I feel as though I’ve had no time to stop and breathe this year. Even now, as I write in a cabin up in Vermont, I find myself gasping for air.
I know that this is of my own making. No one drives me to do what I do. I do it because I love it. I do it because I know that, no matter how much I gasp for air in this process, I would not breathe at all without it. Writing has become so much a part of me that to take it away would be to erase my very being.
That may seem dramatic to you, but it rings true to me. I’ve devoted so much time over the last five years to honing this craft. I don’t think I was very good at the start. I might have been better than average (this is a dubious claim, I am sure), but I was nowhere near the quality I needed to be to publish. I had to work to get here. And, when so much of life has come naturally, that is a difficult pill to swallow, but I’ve never been one to back away from a challenge (at least not a largely intellectual one, I think I would flee from an angry rhino or vicious chuhuahua.)
I knew even when I took the first step that this would be a long road, but I am stubborn. It is one of my favorite qualities about myself. Yes, I might be told that I perseverate, but perseverance means winning the race, at whatever pace is necessary.
So, I will keep gasping for air. I will love every moment, even when it is hard, because I am doing what I love, and should I be so fortunate, I will do it full-time someday. Maybe then the anxiety will subside. Then again, I know myself, and I know that if given more time, I will only raise my goals and my standards. I joke that I am a terrible boss to myself, and it is true. My standards are high, but that is only because I really love what I do.
Did I Reach My Goals?
Write 365k words (aka write 1k a day on average)/beat 2024 word count: I wrote 288k words this year. Once again, that 365k-word goal is my white whale. I will hit it one of these years, but the real question is whether that will happen while I still have a full-time job or not. I do expect, though, that once I go full-time with my writing, my yearly word count will well exceed 365k words a year. However, even though my on-paper goal was 1k a day or 365k words for the year, in my 2024 update, I said that at the very least I wanted to outdo my 2024 numbers, and I did outdo them by 74k words. So, I will renew that part of the goal here in saying that next year I want to outdo my 288k from this year.
Finish Cut Throat and start querying it: I did not finish Cut Throat. I revised it again, and though the beginning is solid (I reread it last week and loved it), I determined I wasn’t ready to write it. I have a vision for this story that was a bit beyond my capacity at that tim,e and I wanted to be able to give it the time it deserved. That is why I moved on to Surrealist. Surrealist was meant to be a simpler project. In some ways, it was, and in other ways, it was significantly more difficult. However, I know I made the right decision because Surrealist has taught me a lot about the stories I want to tell and the kinds of books I want to write.
Write and revise Project B: I wrote Project B in January, and every part of it is done to completion!
Write and revise Project C: I wrote a first draft, but have not yet gotten to revise it. This will happen early in the new year.
Start drafting Project Rose: This project got pushed back with the delay caused by rewriting half of Cut Throat and writing all of Surrealist. That is okay, as I will get to it sometime in the new year.
My secret goal was accomplished this year, and I am holding it for myself even now. I share a lot here, but some things I keep for myself.
Monthly Stats
January
Wordcount: 59,757
Daily Average Word count: 1,712
Mainly: Drafting (93.9%)
Main Project: Project B
February
Wordcount: 19,702
Daily Average Word count: 703
Mainly: Drafting (57.0%)
Main Project: Cut Throat
March
Wordcount: 23,175
Daily Average Word count: 747
Mainly: Revising (62.0%)
Main Project: Cut Throat
April
Wordcount: 26,769
Daily Average Word count: 892
Mainly: Revising (85.2%)
Main Project: Project B
May
Wordcount: 15,296
Daily Average Word count: 493
Mainly: Drafting (96.6%)
Main Project: Surrealist
June
Wordcount: 24,370
Daily Average Word count: 812
Mainly: Drafting (89.3%)
Main Project: Surrealist
July
Wordcount: 24,458
Daily Average Word count: 788
Mainly: Drafting (78.7%)
Main Project: Surrealist
August
Wordcount: 11,079
Daily Average Word count: 357
Mainly: Drafting (98.2%)
Main Project: Surrealist
September
Wordcount: 21,528
Daily Average Word count: 717
Mainly: Drafting (91.4%)
Main Project: Surrealist
October
Wordcount: 23,553
Daily Average Word count: 759
Mainly: Drafting (89,7%)
Main Project: Project C
November
Wordcount: 29,709
Daily Average Word count: 990
Mainly: Drafting (81.6%)
Main Project: Project C
December
Wordcount: 8,604
Daily Average Word count: 278
Mainly: Editing (59.3%)
Main Project: Surrealist
Year Total: 288,036
How I’ve Grown and Developed as a Writer
This year has been filled with growth as a writer and as a person in general. I believe I’ve gotten to the point where my writing skills are starting to catch up to my ideas and vision. I am still on the steeper part of my learning curve as a writer (which is a good thing and rather exciting), but I can feel the climb getting a bit easier.
Surrealist opened my eyes to the fact that I can pull philosophy and metaphysics into a science fiction book without it being too heady and cerebral for the average reader. This is not to say that Surrealist isn’t very strange and a bit disorienting (it definitely is), but it does mean that it is more accessible than I might have been able to make it a few years ago, or even at the beginning of the year.
