I'm coming up on the one-year anniversary of the day I began to take writing fiction seriously. Before mid-November 2013, I dabbled in fiction. NaNoWriMo was an annual curse. I'd start strong and inevitably wind down when I hit a plot problem. Last year, thanks to a sleepless night writing a morality tale in my head, years spent writing non-fiction, and Rachel Aaron's excellent writing productivity primer, 2K to 10K: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love, my mind finally hit critical mass and I found a way over that hurdle.
I've learned an awful lot about myself along the way. Writing fiction was always a dream of mine. I just couldn't figure out how to get around the plotting problems I faced. In fact, I didn't even know that was my main obstacle to writing fiction until last year when I had a huge breakthrough that preceded my writing the first draft of my first novel, The Prophecy (Daughters of the People, Book 1).
I've talked about that breakthrough before, but what I haven't shared is how it affected my life. In fact, the change is so radical, I think of it as Before and After. Before, I had no real plans, no ambition, no driving force outside of caring for my son. After, well, I guess that speaks for itself. Nearly one year after beginning the first draft of The Prophecy and eight and a half months after publishing it, I've published five titles under the Lucy Varna pen name and another ten under a different pen name, plus two short stories set in the world of the People that were published through my newsletter and website. I have another five stories in the first draft stage (three under Lucy Varna, two under that other pen name), one in the final editing stage, and several more in the planning stage. All in all, it looks very much like I have, at long last, found the ambition I always thought I lacked completely.
For the writers out there who are curious, here's how my statistics stack up: 461,286 published words over fourteen publications (one of the titles under my other pen name is a bundle of previously published works); 86,012 words in the book to be published soon; 141,290 words over five first drafts; for a total of 688,588 fictional words written since 19 November 2013. That's about sixty thousand words per month or about two thousand words per day (approximately two to two and a half hours of actual writing time per day). I spend a good deal of time in editing and revision, as well as on marketing, blogging, researching, and learning. (Yes, I'm still learning! I hope I always am.)
I'd love to say that I'm earning a full-time living off of writing, but that just isn't the case. Every month, though, I earn a little more. So far, this past October has been my best month. Nearly two hundred copies (over several distribution streams) of those fifteen titles were sold and around 135 copies were borrowed. Additionally, readers downloaded more than 5,000 copies for free. I hit the three figure mark in sales and hope to improve on that this month. Plus, I'm looking forward to releasing at least three new titles before the end of the year, including Tempered, the next book in the Daughters of the People Series. All of my books are starting to get reviews, and the vast majority of those have been favorable. That readers actually enjoy what comes out of my mind blows me away.
Now, some readers might have concerns that I'm slowing down because I rearranged the publication of titles in the Daughters of the People Series. That isn't the case at all. What I'm trying to do is strike a balance between the business of writing and allowing my creativity to spark as it will. That means cushioning my writing schedule so that if I have an idea that strikes hard (like the Halloween short I just published) I can write it without sacrificing work on planned publications.
This time next year, I hope I can look back on my second year of writing fiction with even better news, but for now, I'm very pleased with this year's progress and hope readers are enjoying reading stories set in the crazy worlds I dream up.