![\"2013\"](\"http:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/2013.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
SUMMARY<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s been a bit of a mixed year for me.<\/p>\n On the positive side, I had two successful #100kwords100days challenges (January and July), and a successful NaNoWriMo. At the time of writing (December 30th), I\u2019ve written 409,575 new words this year. Not all were fiction – the \u2018rules\u2019 of #100kwords100days allow for blog posts and planning to be included in word counts. But that\u2019s still a good total for one year.<\/p>\n On the negative side, I didn\u2019t publish anything this year.<\/p>\n SHORT FICTION<\/strong><\/p>\n One of my aims this year was to complete a selection of dark Christmas-related tales, and to publish them in time for the Christmas<\/p>\n But … I wasn\u2019t pleased with them. So<\/span>season. I did this – I created ten new short stories, at around 21,000 words in total, which I was going to bundle with three previously-released short pieces which had a Christmas theme.\u00a0Some of them worked, but one or two didn\u2019t – they weren\u2019t strong enough stories, and my writing wasn\u2019t the best. So I shelved the project. I didn\u2019t delete it, and They Will Return, with tough rewrites to sharpen up the writing. Depending on the situation when next Christmas trundles alone, I will either publish them as a collection or release them for free as singles. Watch this space.<\/p>\n The bottom line is – I\u2019m not going to release my writing unless I think it\u2019s the best it can be. The quality of the writing is more important than any seasonal-related marketing strategy. I only wish that were the case with some other self-published writers.<\/p>\n LONG FICTION<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve completed 3 long works to \u201cdraft zero\u201d status – a 65,000 word crime story, and two thrillers at 45k and 47k each.<\/p>\n But therein lies the problem. I love writing, I love the buzz I get from creating new characters and situations. But, before 2013, I was a terrible finisher. I never really completed anything but short fiction. So one of my goals for this\u00a0year was to finish some long fiction, and I\u2019m pleased I\u2019ve been able to do that.<\/p>\n However, I\u2019m still not completely happy with my stories. At the time of writing, I\u2019m not sure whether they\u2019re going to be edited, or put to one side. All is not lost, and I have good news in my \u201c2014 – look ahead\u201d post, coming soon, including a new life for a piece of writing that\u2019s over ten years old. NaNoWriMo 2003, your time is up!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SUMMARY It\u2019s been a bit of a mixed year for me. On the positive side, I had two successful #100kwords100days challenges (January and July), and a successful NaNoWriMo. At the time of writing (December 30th), I\u2019ve written 409,575 new words this year. Not all were fiction – the \u2018rules\u2019 of #100kwords100days allow for blog posts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,9,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-100kwords100days","category-my-writing","category-nanowrimo","category-thinking"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5y3CH-7k","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}