2023, A Writing Year in Review: Bulbs and Beavers (and Pie!)

December 27, 2023/1 Comment/in Updates, Year in Review /by Katherine Cowley

2023: A Writing Year in Review. With a picture of a tree, barely standing as it has been gnawed by a beaver, and tulips next to a mailbox.

Last year, in 2022, I had two novels and two short stories published, wore fancy dresses and attended two awards ceremonies, ran a successful Kickstarter for a nonprofit, spent 937 hours writing, and had what is, for writing, a rather glamorous year.

This year was very different.

A hipster writer. He looks at you instead of his page. He might be pensive, but he might be sadness. Perhaps writing requires a certain weight of sadness, at least in 2023.

Above: Peak 2023 writing energy. Deposit photos says he is “hipster.” If I owned that hat, maybe I would be hipster too.

In 2023, I had no books published. I attended no award ceremonies. I spent 880 hours writing (which is lower than the amount spent in 2020, 2021, and 2022). I hit a point in the revisions process where my confidence (as a writer) decided to indulge in clichés and completely shatter, like a Corelle soup bowl on the kitchen floor, shards of glass scattering across two full rooms. (Corelle is made of tempered glass, so it’s not supposed to break easily, but in my house, we’ve broken at least four bowls and plates this year.)

Yet right now, as I look back on another year of writing, I feel good about 2023.

Hours Spent Writing Per Month in 2023, by Katherine Cowley. January: 68. February: 59. March: 82. April: 104. May: 59. June: 85. July: 67. August: 82. September: 68. October: 71. November: 83. December: 50.

This year of writing was like planting bulbs in the fall with the hope that they’ll come up in the spring. Yes, despite the spicy hot pepper-based deer repellant, the deer might still eat all of them, but chances are, next year I’ll have tulips.

A small garden bed of brightly colored tulips.

A picture of my tulips from this spring. Unlike in 2022, when the deer ate all my tulips a few days before they blossomed, in 2023 my tulips survived so they could act as a positive metaphor.

This year of writing was also like a beaver, gnawing on trees. There are lots of trees to gnaw on. There’s a lodge to maintain. There’s pesky, flowing water that must be stopped. Sometimes people put up metal netting so you can’t get to the best trees. Sometimes you take down a whole tree at once, but most of the time, that’s not possible. So you start on a few trees and make some progress, knowing that you’ll have time to do the rest later.

A tree in a marshy area of a pond. It has been gnawed on on both sides by a beaver, yet somehow it stays standing.

These are pictures that I took that show the efforts of the local beavers at the Asylum Lake Nature Preserve in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Every few months, I check on the beavers’ progress.

What trees did I gnaw on this year? Well, there’s a chart for that.

The Delicious Pie Chart of Writing 2023 Edition - Katherine Cowley

I love charts, I love pie, and I love writing. This collision of all three interests was meant to be.

And now, in classic bar graph form:

Hours Spent Per Writing Project in 2023. New Murder Mystery: 437. Development: 200. Website, etc.: 97. Personal Writing: 50. Short Stories and Essays: 30. Writing Nonprofit: 26. Translations: 18. Submissions: 17. Other Projects: 5.

And, because I like writing, some written details for a few of the categories:

New Murder Mystery (437 hours)

These 437 hours are on top of the 227 hours I spent on this book last year, bringing the total up to 664. This is the most research-intensive, complicated, and challenging book I’ve written. It’s also been like making soup—the components have needed time to stew together, so the flavors develop properly.

Development (200 hours)

Conferences: Malice Domestic and the Midwest Mystery Conference
Critiquing and writing group
Networking
Writing craft and mystery genre research
Accounting, taxes, and business stuff
Planning and considering goals

Website, etc. (97 hours)

Website, newsletters, blog posts, and a few book events! My most popular blog post for the year was on Mary Bennet and Mr. Collins.

