At the closing of the year

Before I write the last story for this year [but not the last story for this year's Year of Instants... that's another story] I thought I'd mark my progress in word counts.

The novel I'm currently working on should hit 62K today, and 63K before the weekend.

This year's Year of Instants is standing at a little over 142K, including titles and menus. I have twenty-nine stories to go before I can bundle it all up and get it out as a pay-what-you-want anthology.

And I have 40K sitting in the master file for Iris and Peter Get Married (Eventually) with more to come. And a mere 5K in that Papyton fluff I've been working on during the rare occasions when my office is not actively trying to roast me alive.

So, all up, I have written something in excess of two hundred and forty-nine thousand words. Give or take five hundred or so.

If I could focus strictly on writing Novels, I could fill a library shelf.

Mind you, if I could focus at all, I wouldn't be writing my blog entry at nearly nine o'clock and still yet to have breakfast.

There are two visible patches of floor under the laundry mountain, now. I aim to enlarge them as time goes by. I put on a load before I ever sat down and got lost in Tumblr. When I get up from roasting, I shall put on another load.

Plenty of time.

I have few plans for New Year's beyond making sure we have stuff (we should) and trying not to fall asleep (I probably will).

But I do know my resolutions:

  • Keep writing
  • Keep nibbling at the big problems
  • Do my utmost to get into dead-tree press
  • Keep up good habits

Four is plenty. Really. I read somewhere that if you make five or more, at least three of them are doomed to fail. These are positively worded and should not be taxing on dear old distractible me. And they're vague enough that I can keep them.

I think I gave up entirely on Self-Shill Saturday long about March. If I could hire a publicist I would. Just... tell your friends about me. Okay?