2022 in Review

The last twelve months were about 2023. In other words, all the work I’ve done has been future-looking. I have felt as if I were paddling so hard, but in many ways, I’m in the same place I was last year. Or, to mix my metaphor, maybe I’ve edged a little closer to the waterfall, but I haven’t fallen over the precipice–yet.

In the last twelve months:

• I revised Chick Magnet yet again, adding about 10K to the book (and then pruning it back). I also laid marketing groundwork, because, had I mentioned it?, it’ll release on January 24, 2023.
• I wrote and revised Funny Guy. The polished word count is 80K, but I suspect I wrote and deleted at least an additional 10 or 12K. This will release on May 16, 2023.
• I revised and rereleased the entire Political Persuasions series. This includes at least 15K new words, most of which went into “Aspiring” (in The One You Crave). That novella is my only wholly new piece of writing published this year. I also did some marketing for the series, and it’s currently in KU.
• I researched and then wrote 25K words for a secret project. I’m not super happy with it, so I’ve taken a few steps back, and it’s marinating. Getting this finished and into a submission-worthy state is one of my key goals for 2023.
• I began work on a major revision/rewrite of a series that’s on my hard drive, with the goal of going out on submission with it early in 2023. I’ve written at least 10K new words for this.
• I read 56 new-to-me books.

In terms of my 2022 goals, I played piano most days (logging practices on Twitter with the #RomancePianists hashtag). I didn’t start jogging again, alas. I stayed off social media…in fits and starts. But I did write approximately 150K new words, which is my best writing year since 2016. Except I didn’t achieve my stated goal of writing two books. I may need to reevaluate whether two books is achievable for me these days, or whether I have to settle for writing one, plus revision/marketing and life-ing.

Taken as a whole, it was a year of labor that will bloom–or wither–in the next year. I’m not displeased when I look back, but on reflection, my primary emotion is anticipation.

(I’ve been producing some version of this post for as long as I’ve been blogging my writing. You can read about my 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013 respectively.)