Submissions (17 hours)

Most of this time was spent applying to an art residency. I didn’t get selected, but I was on the short list, and now I have a very solid concept for a future book that I plan to write.

Looking to 2024

Me with my 2024 planner, which matches my sweater. Maybe I am hipster after all.

I often have a 2-year writing plan, with all my upcoming projects figured out. I don’t right now, and that’s both terrifying and liberating.

I do know that I’ll need to do more revisions on my current mystery novel. I want to write some short stories, and spend a few weeks focusing on reading and doing other things to refill my creative well. I suspect I will start a new book. Will that be a sequel to my current novel or to Mary Bennet? Or something entirely new? Only time will tell.

Hours Spent Writing Per Month in 2022. January: 103 hours 39 minutes. February: 80 hours 59 minutes. March: 84 hours 4 minutes. April: 58 hours 12 minutes. May: 108 hours 44 minutes. June 66 hours 52 minutes. July 57 hours 21 minutes. August: 47 hours 30 minutes. September: 108 hours 49 minutes. October: 93 hours 28 minutes. November: 77 hours 5 minutes. December: 49 hours 58 minutes.

Big Mary Bennet Energy: 2022, A Year in Review

December 31, 2022/1 Comment/in Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet, Updates, Year in Review /by Katherine Cowley

And now, as we reach the final day of 2022, it is time for my annual writing year in review.

I spent 937 hours writing in 2022, and my year looks like a series of waves.

Due to a variety of outside factors, my writing time varied from 47 to 109 hours each month, but it did so in an aesthetically pleasing way, which is definitely a win.

(Note: 937 hours is less time than I spent writing in 2021, when I wrote for 1000 hours, but more than I spent writing in any previous year.)

Which leads us to the next chart: how did I spend my time?

Hours Spent Per Writing Project in 2022. Website, Guest Posts, Book Launches, Presentations, Marketing 309 New Murder Mystery 227 Development 148 Board of Directors for Writing Nonprofit 75.5 Jane Austen Writing Lessons 54.5 Journal Writing 49 Mary Bennet Book 3 32 Novel I'm abandoning 24 Other 18

This year had big Mary Bennet energy, and that determined a lot of my writing hours. True, I only spent 32 hours doing final revisions on my third Mary Bennet novel. But the second and third books in the Mary Bennet spy series were both released:

The True Confessions of a London Spy in March 2022

The Lady’s Guide to Death and Deception in September 2022

Katherine Cowley at This is a Bookstore/Bookbug with Ladys Guide to Death and Deception

I had my launch party for The Lady’s Guide to Death and Deception at This is a Bookstore/Bookbug in Kalamazoo, MI.

It was exciting to have these books released in close proximity, because then readers could enjoy the full story arc without having to wait very long. As you’d expect, two book releases takes up a lot of time, and I spent 309 hours on everything from my website to guest blog posts to presentations to marketing tasks.

This year was also thrilling for the first book in the series, The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet, which had several award wins and nominations:

-Winner of the LDSPMA Praiseworthy Award for Best Suspense/Mystery novel

-One of five nominees for the Mary Higgins Clark Award

At the Edgar Awards: me with three of the other finalists for the Mary Higgins Clark Award

-One of five finalists for the Whitney Award for Best Mystery/Suspense novel

The Big Question: Will we see more of Mary Bennet?

I have had so many readers finish the third book and ask, “Will we see more of Mary Bennet?” Others have asked if I will write a Kitty Bennet series.

The series was originally conceived as a trilogy. I wanted it to feel complete and have a satisfying resolution for Mary (and company) by the end of the third book.

However, there are other stories that I would love to tell about Mary and her sisters. So I think it’s fair to say that there will very likely be more books in Mary and/or Kitty’s futures.

That said, I have been working on this series non-stop from 2017 to 2022. Five full years. That’s a lot of time to spend in one story world, with one set of characters. A book takes me at least a year or two to write, and it’s very all-consuming. So I decided that the time had come to work on a brand new murder mystery.

