It’s the end of the year, which means I’m doing a lot of reminiscing about what that year contained. There were a lot of ups, a lot of downs, and a lot of loss — but I’m here to focus on the gains instead.

In case you missed it, I did an END OF YEAR ART WRAP-UP earlier.

Life, Fitness and Health

BUYING A HOUSE AND MOVING INTO SAID HOUSE. Holy smokes holy smokes we got a HOUSE ahhhhh BEST YEAR EVER.

Registered as a blood donor, even though I’m a living nightmare to take blood from. I’ve got thin veins, but by the end of the year I managed to make some capillary/fingertip donations since I’m near-impossible to get blood from otherwise.

DRIVING LESSONS GALORE. I spent this year doing a steady stream of driving lessons and getting confident with it, but due to my instructor taking a lot of holidays I won’t be doing my test until some time next year. This was a disappointing setback, but it worked out for the best — all the pauses in my lessons made it easier to afford the mortgage on the new house.

Satellite 4 Eastercon in Glasgow! I had a really great time at my second con. This one was a much smaller event, but it was nice having a con up in Scotland

RAN 5K IN ZOMBIES RUN! 2014 was a big year for me finding fitness activities that I enjoy, and running — with the help of the Zombies, Run! 5k Training app — was my first big fitness achievement…. pretty much ever. I blogged about it every step of the way.

DID THE SPEYSIDE KILTWALK AND NEARLY DIED (okay not really but it was super painful). I’m not even sure I can call this one a real achievement… sure, I walked 26 miles, but I was a mewling wreck from about the 5 mile mark onwards and was miserable company. On the bright side, I DID IT. But I dragged my team down and I still feel bad about that.

I kind of want to do it again in 2015, since my injuries last year were mostly down to bad luck and should be avoidable. But I might do the 16-mile half-kilt walk instead. We’ll see.

STARTED LIFTING WEIGHTS TO ACHIEVE MY DREAMS OF BECOMING SHE-HULK. I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time, but as of December I got over my own awkwardness and started lifting weights. It’s a lot of fun, and even though I’m not exactly great at it I really enjoy the rush of energy it gives you.

Writing

It’s been an interesting year! Lotta unfinished stuff this year, which is something I need to avoid in 2015 — unfinished projects feel lousy when it comes to the end of the year and you start totalling up what you’re actually done.

In 2014 from April onwards, after I got serious about recording my progress, here’s how it all looks…

I typed up 128,700 words, not counting daft late-night tweets and about half of my blog posts. There’s a good couple of thousand still in my notepads waiting to be typed up.

I finished two major rewrites, learning a lot about editing and rewriting in the process. I finished an anthology short story. I wrote a good chunk of a YA novel and a middle grade novel, and I’m looking forward to working on both of those in 2015.

Writing: The Year In Review

January — March: At the start of the year, I began working on the  BROKEN THINGS REWRITE 1 and figuring out how to edit the monster I speed-drafted in 2013. It took me a while to figure out where I was going with this, but I figured out the massive changes the story needed and learned how to outline in a way that helped me.

April: Wrote 35k and had a fun time at Eastercon Glasgow.

May–July: Wrote just under 40k. Editing/rewriting months, and there was some bad personal stuff that started going on in July which slowed me down.

August: Final stretch of that rewrite. Wrote 16.3k. Started a new YA first draft about awesome demon ladies and summoner kids, which I used as a breather project when the going got tough August through to November.

September: Wrote 2.3k, then disappeared down a rabbit hole of mortgage stuff. I finished BROKEN THINGS REWRITE 1 on September 4th, having removed about 12,000 words and replaced them with stronger ones.

October–November: Mostly time off from editing Mostly worked on a fun new first draft. Wrote 8.2k words in October, 7.2k in November in between a house move, and began progress with BROKEN THINGS REWRITE 2.

December: Solidly in the editing zone here. Finished BROKEN THINGS REWRITE 2 right at the end of the year, after removing 30,000 words. Began working on the first draft of a middle grade dragon story. Finished an anthology short story and drafted two other shorts. Wrote 20,000 words!