On November 30th, I noted that I’d had a little bit of irregularity in my writing thanks to some real life issues getting in the way, and I concluded with a challenge to myself to hang on to the momentum I’d found toward the end of the month, and to increase it a little, in December.
Oh, wow. Did I ever. December, with 34,294 words, became my 2024 month with the highest word count. A good bit of this was composing blog posts that went up during the first half of the month, as well as revising two shared-universe stories that had previously been accepted. I also did a good bit of work on Standing in the Dark, particularly during the last weekend of the month.
Final monthly writing stats for 2024 (click for larger version)
I hadn’t planned on anything like this happening. I’d been wanting to stay the course with Standing in the Dark, but “Stay With Me” simply would not be ignored. On December 10th, I finally gave in and started writing it; I finished it and posted it on December 22nd. Once I stopped fighting it, it came out remarkably quickly. Since I had not asked my regular beta reader whether she’d be interested in the story, and since I later realized she wouldn’t be interested in beta reading it anyway (we disagree on one of the debates within the fandom), I went ahead and flew without a beta.
There are days that being a teacher’s kid comes in handy. So does spelling and grammar check. I’ve made a few tweaks to “Stay With Me” since I first posted it, but not very many.
My other projects suffered a little while I was doing it, though. By the time the final weekend of December rolled around, I’d only added one-and-a-half chapters to Standing in the Dark. Fortunately, that weekend, I had already signed up for a Weekend Intensive. I got two-and-a-half more chapters done then. My wonderful amazing beta reader returned them to me yesterday.
Unfortunately, I did fall off a bit on the blogging toward the end of December, but part of that was due to the holidays and part of that was because I was determined to get the outpatient procedure I needed to address my medical issues done before my deductible reset on January 1. We just barely made it; I had it on December 30th, and it was the afternoon of January 1st before I could stay awake for more than two or three hours at a time. (This is typical following general anesthesia.) The first time I really felt truly coherent was yesterday, January 3rd.
That said, I have ideas for more blog posts, so I expect that in January I will be able to pick up the pace some more. I’d also like to see if I can keep the momentum going with Standing in the Dark and get the next five chapters done and off to my beta reader. That will leave me easily being able to finish the story in late February or early March. By the time I’m finished posting it (at a rate of one chapter per day), I will probably have gotten to April 1st which is when I can post my stories from Through The Years 3 online.
But I’m getting ahead of myself when I think about posting. What I need to do now is write. Fortunately, it seems that the outpatient surgery has done the trick and addressed some of the problems I’ve been having. Once I’m fully recovered from it, I should be able to pick up a lot of steam. And that is exactly what I intend to do: my goal for 2025 is 236,500 words, which means I need to get busy!