The New Murder Mystery:

I’m still keeping this largely under wraps, but I will say that my new murder mystery is set in Paris in the late 1800s, with a number of fascinating historical figures. The main character of the book is a determined woman in her thirties trying to make her way in the world. But then there is a theft and a murder, and she is drawn into solving the mystery.

I spent 227 hours on this book in 2022. While I had to do a lot of research for the Mary Bennet novels, I already had a strong background on Jane Austen and Regency England. I did not have that same background for my new murder mystery, so I’ve had to do a lot of additional research on everything from politics to architecture. Fortunately, I love research. One thing I didn’t count towards writing time was studying French. I’m fluent in Portuguese, and reading Portuguese definitely helps with reading French, but knew I needed to study French itself to help me read some of the sources (including newspapers and a few biographies) that are only available in French.

A few of the research books I’ve read for my current novel

While I love research, one cannot research forever. One of the things that I am most happy about for this year is that I found my main character’s voice, I found my narrator voice, and I found the voices of many of my other characters.

I’m now at the 60% mark on the first draft. In the new year, I plan to finish the first draft and then revise, revise, revise.

What Else Counted as Writing:

There are endless other things that counted as writing this year, but here’s a few of note:

-Choosing out formal gowns. I rented dresses for both the Edgar Awards and the Whitney Awards, and I definitely counted the dress search as writing time. (Under my Development category, which includes all writing and career development.)

Katherine Cowley in her dress for the Whitney Awards

My dress for the Whitney Awards. Both my dress for the Edgars and the Whitneys were from Rent the Runway.

-I ran a successful Kickstarter for a writing nonprofit and helped publish an anthology.

-I abandoned a novel. I went back and began another revision on an old mystery novel I wrote in the mid-2010s. And then I decided it’s not the right book, so I am officially abandoning it. We’re all better off.

-I wrote 17 new Jane Austen Writing Lessons, focusing on what Jane Austen can teach us about writing dialogue and writing emotions.

-I worked on a few short stories. And I had two short stories published, both with a bit of a religious bent: “The Gift of Undoing” in Saints, Spells, and Spaceships, and the darkest story I’ve ever written, “Burdens,” in Irreantum.

My Writing Plans for 2023:

I have a number of goals, including setting up bookstore and library visits (note: if you’re a bookseller or librarian, I am available for both in-person and virtual visits).

Mostly though, I’m going to buckle down and write, so you can read more of my short stories and novels in the future.

1000 Hours of Writing in 2021: A Year in Review

December 30, 2021/2 Comments/in Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet, Writing, Year in Review /by Katherine Cowley

In 2021, I spent 1000 hours writing.

1000.

A few weeks ago I realized how close I was to 1000 hours of writing for the year, so I decided to go for it and get in the last few hours.

1,000 hours 1,000 hours

If you look back on previous years, there were a number of years when I was firmly in the 400 to 600 hours a year range (so writing on average 60 to 100 minutes a day). Last year was my most writing time ever, with 909 hours total–so an average of 150 minutes or 2.5 hours a day. 1000 hours per day is an average of 165 minutes a day, or 2.75 hours.

Of course, I was not actually writing 2.75 hours a day–some months I wrote a lot more than that, some months a lot less:

Bar Graph. Hours Spent Writing in 2021. January 98 Feburary 90 March 93 April 106 May 88 June 79 July 31 August 80 September 91 October 99 November 84 December 61

Now, a qualifier. I did not spend 1000 hours typing. I’ve talked about this in previous year-in-review posts, but I believe in being pretty expansive in my definition of writing. Daydreaming about story ideas counts as writing. Listening to writing podcasts counts as writing. Submitting stories for publication counts as writing. That said…

What specifically did I work on in 2021?

Katherine Cowley and the Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet

First off, my debut novel was published!

When I was five years old, I decided that I wanted to be an author and publish books. While I have had a number of shorter works published, this year was my first to publish a book.

