I got off to such a good start last year. I was writing every day, not the 1000 words I was aiming for but still pretty close. I hit the 249th day of a writing streak. I was even posting monthly updates here.
And then I stopped.
I didn’t hit a wall exactly, but I needed to ease off, get some distance and refill my creative well. I wrote just over 1000 words from September to December and that was it. My total word count for the year was 198,945 which is so frustratingly close to a nice round 200,000 that I wish I’d paid more attention and thrown together a few words over the Christmas break.
That was the original plan. I’ve had three weeks off from my day job and I was going to use that time to ramp up my writing again. Instead I played Alan Wake Remastered and watched a lot of TV and movies. Which was exactly what I needed.
I guess there were probably times during the break where I considered giving up writing, but I’ve tried that before and it doesn’t stick. I always end up coming up with an irresistible idea that drags me back to the keyboard and as soon as my fingers touch the keys I feel the familiar buzz of creation and I’m back writing.
That’s exactly what happened over the Christmas break. I’ve been considering writing a straight up, old school horror novel and a couple of weeks ago I settled on a concept. I’ll spend a while letting my subconscious come up with the details but on January 1st I sat down and outlined the ideas I have so far and I’m pretty excited about them. It’s definitely an 80s style horror story along the lines of IT or Stranger Things.
I considered diving into this idea straight away but I’ve got a science fiction novel that I’ve been wanting to revise for a long time. I reread it yesterday and it’s good enough that I’ve decided to do that rewrite first. I’m aiming to get that done by the end of February.
I’ve also got books two and three in my supernatural mystery series planned out. From a business perspective, those should come first but I’ll see how I’m feeling once this science fiction novel is done.
So, I’m back on the writing wagon for 2022 and casually aiming for 1000 words a day. We’ll see how that goes.
Until next time. Stay safe.
