Sunday, December 31, 2006
Annual Output
Last year, I broke down my yearly output for 2005, and with only five hours left in the year, it seems about time to do it again for 2006.
I lost almost half of 2005 to general suckiness, managing in the remaining seven months to write two novels and three short stories. While 2006 was immeasurably better, as years go, I was only able to write a few hours a week for the first eight months, and so fared only slightly better.
Novels:
Further: Beyond the Threshold 80,000 words
X-Men: The Return 72,000 words
Short Stories:
"The Famous Ape" 6,500 words
"The End of Now" 3,000 words
"The Jewel of Leystall" 5,000 words
"Elvera" 3,300 words
Total new words written in 2006: 169,800
That's just a shade less than eleven thousand words more than I wrote in 2005 (the two novels, though both considerably shorter, were written entirely in this calendar year, while last year's books were both partially completed in earlier years). The rest of my writing time was spent working on End of the Century and the expanded Set the Seas on Fire, both of which won't be done until after the new year, and so will be counted towards next year's annual output.
So how about my other part-time jobs, publishing and parenting?
Wearing my editor/publisher hat, I managed to give birth to six books this year, Cover Story: The Art of John Picacio, The Man from the Diogenes Club, Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre, The Hollow Earth, Blood & Thunder: The Life and Times of Robert E. Howard, and Cross Plains Universe: Texans Celebrate Robert E. Howard. For those keeping score at home, that's one art book, one short story collection, one biography, one novel, one nonfiction survey, and one anthology. Say what you will about MonkeyBrain, but we tend to cover the map.
Finally, how did I do on the parenting front? Well, I have the cutest, smartest kid on the planet. So how do you think I did?
I lost almost half of 2005 to general suckiness, managing in the remaining seven months to write two novels and three short stories. While 2006 was immeasurably better, as years go, I was only able to write a few hours a week for the first eight months, and so fared only slightly better.
Novels:
Further: Beyond the Threshold 80,000 words
X-Men: The Return 72,000 words
Short Stories:
"The Famous Ape" 6,500 words
"The End of Now" 3,000 words
"The Jewel of Leystall" 5,000 words
"Elvera" 3,300 words
Total new words written in 2006: 169,800
That's just a shade less than eleven thousand words more than I wrote in 2005 (the two novels, though both considerably shorter, were written entirely in this calendar year, while last year's books were both partially completed in earlier years). The rest of my writing time was spent working on End of the Century and the expanded Set the Seas on Fire, both of which won't be done until after the new year, and so will be counted towards next year's annual output.
So how about my other part-time jobs, publishing and parenting?
Wearing my editor/publisher hat, I managed to give birth to six books this year, Cover Story: The Art of John Picacio, The Man from the Diogenes Club, Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre, The Hollow Earth, Blood & Thunder: The Life and Times of Robert E. Howard, and Cross Plains Universe: Texans Celebrate Robert E. Howard. For those keeping score at home, that's one art book, one short story collection, one biography, one novel, one nonfiction survey, and one anthology. Say what you will about MonkeyBrain, but we tend to cover the map.
Finally, how did I do on the parenting front? Well, I have the cutest, smartest kid on the planet. So how do you think I did?
