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2015 - A year of writing in review

A lot happened in 2015 in my writing career and I produced a LOT of work.

By the numbers:

  • I published 1 novel
  • I published 1 original short story collection
  • I wrote 2.8 new novels
  • I wrote and published more than 12 short stories
  • I wrote more than 100 pieces for magazines, print publications and websites
  • Altogether, I wrote 498,161 words in 2015, which averages to 1368 words written per day
  • By December 31, I'd written for 181 consecutive days
These are not for comparison with other writers. I write more than some and less than others. I keep track of these things as a mere benchmark for myself, so I know what I am capable of and I know how much further I can push myself. Honestly, I think I can be more prolific than this and seeing it laid out, I know I can do more and keep my quality consistent. 

This is purely an exercise in accountability for myself. 

My challenge for myself is to increase these numbers in 2016. 

My challenge for you is to just keep track of what you're writing so that in 2017 you can do more and know how much more you're doing. I track my word count daily, but you don't have to do it the way I do. Maybe you'll track number of stories written, or published, or whatever. Just keep some metrics so you know how to improve.

As for my own work, I have two pieces that came out over at StarWars.Com. The first is The Cinema Behind Star Wars: A Bridge Too Far, the second is the 10 most quotable lines in The Force Awakens.

I still haven't finished the 10th novel. I'm so close, but a nasty case of gout made writing a lot slower this last week than I would have liked. I've worked on it every day, just not with as many words as I would have liked. 


As a reminder: The Aeronaut and Escape Vector are still out and still need your purchases and reviews. If nothing else, they can use you telling people about them. If you want signed copies, visit the shop here on this page.

Also! here's the full list of "rules and guidelines" I've been collecting over my years of studying writing advice and process. 

As far as my work outside of all this: There's a lot of great stuff on Big Shiny Robot! and Full of Sith for you. 

And please, please, please don't forget to check out any of my books, drop reviews of them on Amazon or Goodreads, and follow me on twitter and Facebook!

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