I don’t say much here about my life outside of writing, and I won’t change that now, but writing never happens in a vacuum. Other aspects of life inevitably intrude and intertwine with our art. Life also provides plenty of things to do besides writing, and it’s never hard to find reasons to procrastinate and put projects off.
Family medical issues and the mental energy required for my day job were the big challenges this year. Thankfully, everyone in my house is now healthy, and I am grateful to have an interesting and well-paying day job in a world where that is becoming steadily more difficult to obtain.
I am incredibly lucky to be able to visit the emergency room or get an unexpected car repair without my first worry being my bank account, and I am able to put presents under the tree for my kids. I don’t take that for granted.
Words Deferred
I’ll try to avoid repeating myself from the State of the Blog 2025.
I was shocked to learn from my stats page that I had posted almost 150 times this year. Then I looked back and realized that I definitely haven’t. It looks like there’s a quirk in WordPress statistics where it counts updates to static pages as new posts. So in actuality I posted less than 100 times (and quite inconsistently in the first half of the year).
It’s strange to realize that this site is the majority of my word count. Sometimes that feels bad, because it’s not advancing my writing career in a tangible way. (Maybe some day it will check some box for a publisher’s marketing department. Or maybe that’s not something they care about anymore and they’ll make me start Instagram and TikTok accounts.)
On the other hand, the site has been the single most effective tool for keeping me writing—and thinking about writing—regularly. It’s hard to quantify, but I do think this site helps fuel my energy for other writing projects and endeavors. Plus, you know, I enjoy it.
In terms of blog stats, this has been my best year ever along most axes. It feels a little odd, since I didn’t do anything different to “earn” it. The will of the internet is mysterious. It giveth and it taketh away.
After three years of steady growth, it was admittedly a little disheartening to see a significant dip last year. Likewise it feels good to see it bounce back this year. However, I’m not playing SEO games or trying in any concerted way to turn this site into a money-making venture. The numbers aren’t really important, except that my words might be getting out to a few more people, and that’s nice.
Even if the numbers flat-lined, I probably wouldn’t stop doing this. I’m in too deep now; there’s no getting out.
Short Fiction
I submitted short fiction 35 times in 2024. In 2025, that number dropped to 18 submissions.
I only sent stories out in a handful of weekend sessions, but my numbers were boosted by sending more simultaneous submissions to semi-pro markets. You can send to a lot more markets when you don’t have to do it sequentially.
I wrote 3 new original stories this year, and utterly failed to revise any of them enough to send out. I also wrote two goofy little fanfic stories, which is something I haven’t done before, and may very well never do again.
My main short fiction takeaways from the year are that simultaneous submissions are great, even if the markets tend to be lower-paying and less prestigious, and I need to work on revising work to completion.
Long Fiction
I did no novel writing in 2025.
I occasionally think about spending the time necessary to revise Razor Mountain, but so far I haven’t. In one sense it’s a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end. It was an interesting process to document here on Words Deferred. But unless I go back and really polish it to the best of my ability, it will always feel like an unfinished project.
I’ve talked about it before, but I have a hard time getting motivated to polish a book that is already “out there” online, and therefore is less appealing to send out to traditional agents and publishers. The idea of self-publishing a novel remains unexciting to me as well.
I fully accept that this attitude is a symptom of being an old man, and perhaps out of step with the state of the modern publishing industry. For now, at least, that’s just who I am.
Looking Forward
It’s good to look back and reflect on the year, but now I’m ready to look forward. In my next post, I’ll talk about plans for 2026.
Words Deferred 