2022 Writing Year In Review
It’s the time of the year where I look back at 2022 and see how I did with my writing. If you’re not one for numbers and stats, feel free to skip this post.
I learned that I needed to track my writing or else I had the habit of telling myself I’d done nothing at all over the course of the year. This, of course, is never true, but I feel like it is. The whole concept of tracking my time spent writing came from a suggestion from my dad back in 2010 when I started writing radio drama scripts. I didn’t know at the time that a combination of time spent and words written gave me better data. It took many years before I found a spreadsheet I liked, and then a few years later, I found an even better one.
Since then, I’ve cobbled together three writing trackers I found on-line with aspects that I wanted to track for myself. There are still many things I would love to know, for curiosity’s sake, that I don’t know how to track.
Here goes.
Lofty Goals
I added 34 different projects that I thought I would work on, with an estimated total word count of 906,000. As you will soon see, this did not happen.
“Portal Report” series, books 1-4
I decided I couldn’t work on this until I had more of the series planned, but I did write a chapter from the middle of Book #3 to use as a short story for a Valentine’s Day challenge my writing group hosted.
Goal (total): 240,000
Final (total): 3,104
1% complete
1 total day written with an average of 3,104 words per day.
“Fourth Prince” series, books 1-3 and snippets
This is my baby. I knew it probably wouldn’t happen this year but I put it down to make me feel like I wasn’t neglecting it. I did start writing the first few chapters of Book #1 and some other notes.
Goal (total): 120,000
Final (total): 7, 708
6% complete
7 days total to write 7,248 with an average of 1,036 per day.
Other notes: 1 day to write 460 words.
“Charlemagne” series, books 1-4
I really wanted to to work on this one and even got a few good chapters of the first book written in January.
Goal (total): 180,000
Final (total): 7,584
4% complete
9 total days written with an average of 844 words per day.
Dr. Thorndyke Mysteries, 3 radio drama scripts
I had three scripts to finish up from last year. Looking at these numbers, I think I forgot to enter the remaining words from the third script that I wrote. There is no way I turned in a script only 43% written.
Goal (total): 12,600
Final (total): 10,408
83% complete
9 total days written with an average of 1,156 words per day.
Of Ice and Roses, first draft
This novel had a release deadline, so every other area of my written suffered while I struggled through the first draft. I had done the outline and about 10,000 words last fall but ended up scrapping them and starting over.
Goal (total): 70,000
Final (total): 71,589
102% complete
57 total days written with an average of 1,256 words per day.
Client Memoir project
The project has been in limbo for a while and I feel really bad about not working on it. It’s now top of my list for next year if the client wants to proceed.
Goal (total): 40,000
Final (total): 0
0% complete
WorldAnvil-Flamesend world
I’ve been trying to get my notes entered into the wiki-style site so readers can explore what I’ve created. I ended up spending most of my time on a massive restructure of the folder organization and linking system.
Goal (total): 30,000
Final (total): 1,214
4% complete
8 total days written with an average of 152 words per day.
Blog Posts
The numbers on my spreadsheet are not calculating correctly so if they are to be believed…
Goal (total): 12,000
Final (total): 14,919
124% complete
12 total days written with an average of 1,244 words per day.
Developmental editorial letters and comments
I really didn’t know what to expect and was certain I would be building my business this year. I didn’t, but I did get a bunch of words in comments back and forth with an author for a beta read I did.
Goal (total): 30,000
Final (total): 5,511
18% complete
3 total days written with an average of 1,244 words per day.
Beta Reading, time only
7 total days @ 585 minutes (9.75 hours) with an average of 1.4 hours spent reading per day.
Conference Notes
I really didn’t know what to expect in this category. I set it up to be for in person and recorded writing lectures. The bulk of these notes are from the Realm Makers Writers Conference I attended July 21-23, 2022
Goal (total): 10,000
Final (total): 12,288
123% complete
6 total days written with an average of 2,048 words per day.
Of Ice and Roses, final draft
This was a very intense two weekends and one week of editing. I’d love to never do that again.
12 total days @ 2,707 minutes (45.12 hours) with an average of 3.76 hours spent editing per day.
Calliope Summer
The novel I didn’t plan to work on this year.
Goal (total): 0
Final (total): 9,298
8 total days written with an average of 1,163 words per day.
Year-at-a-Glance
103 actual days written @ 28.3% of the year
1,231 average daily words written
Best days for writing:
Sundays @ 1,955 average words
Fridays @ 1,697 average words
Worst days for writing:
Thursdays @ 972 average words
Mondays @ 945 average words
Best sprint lengths:
31-45 minutes @ 24,126 total words
16-30 minutes @ 23,868 total words
46+ minutes @ 23,487 total words
Worst sprint lengths:
1-15 min @ 9,917
Range of total words per month:
5,600 to 26,000 with the 15,000 range occurring in five months.
Q1 and Q3 had the most writing accomplished @ 49,742 total words and 44,231 total words respectively.
Second quarter @ 28,326 total words
Fourth quarter @ 4,480 total words
