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Wow, has it really been a year already? I launched this book late last December and kicked things off with 2021 in review, so I guess things have come full circle. What a time to be alive! And because I love throwing confetti and reflecting on my goals, here's my wrap-up of things I've found worth celebrating in 2022 ✨
This past year, I:
❖ Finished, edited, and started posting As the Crow Falls, my Dark-Fantasy/Romance ace Cinderella retelling (Goal: ✅ )
❖ Wrote a novella alongside Wattpad's Open Novella Contest after complications with the contest rules made me decide not to enter. Also limited myself to just one novella, as hoped! (Goal: ✅ )
❖ Spearheaded an ONC-adjacent novella festival to keep the community alive for others who didn't want to enter this year
❖ Finished, edited, and posted Song of the Deep (Goal: ✅ ) and promptly discovered that its series was not, in fact, a trilogy. Started writing the third book of four, City of Coral 😂
❖ Kept up weekly posting on that series (Goal: ✅ )
❖ Submitted three books to the Wattys (Goal: ✅ )
❖ Double Wattys Shortlisted AGAIN (🤯), once with the same book, and once with a different one that I never expected would win such a prize. Learned that my pantsed works might be better than I thought!
❖ Participated in all three NaNo events with at least a 50k goal for each (Goal: ✅ )
❖ Camp NaNo in April: 58k
❖ Camp NaNo in July: 60k
❖ NaNoWriMo in November: See "new monthly record" below
❖ Broke every single one of my writing records to date:
❖ New monthly record (176k) in November
❖ New weekly record (55k) in August-September
❖ New daily record (15k) within that weekly one
❖ Set a yearly goal of 500k again and then smashed it. Closed out the year with ove 600k, also a new record (Goal: ✅ )
❖ Resisted the temptation to plot my next epic series (The Hattu Empire Series, aka HES, aka Desert Epic) until it was ready to be plotted (Goal: ✅ ). Found out it was ready. Started plotting. Started writing. Promptly set a psycho monthly record with it, as well as a record for the single longest book I've ever written
❖ Discovered that HES is going to be longer (3M words) than I originally thought, but I love it so much, I'm not even complaining!
❖ Wrote an additional 200k of planning, worldbuilding, and zero-drafts, especially on HES
❖ Wrote and posted another Horror novella for Halloween (Goal: ✅ )
❖ Got whacked upside the head by a sprintable book idea (Goal: ✅ ) and sprinted it. Welcome to the world, Red Rover!
❖ Got front-page Featured twice with Red Rover, pushing it to be the fastest-growing book I've ever posted on Wattpad
❖ Got invited to the Wattpad Creators Program 🎉
❖ Consciously improved the way I approach scene and chapter structure, and improved my developmental editing as a result (Goal: ✅ )
❖ Got to work with not one but two professional editors on different books
❖ Put a ton of work into my fringe genres—Horror and Romance—to study and practice them (Goal: ✅ ). Discovered that I love them both a lot more than I thought!
I also have a few 2022 goals I did not accomplish, which I think are worth acknowledging:
❖ I did not finish Rocks Can Dance, standalone sequel to White Crystal Butterflies. Other projects kept taking precedence, and I just never managed to find time for this one
❖ I did not write Stormrunner, standalone sequel to Dreamcatcher, and in fact dropped it from my queue. It was the first (and thus far only) time I've ever done this. The full explanation can be found in my April 17, 2021 post in this book
❖ I completely fell off the bandwagon with writing and posting flash fiction. Grad school + having an actual writing job meant it became one too many things to keep in my brain at once
❖ I did not revive my Instagram account, and could not find the energy to do so when my life was so chaotic on other fronts. I'm... not that sad about it
Those were the practical highlights of my writing year, but I also need to thank all my readers, and all the communities I've been a member, mod, and organizer of, for being highlights of their own kind. Whether in person or online, and especially online during lockdowns, you guys have made—and continue to make—my writing life a social, productive, and rewarding one.
Here's to another year!
What will that one contain?
Well, that merits its own chapter in this book, now, doesn't it?
Next chapter: Jan 1, 2023: Coming Up Next
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