This time last year, I set myself a small challenge. The goal was to write a minimum of 100 words a day on a side project, other than my main book, every single day of the year.
The stats
I worked on two projects over the course of the year. I finished the draft of one book (starring a certain recurring character), and started another one (a standalone). I wrote 50,066 words on the former, from January to late September, and 22,207 words on the latter, from late September to today, giving a total of 72,273 words.
That's not a bad total for a year. In fact, it's close to a full book's worth of words.
But this was just a side project, so it's 72,273 extra words that wouldn't have existed otherwise. I still wrote a full draft of a book as well as that.
Are they good words? Some of them are pretty good, some are total shit: such is the way of first drafts. But I now have a big chunk of words to work with, and hopefully, in 2022, I can develop one or both projects into books people might want to read.
It's just before 6pm where I am, and 2021 is almost over. Wherever you are, I hope you have an amazing new year and read (and/or write) some good books.
And tomorrow? I'm going to write 100 words.