Last Words of 2017 #amwriting


Well, I planned to hit a milestone before the end of 2017, and I thought I’d missed it (damn you, Deb, and your rubbish record-keeping), but in the process of writing this blog post, I discovered I didn’t miss it at all. Hurrah!

What am I talking about?

This…

3,003,924

…is how many words I’ve clocked up since I started writing ‘for real’.

Which is rather good, as I was aiming to hit three million, and I did.
However…my annual word count has dwindled over the past four years:
  • 2001: 105,342
  • 2003: 8,600
  • 2005: 1,062
  • 2007: 111,813
  • 2008: 122,414
  • 2009: 66,735
  • 2010: 52,771
  • 2011: 101,820
  • 2012: 183,373
  • 2013: 515,840
  • 2014: 486,425
  • 2015: 474,692
  • 2016: 399,912
  • 2017: 373,125
😞

New Year, New Me? Hahahahaha. No.
If I was the kind of person to make New Year resolutions (which I’m not—you can set a goal any time you like. Pretty radical, huh?), I’d be setting one to hit 400k words in 2018.


Last Words of Last Year…
Anyway, here were the last words I wrote in 2017, because it’s Monday, and I needed to post something. :) This excerpt is from Goth of Christmas Past:
It was only a couple of minutes later when the door opened, and a voice called, “Are you all sitting down?”

“We are,” Kris confirmed. Krissi clenched her hands in her lap and watched the door, expecting a boisterous crazy thing to come bounding through it at any second. Instead, a kennel assistant stepped into view, followed by a quiet, shy and completely gorgeous yellow Labrador.

“Here’s your new family, Duke.”

With head bowed, the dog advanced on each of them in turn, his tail wagging low and slow the whole time.

“He’ll be a bit wary of you at first,” the kennel assistant said. “As you know, he’s already been to two new homes. He’s good with basic obedience, and he’s house-trained, but he’s only young and likes to chew.”

As for those titles up there? My MSc tutor’s fault, and my editor’s, for being amused the last time I did it, but I think they might help. *shrugs*

Thanks…always…for reading. Have an awesome 2018. :)
Deb x

Comments

  1. AM Leibowitz4:57 pm

    Ooh, puppy! :)

    That is a LOT of words. I don't generally manage more than 150-200k per year max.

    I'm with you--goals can be set any time. I don't have any specific ones in mind. Aside maybe from "don't get burned out again." I'm setting the bar low, LOL.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Debbie McGowan8:49 am

      I think 'don't get burned out again' is a really good goal. I don't know about you, but for me, it's everything but writing that leads to burnout (in the literary realm rather than RL).

      Delete
    2. AM Leibowitz2:15 pm

      Good lord, yes. I think it's the other stuff (in the literary realm) that makes it so hard to focus on the good part (the actual writing). I just need to remember that I always have the option of keeping my mouth shut, which is really hard for me.

      Delete

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