12 Months of Writing: 2014, A Year in Review

Yesterday morning my almost-four-year-old daughter came up to me and asked, “Mom, are you working on your dream?”

I was editing a story in my green binder, which she recognized as my writing binder. The day before we had listened to the song “I’ve Got a Dream” from Tangled and my daughter had asked me, “Mom, what’s your dream?”

I explained that my dream was to have my name on the covers of published books. And then I told her that if you want a dream to happen, you don’t just sit around. You work for it.

That’s what I’ve been doing during 2014: working on my dream. I read the book The Power of Habit and learned how to create habits. I forced myself to focus, to output words when I had no motivation and no inspiration (which was probably 3 days out of every 5). When I found myself truly stuck on one project I would switch to another project until I figured the first project out: I knew that I couldn’t let myself stop writing. I kept a daily writing journal to keep track of my progress.

There were days where I didn’t write a thing, and days where I eked out a mere hundred words. I intentionally gave myself a day of rest once a week, where I did not actively work on my goal. But most days I spent at least an hour writing, and many days I spent more than that. Throughout the year, I sacrificed all sorts of things so I could write: movies and TV shows I wanted to see, books I wanted to read, activities I wanted to attend, and other hobbies and interests that I love. I sacrificed sleep and relaxation. But it was worth it.

Here’s what I accomplished during 2014:

• Wrote approximately 135,700 entirely new words. That’s around 550-600 double-spaced pages.
• Revised a 140 page novella (4 additional drafts).
• Wrote the first draft of a young adult fantasy novel.
• Wrote the second and third drafts of a 500 page adult steampunk novel. This was a brutal task.
• Deleted over 30,000 words.
• Wrote and revised 6 short stories, ranging in length from 750 to 9000 words.
• Received 20 rejection letters from publishers and magazine editors.  (I tried to constantly have at least 3 short stories and essays out on submission.)
• Received 2 acceptances. My short story “Daughter of a Boto” received third place in the Meeting of the Myths contest. Another story, “Three Wishes,” will be published in a digital anthology next year.

According to my writing journal, I spent about 521 hours working on writing over the course of the year. That’s 1.4 hours a day—less than an hour and a half every day.

I’m now much closer to my dream. And 2015 looks like the perfect time to spend another year writing.