Yes, it’s an arbitrary figure. Yes, it ignores the many hours I’ve spent editing and revising. Yes, it took quite a lot longer than I expected.

But here it is anyway. As of today I reckon I’ve written 500,000 original words of fiction since I began in February 2011. It’s not quite enough to match the word count of War and Peace (587,000 words), but it’s still two Moby Dicks plus a Picture of Dorian Gray…

What’s most interesting to me is to take stock of the change in the quality of writing I’ve produced over this period. I’m an awful lot better at drafting and editing. Equally importantly, I’m an awful lot more efficient, to boot.

Anyway. The 50% mark is also a good excuse for a writing update. So far this year I’ve been funnelling my time into longer projects rather than short stories:

Short stories

• The Forge (7300 words) – SF

Longer fiction

• Blighters (16,300 words) – SF
• Untitled medieval time-travel novel (40,000 words and rising, though only 15,000 of those words were written this year)

And, although the following are nothing to do with actual writing (as they’re all stories written during previous years) and all to do with the tenacious sending of submissions emails…

Publications and sales

• Like Clockwork – SQ Mag Edition 18, Jan 2015
• By the Numbers – The New Accelerator #3, Feb 2015
• The Sleeper – Phobos, Issue 3, Feb 2015
• Screaming His Scream – Perihelion, May 2015
• The House Lights Dim – Dark Lane Anthology Volume 2, forthcoming
• Finding Waltzer-Three – Pantheon Vol. 7, forthcoming
• Read/Write Head – The Museum of All Things Awesome And That Go Boom anthology, forthcoming

Oh, and one other notable thing, for the sake of completion:

• The Walls of Tithonium Chasma – Honorable Mention from the Writers of the Future contest (Q1 2015)