Having my book out in the world has been thrilling and tiring and exciting and overwhelming and wonderful all at once. Most of all, I’m grateful to have a story that I wanted to tell out in the world. And I’m grateful to everyone who has read and shared and reviewed my book–I truly appreciate all of your support for my stories!

While The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet was a huge milestone for my year, it actually didn’t take up most of my writing time. (The time that it did use was sharing the word about the book on social media, blog posts, sending out my newsletter, being a guest on podcasts, updating my website, etc.–aka marketing.)

Here’s a snapshot that shows how I spent my writing time throughout the year:

Book 2 in my Mary Bennet series—The True Confessions of a London Spy–comes out in a little over two months, on March 1, 2022. However, this past year I only spent 30 hours on it, and that was for final revisions. (Most of the time for that book came in 2020, when I spent 347 hours on it, and from 2018, when I wrote a very rough first draft.)

What I did spend most of my time on in 2021 was Book 3 in the Mary Bennet series, The Lady’s Guide to Death and Deception. I spent 387 hours on the book. This included brainstorming, research, outlining, reading newspapers from the time, and four drafts. The book is still not finished–I still have 3-4 revision passes on it with the publisher that will happen in early 2022.

Other things I worked on:

Jane Austen Writing Lessons. This has been a project of joy, as I’ve deep dived into writing through the lens of Jane Austen. Basically, this is everything I know about writing in a series of blog posts, and it was actually selected by the Write Life as one of the 100 Best Websites for Writers in 2021.

Jane Austen Writing Lessons. With an image of the original cover page of Pride and Prejudice; a color image of Jane Austen; an image of tea and pastries with an open book, and an early cover of Sense and Sensiblity.

The 97 hours spent on development included my monthly writing group, critiquing the writing of others, accounting, networking, goal setting and tracking, and learning about writing through listening to writing podcasts and reading books about writing. Developing yourself as a writer is so essential at every stage of the writing or publishing process you are at, and so it’s something that I continue to prioritize.

It’s also important to do writing that’s just for yourself, and that’s where my 52 hours of journal writing came in. And then there were all sorts of other smaller writing projects and writing-related tasks that I worked on throughout the year.

How much of the thousand hours was spent actually outlining, writing new words, or revising? I have no idea, and I absolutely refuse to go through every entry in my time tracker to figure that out. My guess is at least 500. But that number doesn’t really matter to me, because all of the writing-related things are important for me as a writer.

How in the world did I get in 1000 hours?

In years when I was writing 400 hours per year, it was because I fought tooth and nail to spend a solid hour a day working on my writing. It took sacrifices–reading less, watching less, cleaning less, waking up early or staying up late, and sometimes insane life-juggling to carve out that hour.

Writing 1000 hours this year was actually easier than writing 400 those years, because of a very particular set of life circumstances:

In September, my youngest child entered full-day kindergarten, but I did not start working full-time. Instead I got a 10-hour-a-week part-time job.
From January to June, I was a stay-at-home parent with one 5-year-old at home. She was rather independent. I also gave her movie time for 2 hours every afternoon, and I always used it for writing time.
Our family finances work on only my husband’s salary, which is a privilege that many incredible writers don’t have. I can put 1000 hours into writing even if I’m not going to make much from it.

If life has taught me anything, it’s that I can’t guarantee what my life circumstances will look like in any given year. Maybe I will have years in the future where I can spend 1000 hours writing, maybe I won’t. But it was fun to achieve that completely arbitrary benchmark this year.

What to Look for From Me in 2022

March 1: The True Confessions of a London Spy (Mary Bennet 2) will be released
May 13-14: I will be teaching a class called “In Defense of Writing Slowly” at the Storymakers conference in Utah
September: The Lady’s Guide to Death and Deception (Mary Bennet 3) will be released

Hopefully I will be able to add some more in-person events to this list

The Secret Life of Mary Bennet Series: The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet and The True Confessions of a London Spy. Mary Bennet, Spy. "Beautifully written, masterfully plotted, meet a Mary Bennet every bit as fascinating and twice as daring as her more famous sisters." -Gretchen Archer, USA Today bestselling author

My Goals for 2022

Finish revisions on The Lady’s Guide to Death and Deception
Actually finish revisions on an old steampunk novel (this is a goal I had for 2021 that I didn’t meet)
Write at least the first draft of a new book (I have a few ideas for this)

I may add or subtract goals from this list as the year progresses.

