2023 in Review: Writing

This time last year, I was on a high. I had just published my third book in the Cassie Morgan Series in September, had won NaNoWriMo and felt like I was coming out of a bad year to have a good year. My last year of my twenties, right? I even ended my 2022 writing recap with this sentiment.

Knowing I went through 150,000 words this year, and knowing what I want to write next year, I think it’s quite possible that I will write 200,000 words in 2023.

So, I’m pretty sure I did hit this this year, but my tracking of word counts was lackluster this year. Actually, a lot of little habits I had for tracking kind of fell to the wayside this year, like tracking my word county, my pages read, how many WW points I ate each day. A lot of it just didn’t happen this year and I think it was just that I was so exhausted from life, especially the last two years at work.

That’s okay, because that’s no longer my problem, but now I have to rebuild some of these goals I had, like accurately tracking words for each day. Even harder, doing it for two pen names.

This year, I started out with a draft of Hit List, the last book in the Cassie Morgan Series. What I thought was going to be a quick draft ended up taking six months and I didn’t even write the ending before I just gave up to go do Camp NaNoWriMo.

For Camp NaNo, I started a stand-alone thriller, The Girl in the Hay Bale. That title will hopefully change but it works for now. That was 30,000 words plus the 90,000 words in the first draft of Hit List.

Then after I got the news that I would no longer be needed in my job (along with 120+ of my fellow employees), I went into high gear. I did 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo plus another 50,000 words in a separate project, bringing me over 200,000 words this year. And yet, this year feels a little like a disappointment. Not because of the word count, but simply because I feel like I started so many drafts (three) that I didn’t quite finish. And I like to finish my drafts and move onto the next one, but this just wasn’t the year that it happened. But I do love that I had 200,000 words to end an absurd year.