After a slow year for writing in 2014 and a slow start to the year in 2015, it was great to get back to a more productive pace again during the latter half of 2015. In my 2015 goals post, I set a goal of 200,000 words for the year even though I’d originally planned to shoot for a more modest 100,000 words. It turns out that I landed almost exactly in the middle:
2015: 142,434 words
Nearly all of those words were written in the second half of the year, so I’ve finally been able to re-establish some routine and consistency again with my writing. I think that this development has quite a lot to do with being better rested and back to a more normal home routine now that the babies are a little bit older :-) My 2015 writing progress was spread across four different projects: The Emerald Veil (Book 2 in the Mirynthir Chronicles), Scarred (sequel to Shattered), Bloodrunner (Book 1 in a new science fiction series), and Splitter (Book 1 in another new science fiction series). In terms of book completion, it would probably be a better plan to concentrate all of my efforts on one book at a time rather than jumping back and forth like I have been doing, but I’ve been having so much fun writing each of these books that it’s hard to restrain myself. Splitter is actually fairly close to completion and will be the first book out of this list that is finished. After that, I plan to return to The Emerald Veil so that fans of the Mirynthir Chronicles don’t have to wait any longer to find out what happens next for Zaron and the others.
Lastly, I mentioned a little while back about the exciting possibilities that are available now for self-published game designers through The Game Crafter. I’ve been working on ideas for two different games: Starliners (a galaxy-building game of intergalactic trade) and an as-yet-untitled fantasy empire-building card game. I made good progress on both of these designs during 2015, but it will still be some time before they are ready for publication. I know my way around art and photo-editing software a little bit, but I am certainly not an expert, and since I am the artist as well as the game designer for both of these games, it takes me a little while.
Looking ahead to 2016, my writing word-count goal is going to be just what it was last year:
Goal for 2016: 200,000 words
I’m secretly hoping that I can blow this goal out of the water. We’ll have to see how it goes :-) As I mentioned earlier, I anticipate that both Splitter and The Emerald Veil will be finished and published this upcoming year. After that, I’m not sure if I’ll start work on the sequel to Splitter or if I’ll keep working on some of the other ongoing projects. We’ll see what happens as the year rolls along. I think that does it for the year-end summary and for my new goals. I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas and is having a great start to the new year! Happy 2016!