Word count 2014

Remember how I said I finished a novel this year? Just kidding, I actually finished two novels. And now I’m going to make you stare at word count charts, because I’m an obsessive weirdo when it comes to counting up all them words.

My total word count for this year, not counting this blog, was 135,900 words. That is, in layman’s terms, way too many words.

Yes, I know this color coding doesn’t match the other charts. No, I’m not going to fix it. This is my navel gazing session, thank you very much.

The glowing lines on this chart are my work this year. Novel #1 is the story I set out to write, and novel #2 is the accidental novel I started, and finished, just to see if I could.

And here’s the words per week chart. I’m getting better about writing consistently, but you can still see that my enthusiasm for a project only lasts 3-4 months. Next year, I’m going to try taking real breaks between projects, so I can recharge and hopefully avoid burnout.

Both of these novels will sit on my hard drive until January 1st, and then I’ll begin the process of cleaning them up. Novel #1 needs a complete rewrite, and novel #2 requires serious pruning. Novel #1 may be marketable some day in the very distant future. I’m going to spend 2015 doing a complete rewrite and then sending it out to beta readers. Novel #2 is such a strange duck that I doubt I’ll ever find a publisher willing to take a chance on it. I’ll make it as good as it can possibly get, because goodness knows I need the practice, but if it ever sees the light of day it’ll probably be free to read on this blog.