The fact that I can write more literary prose and get my strange ideas across to people feels like a massive accomplishment. I still have a long way to go, but it is notable progress. I also realized that this is the sort of writing I want to do going forward.
Even my books that will skew more commercial will still have the literary bent that I’ve found in Surrealist. I want my stories to mean something that I consciously add to them.
I think of myself as a writer first and foremost, but in the pursuit of traditional publishing, I need to be a businesswoman. I’ve made multiple steps forward on this front by going to conventions and meeting a lot of new people within the industry. Going to conventions and interacting with other industry professionals has greatly altered my perspective on where I am with my writing and publication journey. I have a feeling that I am much closer to publication than people expect. The timing just feels right.
Conventions
Boskone was once again fruitful. For being a smaller convention, it packs a punch. The panels rival Worldcon. I love all the science panels and find them to be the most useful ones. I imagine this will only increase as I progress in my writing and publication journey.
That said, I have decided to take this year off from Boskone. It doesn’t line up well with my querying and work schedule, and after going to Worldcon this year, I want to prioritize that trip.
Seattle Worldcon: I don’t think anything could have prepared me for Worldcon. My only other in-person convention was Boskone, and it is nowhere near as large.
I met so many people and made some new friends along the way. I went to the Writing Excuses meetup, where I met some new people, a few of whom I’m still in contact with. I met a couple in the dealer’s room from Pittsburgh, and we’ve become friends. I even went to his Kickstarter graphic novel launch party, where I met even more fascinating people.
Brandon Sanderson was in attendance at Worldcon (I had already planned my trip and bought tickets, flights, and a hotel before he’d even been nominated for a Hugo and thus decided to go). I enjoyed the panel with Robin Hobb, Ryan Cahill, George R. R. Martin, Rebecca Roanhorse, and him. It was quite eventful.
The biggest highlight, of course, was the evening barcon after the convention hours had closed. This is where I met the most people and felt the most part of the industry. People asked me about my project, I pitched it, and every single time, they were interested in my story. It made me feel like I belong in the industry and that I’m almost there.
Goals
- Write 365k words (aka write 1k a day on average)/beat 2025 word count
- Finish Surrealist and start querying it.
- Finish Project C
- Write and revise Project D
- Write and revise Project Rose
- Write and
reviseCut Throat - Other secret goals: These keep growing. Maybe you will learn about them in the future, maybe you won’t, but I will edit this blog and add them later, if and when they do come out.
Yes, I understand that this means I have five different projects scheduled for some level of development next year. Surrealist and Cut Throat have the advantage of already being drafted or partially drafted, but the other three are nearly completely drafting to finish or completely drafting to finish.
The Year Ahead
Part of the reason that this did not come out around the new year is that I have changed my writing schedule between writing this and hitting publish. All my projects after Surrealist and Project C have been pushed back because Surrealist is taking more time than originally anticipated. Thus, this section below has been altered from my original draft to reflect that change.
Five projects is a lot for one year, but I am excited for it. I will start the year with a revision of Surrealist. Then I will do another pseudo first draft of Project C. It will either get one more round of revisions or go straight to beta readers (depending on the quality of the draft).
After Project C, I will go back to Surrealist for a line edit before sending it off to beta readers. While Surrealist is off with Beta readers, I will work on drafting Project D. Then I will get Surrealist back, revise once more, polish, and start querying it. My goal is to get Surrealist query ready by June. I am beyond excited to get Surrealist to this point. However, there is a lot of work between now and this coming to fruition.
After Surrealist is off to the query trenches, I finish up Project D if it is not already done, and then jump into Project Rose. If all goes to plan, I will finish it up and jump into Cut Throat for the end of the year.
Hopefully, the third time is the charm with Cut Throat, and I can get it queryable by mid-2027. It is a bit of a shame that the earliest I might be working on Cut Throat is November of 2026, when it is so much on my mind at the moment. This always seems to happen to me. I am never simply content to stay with my current project without dreaming up ideas for later projects. I could probably use the brain power on Surrealist at the moment, but sometimes it makes more sense to let my mind wander. It’s going to do it anyway, so it might be best not to fight it.
I am hopeful that this is the year that I get a publishing deal. I’m closer than I’ve ever been, and likely closer than most people ever get. If I do get a deal this year, it will be with Surrealist. My little baby, whom I love so much, has potential beyond anything else I’ve ever written. I can see its path, and I pray that it will find it. It only takes one yes to change everything.
Next Month
I will start the new year strong with a revision of Surrealist. I will hopefully finish Surrealist as soon as possible. I am behind because of the holidays, but that can not be helped. Then it will go to one of my Alpha readers for a lightning round critique. Once it is with my Alpha reader, I will do a pseudo first draft of Project C, and that should take me through the end of January.
The only other project I will probably work on this month will be a short story that I need to revise and send off to literary magazines.
So much of the pace of the year is set in January, and I am hoping that I can set a good one.
What I know is that I am excited for the next story, and the next, and the next, and the one after that. Gasp after gasp, breathing my breath.
Happy New Year!
Naomi
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