A Happy New Year to A/all!

Last year I wrote about my writing resolutions for the year. Among them was to keep a word-count diary with the ultimate goal of hitting 250,000 words for the year across all platforms (short stories, long stories, the blog, novels...). How did I do?

Well, the diary lasted longer than most of my resolutions...right up through June. At that point my schedule changed and I never had the diary with me when I was writing. By the time I'd get to where the diary was, I'd forget to write down the number of words for the day and by September, I'd totally forgotten I was keeping track of my writing.

The total as of June? 85, 135 words.

Since then I've written 55 blog posts, some of them longer than others, a few only a sentence or two in length. Two hundred words is a good average, so 55 x 200 = 11,000 words we can add to that. I wrote a short story in August of approximately 20,000 words, so we can throw that in the pot (Diamond Submission. It will be out via EC before summer. I hope. More on that in a future post.)

In June, 12 Days of Christmas (Bondage) was only 1/4 written, so that means I wrote another 38,000 words for that. Give or take a word or two.

All together? 85, 135 + 11,000 + 20,000 + 38,000 = 165,135 words. Just a little short of my goal.

Okay, a lot short of my goal.

What does that mean? I'll just have to do better this year! And I think that'll be easier this time around. I lose the day job at the end of June (181 calendar days to go...but who's counting? ME!!!!). That means I'll be writing full-time after that. So I won't have any excuses this time next year.

So I'm keeping that as a goal for this year: write 250,000 new words in stories and blog posts. In addition, I will write a new Mystic Shade novel to be out before June. Diamond Submission will be published by EC (waiting on my edits). I will get back to the fantasy I've been trying to finish for years.

And, like last year, I'll learn something new (thinking of taking a course in small business administration), read a lot of books (maybe I'll keep track of them here again as I did one year. I liked doing that. Made me feel like I really read a lot!), and above all, I'll hug my family and tell them how much I love them over and over and over. This is a year of change for us and, while exciting, there's also some fear under the surface.

Here's to a great year for A/all!

Play safe,
Diana

PS. This post marks the first 475 words of the year!