As we’re sure you’ve noticed, 2023 is nearing the finish line. That means it’s time for us here at SkelleyCo Amalgamated Fiction Enterprises, LLC to review what we accomplished throughout the year.

Our main goal for the year was to complete the first draft of As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novel #1, and that gets a big ol’ checkmark. The first draft was in the can by late summer, and we managed to squeeze in a couple of read-throughs and a sort of mini-edit to address the issues we uncovered. It might not meet the technical definition of a second draft, but whatever you call it, we’re happy with where it stands right now.

Our second goal was for Kent to retire, and again we accomplished it! (Well, Kent did. Jen cheered from the sidelines.)

Our third goal was to travel, and holy shit did we do that. We got to within 800 miles of the North Pole!

We forecast that we might edit one of the Music Novels if we wanted a substantial break from writing about ghosts between As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novels #1 and #2. That was not necessary. The timing worked out nicely to put #1 to bed shortly before heading out on our Epic Arctic Exploration, and that adventure provided more than enough of a break.

It took longer than we liked for us to get our brains out of vacation-mode, and acclimate to all Kent’s new free time. We’d optimistically anticipated working 4-5 hours a day and having the productivity of the gods. It didn’t quite work out like that, but toward the end of the year we did settle into a pretty good daily schedule that we hope to expand on in the coming year. There will be some challenges to that, which we’ll talk about next week in our preview of the coming year.

Happy new year!

 

ETA: we finished the year with 7287 words in Book 2