seventhe | 2020: Words (Reply)

Have a lot of things to say about 2020, but let's start on a positive note: writing.

I wrote over 459,000 words in 2020. (1)

that's an average of over 1200 words per day. just under 8700 words per week. this includes fanfic (64%), original fiction (5%), paid work writing (22%), and 'paid' fanfic writing for commissions / Patreon / zines (8%).

i averaged about 5500 words per week of fanfic. that's like, a decent one-shot every single week. certainly didn't see that in the output, but that's because fuckin' everything i write has to be ridiculously long.

out of this year's 290,933 words of fanfiction, 164,535 of them were Old Vines (56%). the rest went into a smattering of works and a bunch of things that haven't been posted yet.

i wrote just about 1800 words per week for pay, which tracks. it isn't solid income, but it counts.

i'm not going to get into the paid / commissions issue here, but i do want to point out that the portion of fanfic words i made this year that indirectly gave me money was only 8% of all of my annual writing, which seems fair.

there were only 3 weeks this year where i wrote absolutely 0 words at all, and one of those is a september week (see 1). My record for words written in one day is just over 8000. There were 149 days this year where I wrote nothing (41%) and 217 days where I did (59%). 217 days of writing means that if i sat down to write on any given day, i would put out an average of 2100 words.

so what does this mean? well first, it means a big fat ol' congratulations to me because this is more words than ive ever written ever in my entire damn life.

and in addition, a couple notes:

if i get my ass to the computer and start writing, i average over 2000 words for that day. some of this is work words, yeah, but still: if i get my ass to the computer and start writing, i have a good chance of making solid progress. that's HUGE.
still only wrote 60% of all days of the year. for someone trying to earn money as a writer, i need to do better at THAT, i think. i wouldn't need to dump so many words per day if i had more consistency.
almost 300K of fanfic lmaoooooo i weep at my life choices (2)
if i want a patreon following i need to update more frequently.
how have i written this many words and i still have so many ideas aaaaaaa
i rarely count outlines or anything, so almost all of this is actual writing.
i can tell when i started writing Old Vines because i wrote 31K in one week.
460K words in a year is just. holy shit, self. i struggled in previous years to hit the GYWO target of 200K/yr. granted, this was the year of 2020, where i didn't have consistent full-time employment due to the pandemic, so i had a LOT more time, but i am still hard core impressed.

my writing has grown a lot. i get lost in my own phrasings far less frequently ~~unless im writing and drinking at the same time~~, i'm far better at plotting things, and i can put out a 600 word piece for pay in about 30-40 min if i focus (including both the research time, writing, and editing). my WPM has drastically improved over the year. turns out when you do something repeatedly for 60% of your actual days, you get better at it.

So what does this mean for 2021?

i need to better balance original fiction among the paid words and fanfic words. this means i need to get as excited about original fiction work as i am about my many fanfic ideas. i wrote fanfic over original fic, like, 9:1 -- i don't want to write less fanfic, hell, i have so many more ideas, but i would like the ratio to be more like 3:1 or 3:2. that's a huge switch.
i need to finish up outstanding commissions and switch my focus to building my patreon up, both with fandom and original content.
for putting out 5500 words of fanfic a week, i sure don't post like it. probably more consistency would help aka focusing on one or three projects at a time and posting regularly, instead of bouncing all over the place and only posting one thing a month.
i'm still a goddamn boss and i want to beat this next year, except that i can't predict what my work / income situation will be, so i'm not setting goals excessively high, either.

Anyway. Thanks to ANYONE who has supported my writing this last year - comments, kudos, reblogs, patreon, every single bit of it. y'all are wonderful, y'all are lovely. I appreciate you.

(1) i know it's over because (a) to make tracking easier i rounded work words to their nominal value rather than actual word count and (b) the month of september didnt exist and i only tracked, like, one thing during that month, a chapter of Old Vines. (2) then again fanfic and fandom saved my life during 2020 so i dont necessarily regret it, just, wow