It’s time once again for my annual year-in-review post. Let’s get to it:
The Raw Data
New Fiction: 75,695
Other Verbiage (blog entries, crits, etc.): 21,053
Total New Words: 96,748
Rewrites: 36,744
Submissions: 36
Rejections: 32 (includes withdrawn manuscripts)
Sales: 2
Publications: 0 (One mag folded after buying the story, the other mag hasn’t debuted yet. Just the way that worked out.)
Conventions Attended: ConStellation, Contagion, OSFest, WorldCon, World Fantasy Con
Assessment
Last year at this time, the word was failure. This year, it seems to be improvement. My 2011 goals were as follows:
1. Write at least 100K of new fiction. Fell short of this one by 25K, but that’s a damned sight better than 2010, when I missed by nearly 60K.
2. Write at least 100K in rewrites. Fell short of this one by quite a lot, but that only stood to reason, given that I didn’t have that much material to rewrite. Of course, if I had started my novel sooner, I might have had a shot at it. But jeez, gang, I didn’t even begin to conceive of Apocalypse Pictures Presents until May or thereabouts.
3. Get the website up. Did it! Hooray and huzzah! If you only knew how many years I’d been trying to accomplish this one. Major win.
4. Improve submission statistics, including novel queries. Uh . . . kinda just barely did this. By one. But hey, it counts. I guess.
5. Continue critiquing. Yep. Did some crits for the WorldCon writing workshop.
6. Continue weekly progress reports. Yep.
2011 came with more than its share of disappointments and discouragements. I was so ecstatic to sell a story to Realms of Fantasy, which made it all the harder when Realms folded before the piece could see print. Yeah, it was that kind of year. Even so, I hit 4 goals out of 6, came close on another, and totally missed one. Compare that to 2010, when I only hit 2 of 6. Definite improvement.
And with that in mind . . .
Goals for 2012
1. Write at least 100K of new fiction.
2. Write at least 100K in rewrites.
3. Improve submission statistics, including novel queries.
4. Continue critiquing.
5. Continue weekly progress reports.
Basically, the same goals as 2011, except for getting the website up, as that one is (hooray and huzzah!) accomplished.
Right. So let’s get started.
