A year of writing – the numbers and why they don’t matter.

Welcome to 2025! (late but don’t judge, we have approximately 16 milliseconds of daylight this time of year, I’m 90% dozy bear)

Being as I talk the talk about resilience and not falling into the traps of comparanoia or shifting goalposts, I figure I ought to walk the walk with a wee review post about where I am and how I feel about that.

First though, a lil book sale treat – my publishers for We Are All Ghosts In The Forest are running a 99p ebook sale for firsts-in-series from now until the 18th Jan. Which means you can snag a copy of Ghosts for a bargain price if you’re quick (and maybe some other excellent books too?). Click here to shop!

Now then. Down to business.

The year in review

What are the stats for 2024?

I published 1 novella – The Last To Drown, 1 novel – We Are All Ghosts In The Forest, and 1 short story – Mhairi Aird in the Nova Scotia 2 anthology.

I was longlisted for 2 awards (BSFA and Kavya Prize for Mother Sea), shortlisted for 1 award (Kavya Prize for The Last To Drown) and won 1 award (the Society of Authors ADCI Prize for Mother Sea).

I left one agent and signed with another.

I attended two festivals/conventions, took part in oh god I don’t know … a whole bunch of events.

I wrote & revised 1 novella, fully revised 2 novels, and got a 3rd novel through copyedits & proofs. And I wrote 85k of a 4th novel. Totaling about 120k written, 340k edited.

I signed no new publishing contracts, got no new books out on submission, and (lol) received no further parts of my advance because of delays to edits. So my writing income last year was solely from royalties on my previous books, the short story sale, and writing-adjacent work like workshops and this Substack (thank you!).

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The year in anticipation

What’s on the programme for 2025?

I will be publishing 1 novel (The Salt Oracle).

I will finish & revise the current wip. Edit/copyedit/proof The Salt Oracle, and edit 1 further novel & 1 novella.

I should be going on submission with that 1 novel and 1 novella.

I will be at two festivals/conventions (Cymera Festival & World Fantasy Con), plus a bunch of other events & podcasts tbc.

How’s about the wishlist for 2025?

That I sell both submissions to good people for good deals.

That I maybe get some foreign rights sold.

That I get all or most of another book drafted.

That The Last To Drown and We Are All Ghosts In The Forest maybe get an award listing or two.

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What does it all even mean though?

So how do these stats look to you? Busy? Easy? Perhaps wildly ambitious, perhaps laughably unambitious? It will depend on your viewpoint, right? Your own current ‘normals’. And that’s sort of why I have listed them all out – to say that they don’t really matter.

The number of words I write, the number of events I do, the number of awards listings (especially those omg) or trade reviews or sales … those make for some nice neat numbers but do they mean anything to me, the writer alone (plus cats) at my laptop? They’re all to varying degrees out of my control after all – even how much I get to write is influenced by other people’s editorial timelines, the amount of publicity interest in my newest book, and my health. So when I look back at 2024 or look forward to 2025, what can I take from these lists that really truly intrinsically reflects on me and my writing?

I’ve been mulling over this because as I saw everyone posting their ‘my writing year’ type posts I got increasingly squinty eyed about how good that sort of framing actually is. It’s nice to look at concrete things and pat yourself on the pat, or set a particular aim and work towards it. It can also be really helpful to track these things so you can appraise your relationship with writing/publishing and make any necessary changes. So no shade on tracking these stats at all – I do it all myself, hence being able to reel off the lists above without much thought. And my god, we should celebrate our wins at any opportunity, shouldn’t we? Smell the roses every time, because publishing is a hell of a briar patch.

I came up with two reasons though, why I think these particular roses – these lists of achievements – can sometimes be … maybe not unhelpful, but an incomplete picture.

Reason one is simply the comparanoia of it all. Have you looked at other people’s statistics and Had Sads because yours don’t match up? Or looked at your own previous years and Had Sads because you’ve dropped off in some area or another? Yeah, me too. But if we measure our success or productivity or writerly brownie points by fixed metrics – words written or events held or contracts signed – we are holding ourself to metrics that are (at least partly) out of our control. Which aint all that healthy, folks.

The second reason is that I want to think my creativity matters more to me than my output. I mean yes, I need the output to, you know, have books to sell and hence a hope of a career. So of course words written/books sold/awards won matters. If I look back at 2024 though, while I am extremely proud of the high points on that list, I am perhaps most proud of something that’s not on the list at all – the way in which I’ve pushed my craft.

As I think I’ve talked about a few times, I like to feel that I am trying something new-to-me with everything I write – challenging myself to always be growing as a writer. And honestly, I am really excited by the things I’ve done in Novella2 (which I wrote about here) and the current wip. They are both in their own way taking risks I’ve not been brave enough to take until now, and I think I’m pulling it off. Which is so incredibly cool, I can’t even tell you.

Everything else I did last year, from the simple number of hours I got to write to the joy of winning an award, was connected to other people & other factors. My craft though? That win is wholly and entirely my own.

Which means that whatever those other people & other factors are doing in 2025, I can hold one ambition entirely independent of all that uncertainty – challenging my craft in a new way. If I can succeed in that one thing, then that’s something to be proud of and excited by even if some of my statistics look worse compared to 2024. (They will – I’m not going to get two books out in 2025, let alone a bonus short story, so from the get-go I’m a man down, so to speak).

Depending on other things (lol, see?), my next projects may be pushing me in really, really structural ways, or in attempting a new subgenre, or maybe something that’s going to be so tricksy narratively… I am excited by all these ideas, but I’ve honestly no idea which one will be next on the drafting board.

So do I have a point? Yes!

It is that listing your achievements and ambitions can be really fun, a useful gauge, and an opportunity to take stock and celebrate your awesomeness. But that the most important metric of you as a writer, far more than the subjective whimsy of publishing successes, is whether you are finding joy in your art. (Or catharsis. Or hope. Or freedom.) (Or revenge)

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So my gorgeous creatures, may 2025 bring you publishing joys but may it also bring you wonder and courage in your writing. If you want to stay up to date with my blog posts please consider subscribing to my Substack as that’s where I’m most active.