Becky Allen's Blog, page 2

February.

Hi friends,

It’s February. I’m writing and sending this newsletter because I am determined to send one monthly this year… or at least, for now I’m still determined. We’ll see how long this keeps up. (Fun fact, I drafted this four days ago and just forgot to send thanks to the hazy the brain fog that is this month.)

In all honesty, I don’t have a ton to say. It’s February, and I think it’s generally accepted wisdom that February sucks. I’m sure there are people who disagree, who love February, but ...

Wrapping up 2022

Hi friends,

It’s New Year’s Day! I recently posted my single annual blog entry, about my 2022 in writing, and at the end I noted that I love the potential of a new year, a new project, a blank page. I truly do love that feeling, and this year especially, I feel like I’m primed and ready for lift-off, coming off a… well, a surprisingly good year. Though I suppose it’s only surprising because my last few years have been pretty freaking bad.

I won’t spend too much time on that — maybe I’ll get into a...

Getting Back on Track… Slowly: 2022 in Numbers

Hi. So. I didn’t do my word count blog entry for 2021, because it was a long crappy year and I didn’t feel like it in January and then I forgot. If you’re curious, I spent all of 2021 on a slow, painful, major revision to the project that I’ve been working on for a few years now. I finished that up and the goal was to start 2022 with a bit of polish and get this sucker done.

That… Um. Erk. Wellp. Let’s get into it…

What I worked on in 2022

In 2022, I started strong. My goal was to finis...

On finishing an experiment

Hi friends,

I usually try to send this newsletter on the first of the month, when I send it at all. (So… rarely.) But did you know that if you spend a month in a 50,000 word writing marathon, you’re very tired and need a few days to process?! So I’m not letting perfect be the enemy of the good here, and will send this… I don’t know, early in the month. You’ll know when you get it, I suppose.

“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good” is actually pretty good advice for NaNoWriMo, which I just com...

On starting something new–

Hi friends,

It’s October. It’s October?!?! It’s October. Gosh.

I’m currently feeling optimistic about a lot of things. Not, like, the fate of the world or anything; that’s still too big and overwhelming to think about. But on a personal level. I started my new job about a year ago now, and while it does still feel pretty new, I also feel like I’ve grown a lot and learned a ton and the company I work for wants me to keep growing and learning, and is investing in me as I do so, which is pretty nice....

It has certainly been a year. Whoops.

Hello, friends!

So, uh. It’s been a year since I sent a newsletter. When I wrote last year’s January missive about hope, I was feeling very optimistic — for the world, and for my ability to send a newsletter every month. Well, we’re now staring down the barrel of year three of a global pandemic, and I have not sent a newsletter in a year either. Whoops.

Perhaps I will this year. Sure! Let’s pretend that’s likely, so rather than this particular newsletter being full of cynical mutterings about how ...

Writing Through the Pandemic: 2020 Wordcount

Hello! First a reminder that I only update this blog once a year for this very word count post. If you want to know what I’m up to more often, try my newsletter (though even that isn’t too frequent…).

Look at that: a draft!

After everything the horrors of last year took from us, perhaps the pettiest complaint is that it doesn’t feel appropriate to make a 2020 vision joke for my annual look back at what the heck I did last year. Last year sucked.

I did, however, make it out alive. And I ...

Recovering from Burnout: 2019 by the Numbers

Hello, friends! First, a bit of housekeeping: as is probably obvious at this point, I have stopped pretending that I want to blog. I like doing this annual post about word count, because it’s the sort of thing I find interesting to read, but other than that I plan to only use this place when I have actual news.

That said, I have started sending a monthly newsletter-type-thing! It’s usually personal essays, which is something I challenged myself to do last year because I’ve always found them...

A Year In Numbers: 2018

[image error]In 2018 I moved my tracking document to Airtable, which made compiling stats way easier.

Hello! It’s 2019! I’m still not going to blog much, but I do want to keep up the tradition of sharing some info about a whole year’s worth of writing, so here you go.  I wish I had more news to share, or at least better stats, but… well, 2018 was what it was.  And writing this blog entry is a good thing, because until I dug into these numbers, I thought I’d done even less than I actually did.

Here are my...

Writing While The World Burns: 2017 in Numbers

Oh boy. Okay. So part of me is tempted to not do my writing numbers round up for the year, because my writing numbers for 2017 were…not great. But actually, as subscribers to my newsletter know, my 2017 as a whole was not great. So I guess acknowledging that even though I was waaaaaay less productive than usual, writing-wise, is not a bad thing — it shows that even when the world is an unending nightmare (on both a personal and global scale), I can still get stuff done. At least, some. A litt...