First Year Tally – Aheïla

One year ago, almost to the day, I decided I had enough. Enough of the story sleeping in a buried folder on my computer. Enough of wanting to write but never finding time. Most of all, enough to be all talk and get nothing done; at some point, I had to stop saying I wanted to be an author and just do it.
So last year, my New Year resolution was to find time for writing and develop the necessary discipline to do it consistently. In order to force myself into that objective, I started a blog – this blog – thinking that if I promised people to steadily deliver 1,000 words of a story, I wouldn’t bear to fail them. Even if there were just two or three of them.

Now a year has gone by and when I look at all I have accomplished, I am completely stunned. I never aimed for that much. Not at all.
In the course of year, I didn’t only complete the story that had been sleeping – The One Who Sees (or TOWS) – but two more novels. TOWS came back from its first round of beta and received only critics I “expected”, meaning only small tweaking and no major changes that completely threw me off. The second one, Unforeseen Dives, has gathered more and more readers throughout the year and more positives critics than I hoped for. The third one, Oil and Boiling Water, was written alongside thousands of other novels during NaNoWriMo and will soon be polished enough to go out on beta.
Besides those huge accomplishment, I wrote several drabbles, short stories, poems and whatnots, bringing my word count to about 350k for the year. The number surprises me since it’s a big change from the almost zero of the previous years. One of the story, Coffee, even got published in My First Time and is my first paid story.

There is one secret behind all the accomplishments… readers and fellow writers.

I have followers on various networks and I’m still not quite sure why that is. *laughs* I certainly never thought my blog would draw over 17,000 page views in a year. Nor did I expect to meet so many nice people, make friends and find support for my writing. All of you, dear readers and fellow writers, have played a tremendous role in my first year’s accomplishment. You’ve pushed me forward without even realizing it.
You’ve pushed me forward because I always wish to bring you better stories, better articles, and more enjoyable reading. I don’t want to disappoint you. And it’s not just about the blog; I suspect some of you will be disappointed if I never get published. 😉

So thanks to you all for following my journey and helping me become a better writer. It seems only fair to repay you with the First Year Tally celebration and the gift that goes along with it.  And who better to kick off the guest author’s of the month than Faith Hunter!
Swing by on Friday to read her and I hope you enjoy my new story, Killing Time OST, in the meantime. Because yes, last year’s accomplishment are just the beginning. My target for this year is to sign an agent. If I go “overachiever” like I did last year, I might even have a publishing deal signed by next year. *laughs*