In the new year I plan to keep better track of my writing times, which I hope will push me to be more productive. So even if it does take me 20 hours to finish a short story, I'm optimistic this tracking will help me be write more fiction in 2010 than in 2009.
As such, here are my writing times for the first week of 2010:
- Time spent on new short story writing: 4 hours
- Time spent revising and editing short stories: 4.5 hours
- Time spent preparing one short story submission: .5 hour
- Time spent on my novel: 0
- Time spent on communications with editors/fellow writers: 1 hour
- Time spent on Facebook/Twitter/Blog: 3 hours
- Time spent reading the news and doing other stuff online: 5 hours
I'm not satisfied with those numbers, and aim to lower the amount of time reading the news online and increase the amount of time writing. While I work a full-time job in addition to my writing, if I have 8 hours to spend online (not all of which is goofing off, but a good part is) there is definitely more time in my life to devote to writing.
Unfortunately, I didn't keep track of my writing times last year, so I can't make a good comparison to what I want to accomplish this year. However, based on my Duotrope Digest submission tracking numbers, I wrote 8 new short stories in 2009, of which 5 were accepted and published (mostly in Interzone). I also wrote a large chunk of a novel.
My goals for 2010 are to write fewer short stories but to complete my current novel and finish the rough draft of a second. I'll be giving weekly updates on the status of these projects as a way to keep me honest and productive. So feel free to call me nasty names if I slack off over the next 12 months.