial pain:

And finally: This one’s not funny, but it’s a good reminder for all of us insecure writers:

Do you track your productivity (writing or otherwise)? If so, how’d 2023 go for you?