2020 In Review, and Writing like Alexander Hamilton

December 29, 2020/3 Comments/in Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet, Updates, Year in Review /by Katherine Cowley

The time has come—the long-awaited time of year in which I interrupt your life with charts, beautiful charts!

It’s year in review time. And despite the trash fire that 2020 has been overall, it’s been a really good writing year for me.

(Now I do feel a little self-conscious about it having been a good writing year. So many people have struggled with so much this year—loss of loved ones, personal health, jobs, etc. And as a result of those things or just general 2020ness, many people who have wanted to write have found themselves unable to write. I have a friend who has dozens of published books, and she has not been able to write much this year at all. If this is what your year was like, don’t need to beat yourself up for it. There are times and seasons for everything, and if you weren’t able to write or progress towards your personal goals this year, there will be years where you can.)

And now, on to my charts.

This Year I Wrote for 909 Hours

Note: by “writing” I include research, outlining, revision, planning, writing group, critiquing, listening to writing podcasts, writing accounting, etc…. For example, the “marketing” category includes a multitude of things, including my website (which I revamped this year), blog posts, writing-related social media posts, and conferences and library presentations (I gave two presentations this year). Development includes critiquing, writing group, networking, listening to writing podcasts, and reading books about writing craft.

909 hours works out to an average of 2.5 hours every single day including weekends (if you only include weekdays, it would be an average of 3.5 hours per day). So basically, it was my part-time job.

This is by far the most I have ever written in a year. As evidence, I present another chart:

Hours Spent Writing Per Year. KatherineCowley.com. 2014: 520 hours. 2015: 600 hours. 2016: 530 hours. 2017: 400 hours. 2018: 675 hours. 2019: 734 hours. 2020: 909 hours.

The bulk of my time this year was spent working on my Mary Bennet series. (Which relates to my biggest writing news of the year—I got a three-book-deal with Tule!)

This year I spent 60 hours on the first Mary Bennet book (revisions and copy edits for Tule), 347 hours on the second Mary Bennet book (starting with the second draft, and revising it until it was ready to submit to Tule), and 9 hours on the third Mary Bennet book (this is the one I wish I had spent more on, because I really need to make progress on book 3).

Here’s the cover of the first book, which will be out on April 22nd, 2021:

The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet (Cover)

(If you use Goodreads and haven’t yet added the book to your shelves, here’s the link!)

Another task that I put a lot of hours into was my Jane Austen Writing Lessons. I spent 125 hours on them, and I feel like the posts are really useful in terms of writing craft (and writing them has been a great diversion for me—it’s refreshing to write something that’s more essay-ish rather than fiction). Interesting note—of the 94,500 new words I wrote this year, 36,500 words were on Jane Austen Writing Lessons. So I’ve basically blogged half of a nonfiction book, which is pretty cool, to be honest.

How in the World Did I Write 909 hours during a Global Pandemic?

In part, this was due to the fact that I sort of lost my job this year.

I wasn’t fired. But due to university budget constraints, I wasn’t assigned a section to teach this fall, so I’m not working, and I’m not getting paid. Because I wasn’t actually fired, I can still access the university library (including the Oxford English Dictionary online) and keep my subscription to the New York Times.

Not working has had the side effect of giving me extra hours to write.

Also, the lack of going places and doing things this year has given me extra hours. For instance, I typically write a lot less in the summer, due to driving my kids to lessons and activities, as well doing a bit of travel. Suddenly, this summer, I had a lot more time, and my kids have now hit an age where they were better at entertaining themselves and each other.

