It’s late morning the first day of 2018 and there are a thousand things I should be doing other than this. But, I really love my yearly wrap-ups.
The past two years have been so hard, but also very lovely in their own way. 2017 had its share of ups and downs. For a year when the downs always seemed to follow an up, or stand in the way of progress, I’m really proud of what I did accomplish and very much looking forward to 2018.
This time last year, I was still recovering from an ulcer and digestive issues were a problem for half of 2017. Thankfully those seemed to have improved. Though, I did have some additional health issues in the fall. In October, I managed to cut off a tiny piece of my finger while cooking. (I recommend not adding that to your 2018 resolutions. Trust me.) November was full of mostly the wrong type of excitement. A deer ran into the side of our 4Runner while my husband was driving us to the gym. I ended up with some tooth/face injuries and the 4Runner was totaled. Unexpected car shopping is always great fun, especially around Thanksgiving and Christmas. After a long search, we’re now the happy owners of a Subaru Outback. RIP 4Runner. Long live the Outback!
I also struggled with repetitive stress injuries in both hands forcing me to switch from typing to dictation. Learning an entirely new way to to process the story and push it into words had been both interesting and challenging.
But, even with all of that, I wrote:
Flash Fiction Words: 6,319
Short Story Words: 53,381
Novel Words: 202,300
For a grand total of 262,000 words!
Those were hard words. They were words to fix things I did while very sick in the second half of 2016. They were words that came from learning new writing methods. They were words that happened around pain, fatigue, and days when my best seemed far from good enough.
However, because of the work I put in throughout 2017, I have five books in progress. Earth Born is going through edits right now. Earth Born 2 is being written, as are two other books, and Earth Born 3 is slowly getting a plot. Plus, I have more short stories waiting to be published.
Today, I look at my 2018 to-do list and feel behind. The holidays have a way of making everything pile into January. So, for the next few weeks I’ll be digging deep to see several projects into their next stage. After that, I’ll be doing my very best to make 2018 a fabulous year for writing and publishing. And, with a lot of hard work, and a little luck, I’d like to break 350,000 words written in 2018.
~N
