Yer End

Last Book Read: Dune by Frank Herbert

This month has delivered an abundance of introspection, analysis, and navel gazing. More than the usual calendrical summation, I've pondered the greater effort of writing these past couple years. As someone said to me in an e-mail: "What's the point of all this?"

In terms of goals, I've done well for the last quarter. The disappointments were not getting an earlier novel, Chasing Midnight into a marketable length, and not getting the new novel done during NaNoWriMo. But, I kept short stories in submission, and organized a great book launch. Really, nothing to be disappointed about.

The whole year has been good to me: writing friends found, stories published, and time to write. Nothing to complain about.

So, to get off the maudlin roller coaster, some cold, hard facts about the writing effort. Over the past 18 months, for all the goals set, I have a 50% success ratio. Not bad, but doesn't say much for my planning abilities.

For 2007, I tracked the amount of time I spent in writing related activities. I didn't capture each and every moment, but figure I missed recording every category at about the same rate. Total hours tracked climbed up over 400.

I was surprised that blogging came to only 8% of the whole. Enlightening was the fact that editing made up 33% while writing, new words on the page, was 23%. I'd like to flip that one in the future.

And writing/editing only comprised 56% of total effort. Maybe this is okay given the other activities (event planning, research, etc.) but it seems short. And given the 8,760 hours available in a year, spending just a hair over 4% of all my time on writing seems inadequate.

Especially given how little sleep I get.

Blogging is an easy target for redress. I've spent almost an hour on this post alone (and given the length, I'm sure you feel the same). Going back through all the posts, I discovered that four people who have made comments over the year plus have gone on hiatus or given up on their own blogs. And noteworthy for a blog on writing, the two posts that have gotten the most comments were about soccer and cartoons. So, what's the point of this?

It's fun. So blogging stays, maybe back to once a week. As for additional goals for the new year, I'm still thinking.