Saturday, December 31, 2005
Annual Output
I've seen a lot of writers summing up their yearly output, recently, and this being the last day of the year, I figured I'd follow suit.
After digging up the final Word documents for all of my 2005 projects and running word counts, I wasn't really surprised by the result. I've said elsewhere that I had a pretty shitty 2005 and, not to belabor the point, I did. I lost almost six months of productivity, not really getting in gear until the middle of the year. Still, in just under seven months of writing in 2005, I finished two novels (both incorporating chapters written in previous years) and three short stories. A decent annual output, but certainly not staggering.
Novels:
Paragaea 108,447 (24,154 written before 2005) 84,293 new words
Fire Star 114,472 (52,883 written before 2005) 61,589 new words
Shorts:
"Annus Mirabilis" 4,338
"Last" 3,528
"Eventide" 5,237
Total new words written in 2005: 158,985
So that's it for writing, which is one of my three part-time jobs. So how did I fare in the other two (editor/publisher, and dad)?
While wearing my editor hat, I assembled the anthology Adventure Vol. 1, and shepharded Myths for the Modern Age and The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana from manuscripts to printed versions. (The output of MonkeyBrain Books, too, took a hit this year; we're slowly getting back on track next year, with five titles, and should be back up and running at full steam by 2007, hopefully with eight titles at least.)
And then there's the dad report. My daughter learned how to walk (and how to run, in short order), and her vocabulary expanded from nil to dozens of words, if not more. She's started speaking in complete sentences, which really freaks me out. She is displaying a distinct innate musicality (she loves singing, drumming, dancing, et al), which I think is splendid. She absolutely adores books, which I think it spectacular. She's happy, healthy, and well-adjusted.
Even though 2005 was, subjectively, pretty damned sucky, by any objective measure I did respectable work, which I suppose is some comfort. That said, Allison and I are both glad that this year will be over in another few hours, and are looking forward to starting with a clean slate in 2006.
After digging up the final Word documents for all of my 2005 projects and running word counts, I wasn't really surprised by the result. I've said elsewhere that I had a pretty shitty 2005 and, not to belabor the point, I did. I lost almost six months of productivity, not really getting in gear until the middle of the year. Still, in just under seven months of writing in 2005, I finished two novels (both incorporating chapters written in previous years) and three short stories. A decent annual output, but certainly not staggering.
Novels:
Paragaea 108,447 (24,154 written before 2005) 84,293 new words
Fire Star 114,472 (52,883 written before 2005) 61,589 new words
Shorts:
"Annus Mirabilis" 4,338
"Last" 3,528
"Eventide" 5,237
Total new words written in 2005: 158,985
So that's it for writing, which is one of my three part-time jobs. So how did I fare in the other two (editor/publisher, and dad)?
While wearing my editor hat, I assembled the anthology Adventure Vol. 1, and shepharded Myths for the Modern Age and The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana from manuscripts to printed versions. (The output of MonkeyBrain Books, too, took a hit this year; we're slowly getting back on track next year, with five titles, and should be back up and running at full steam by 2007, hopefully with eight titles at least.)
And then there's the dad report. My daughter learned how to walk (and how to run, in short order), and her vocabulary expanded from nil to dozens of words, if not more. She's started speaking in complete sentences, which really freaks me out. She is displaying a distinct innate musicality (she loves singing, drumming, dancing, et al), which I think is splendid. She absolutely adores books, which I think it spectacular. She's happy, healthy, and well-adjusted.
Even though 2005 was, subjectively, pretty damned sucky, by any objective measure I did respectable work, which I suppose is some comfort. That said, Allison and I are both glad that this year will be over in another few hours, and are looking forward to starting with a clean slate in 2006.