Yet the biggest reason I’ve managed to write so much is that I’ve been channeling Alexander Hamilton (or at least the Lin-Manuel Miranda version of him)

Two of my favorite lines from Hamilton are in the song “Non-Stop”:

Why do you write like you’re running out of time?

How do you write like you need it to survive?

Why do you write like you’re running out of time?

This year, I’ve felt like I’m running out of time. And I accept full responsibility for this. When my agent started pitching The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet to publishers at the beginning of the year, I already had written a first draft of the second book in the series. So I was confident that if the series was picked up by a publisher, I could revise book 2 this year.

Lo and behold, Tule acquired the entire trilogy, and in my contract listed the date by which I would submit book 2 to them. November 1^st, 2020. This was the date I provided, but it ended up being a challenging date to reach.

The book needed a lot more work than I realized—it was a hard book to write, a hard year for me to resolve story problems and actually get words onto the page, and so I spent the entire year writing and revising like I was running out of time. But I made the deadline, and I’m really happy with the results!

(The thing is, I would probably set a similar deadline for myself if I was writing a new trilogy. I would just keep my fingers crossed that there wouldn’t be a global pandemic during the process of writing.)

Why do you write like you need it to survive?

Writing has been one of the things that give me joy, that makes me feel steady and centered, and that gives me purpose and direction. And it truly helped me get through this year. So yes, I need writing to survive.

That and chocolate. Does anyone have chocolate? (I’ve somehow ran out of chocolate…)

Goals for 2021

Successful launch of my debut novel, The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet
Write and revise Mary Bennet book 3
Finish up a quick revision of an old steampunk mystery novel that I shelved for a few years

If I do these three things, I will be happy. (Also, I have to do the first two, because I’ve signed a contract, so…so I better go listen to some more Hamilton.)

Thanks for joining me on my writing journey!

(Also–side note. If you’re not subscribed to my newsletter, I sent out a newsletter today about how I recently deleted 100 pages from the aforementioned steampunk mystery novel. You can read about it by clicking on that link. And if you don’t want to miss future newsletters, subscribe below.)

2019 in Review: Writing, Writing, and More Writing

January 3, 2020/0 Comments/in Updates, Writing, Year in Review /by Katherine Cowley

I would be remiss if I did not write my annual post about writing in the past year.

In 2019, I wrote more than I have in any previous year, coming in at 734.45 hours. That averages out to about two hours a day, every single day. (In comparison, last year I wrote 675 hours, which was a personal best; in 2017 I only wrote 400.)

Of course, I didn’t spend two hours writing every single day–there were weeks where I did much more, and weeks where I did much less:

And what did I do with those hours?

First and foremost, I spent 381 hours on my Regency Mystery Novel

Draft 2: 58 hours (I had started Draft 2 in 2018)
Draft 3: 108 hours
Newspaper Research: 18 hours
Draft 4: 6 hours
Draft 5: 15 hours
Draft 6: 77 hours
Draft 7: 16 hours
Submitting to Literary Agents: 47.5 hours
Working on Book 2: 34 hours
And other minor tasks

The big news of the year was getting a literary agent, something I wrote extensively about in another blog post.

And then the rest of the writing time was a mix of writing/revising short stories, critiquing, conferences, writing groups, running an international writing contest for a literary nonprofit, journal writing, etc. I had one short story published during the year, Paradisiacal Glory

During the year, I wrote a solid 55,000 words, and perhaps a significant amount more (during the revision process I rewrite a lot of entire sentences, paragraphs, and scenes, which sometimes doesn’t end up in my word count log).

Not included in my writing chart, but also writing-related: In August 2019, I started a part time job, working as an adjunct faculty member at Western Michigan University, where I now teach first-year writing.

And that’s my year! For the next year, I plan to finish book 2 in my Regency mystery series, and perhaps start researching a new series.

Archive for category: Year in Review