So a friend and I were chatting about writing and taking stock, and she said, “You’ve had a great year. Four titles to your name. Think you can repeat that in 2016?”
I laughed. What else could I do?
‘Show Don’t Tell’ and ‘Conversations With The Dead’ are the only two books I wrote and published in 2015, and they are very short. My two novels, ‘Divide and Conquer’ and ‘Guarded,’ were finished last year and represented nearly a decade of writing and learning.
Don’t misunderstand. 2015 became the year I fulfilled many of my dreams. I’m proud of what I’ve achieved. If I never published anything again, I’d be okay with that. Yet nothing was handed to me. This wasn’t a lottery win or a fairy godmother deal. In addition to working my normal job, I sat (almost) day after day hammering at my keyboard, writing and rewriting, doubting, laughing, crying. My friends, readers and Facebook friends helped me in more ways than I can count, but there have been sacrifices.
I have plans for 2016, but who knows what’s going to happen?
My novella is nearly done, but I don’t know if it’s going to be part of my 2015 portfolio. My next novel is also a chapter away from being finished.
In the end, though, this isn’t about output or earnings or time. Writing is all about the worlds I create and the characters inhabiting them. This is what I want to do. Everything else is secondary.
