This post is probably more for me than anyone else, but this is a follow up to last year’s post looking at what I achieved in 2019. Now looking at 2020!

In 2020 I wrote more words than in the previous three years combined. I also logged three times more hours worked than in 2019. But then in 2019 I did stop doing so much so that I could contribute towards renovating our house. This meant there were months when I did very little towards writing and publishing books, which means it isn’t really a valid comparison between the two years. 

So despite the corona virus and lockdown and children doing school work at home while I tried to work I still did more than I did the year before. Which is something I’m proud of.

  • I wrote a total of 891,088 words;
  • I worked a total of 1575.5 hours;
  • I published two books – a novella in an anthology and a novel;
  • I drafted two and a half novels and a novella;
  • I spent one and a half times more hours editing than I did drafting;
  • I wrote the most words, and spent the most time, on my journal, as that was how I dealt with much of the stress going on during the year;
  • As well as my dragon and fae series I continued blogging, grew my social media, supported 10 minute novelists and their 365 writing challenge (I am admin for both groups), critiqued writing by other people, and joined a mastermind group of other ya fantasy authors. 

What do I want to change for 2021? Well, I am mostly happy with how much I worked last year. I would like what I do to be more focused, and to spend less time journalling. I do find that a useful tool to clear my mind and it helps me focus on what I need to do, but equally it is far too easy to just mind dump words onto a page and feel like I’m being constructive when I’m not really. It did become a form of procrastination at times last year.

And this is one reason why I haven’t set myself a word count goal for this year. I could do. I could try to do a MilYWordy (write a million words in a year). I almost did it last year without trying. But I feel that if I am focusing on the number of words then it will be too easy to go all out journalling, as that is easy to get high word counts quickly, and not do the harder editing. And it is the editing that needs to be done in order to progress my career and publish the books that I want to. So that is where my focus needs to be, not shooting for as many words as possible.

So, let’s see what 2021 brings! Beyond more homeschooling and trying to do everything at once.

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