I'm happy with my writing progress in December. Overall, I wrote 26,334 words, which is drastically less than November (expected), but still better than September (satisfying), and I managed to meet my goal of at least 400 words a day every 5 out of 7 days (albeit some days just barely). The words were pretty evenly split:
- Blogs: 6994, mostly reviews for SFFReviews.com. I'm working my way through an anthology that has a lot of quite short stories in it, which makes for some short reviews -- but it also makes for quick reviews to write.
- Fiction: 8008. I've got a couple of short story venues opening in January that I have ideas for, and one of my commitments to myself for the Christmas break was to actually write the damn stories. Some are taking more time than others (and require more fighting, as can be seen by the many days where I barely got 50 words on paper), but while in Iowa the last few days, I managed to figure out the voice for "The Simurgh's Daughter," and I might finish up a draft of it tonight (barring jetlag). Base 8 is still being mentally revised to figure out exactly what the story is, but jetlag was good for that, as I spent a lot of time lying in bed mapping out the plot.
- Nonfiction: 4308. Not as much as I would've hoped for, but unlike previous months I haven't had a journal paper to write or revise, so pretty much all the words went into my textbook. (And the work of previous months paid off: December 23 I woke to an acceptance of a paper that had already undergone a few major revisions and was at its second journal.)
- Admin: 7024. It's examining/recommendation letter season, so that contributed a lot.
What I find most fascinating in the chart above is that you can clearly see the four weeks of the month, and you can also clearly see when term ended. In the first two weeks, I've got a pretty high and pretty varied writing output each day, but was definitely struggling on some of the weekends (thanks to birthday parties and Christmas shopping). Then term ended and we've got week three, during which G. was home from school all week and I was in Oxford Monday and Tuesday examining an MA. Those two light blue bars from the end of the week were me writing up the post-defense report while G. played legos next to me at the kitchen table. I'm quite pleased that I managed to do that before we left for the US, which is what took up week four. Week four I'm mostly pleased that I managed to write fiction EVERY DAY, including Christmas Day which involved 12 hours flying and arrival at my sister's place in the US in mid afternoon.
So bring on January and 2018!
