.

It is a new year and I am not one for resolutions, but it is a time to look back at what I wanted to achieve and what I did achieve.

I set one writing goal for myself in 2024, to write a full folk/cosmic horror novel before the end of the year.

Now, I did not set this goal in January but rather July, the first half of the year was finishing up the previous horror novel, getting it out the door to a publisher I had worked with before and begin the tedious process of searching for representation. All those goals were met by July with the agent hunting a continuing endeavor. That left six months to go from a vague concept to a completed first draft for the new novel.

As my last post indicated I did not quite meet that objective. The first draft landed at 84 thousand words on Jan 3rd, 2025, three days late.

Considering the unique process this book followed to its initial draft I’m quite pleased. Normally, I am an outliner, produced pages and pages of notes, characters backgrounds and a detailed map of the plot and the story as it unfolds. Not this time. With only a vague notion of what I was going to do with the story, and shockingly for me, no clearly defined ending, I just began writing.

I expected that if I made it past 10,000 words then the project had a better than fifty/fifty chance of reaching completion. I found a few sticky spots where I stopped my weekday writing to let ideas cook and figure out the next few events but generally, I maintained a steady pace of 800 to 1000 words each weekday.

In fact, had I not on the final week of the year taken two days off to detail notes for the table Top RPG I run I would have met that December 31st self-imposed deadline.

Now I need to do serious revision work. I had to create new backstory elements for the protagonist halfway through the draft and that means the first half doesn’t line up with the second half. There are characters that appeared in the second half that need to be established and such, but overall, I am happy with the draft and the project.

I give myself a solid B as a grade and look forward to the next three months as I mold this thing into its final form.