2022; A look back at your writing

[lovecraft68]

Figured I'd wait until the Winter contest wrapped up to post this. With the end of the year a couple weeks away its a good time to look back on 2022. Did you have any writing goals for the year? If so, did you achieve them? Would you say it was a good year for you in general? Did you reach any site or personal milestones? Those things and anything else you feel worth mentioning for the past year in writing both here, and wherever else you might post(no links to anywhere else of course)

 

[RejectReality]

Goal: Actually write something again Mission accomplished.

Slowly creeping back toward the top 100 authors again after falling off due to a year+ of non production. I seem to stick in the 109 range even when I'm not putting anything out, but staying in the top 100 requires a level of production. I'm #16 on Lush.

New story as Dark about to go into post-production. One that got reassigned to Les from this name because it went multi-chapter is moving along as well. I'm getting closer to musing out some issues a couple of stories as Les had as well.

 

[alohadave]

I started writing for the first time. That was something I had thought about doing for years, and I finally buckled down and started doing it.

It's not good writing, but that is the next step.

 

[TxRad]

26 stories written this year. All but two got the red H. Whether that means anything or not is up to the readers I guess. I surpassed 5300 favorites but that doesn't mean much since someone is still gaming the favorites list. I've still got the same 9am bomber out there. Every morning at nine, 2 bombs on every new story. The sweep gets some of them but nearly enough.

I doubled my sales in the mainsteam so that makes everything so much better. A game that can't be rigged.

 

[SimonDoom]

2022 was an OK year. As usual, I fell far short of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year, but I'm always setting goals that are out of kilter with my usual rate of productivity.

I've published 10 stories so far in 2022, and I believe I will publish one and possibly two more before the end of the year.

3 were 750-word stories, so I suppose they barely count, but I was satisfied with all three considering the limitations.

Of the other 7, 3 were incest, 3 were exhibitionist, and one was stories and letters. Snow White was the longest standalone story I've published so far, at 24,500 words.

For the most part the stories were fun to write and I was satisfied with them.

One of my stories continues to move up the all-time most-viewed list, and I'm slowly moving up the most-followed author list. I like knowing that new readers are still seeing and reading and commenting on old stories.

Probably my biggest disappointments were a) continually failing to meet contest and event deadlines, and b) not completing some more ambitious story projects on which I've been working for a while. I hope to do that for 2023, but I'm going to be more cautious in 2023 about not setting goals that set me up for disappointment.

I should add that I won my first contest, although it was for a story I wrote in 2021. That was fun.

My chief goal for 2023 is qualitative, not quantitative. I want to feel that my writing is improving: better prose, tighter plotting, more careful editing, better characterization, more depth. Not all the time -- I still want to write light sex romps, which I enjoy. But I want to feel I'm a better writer at the end of 2023 than I was at the beginning. That's goal number 1.

 

[MelissaBaby]

It was a mixed year for me. I'm in my last semester of college, and my writing time has been curtailed to some extent. My first reaction to the thread title was that the year was kind of a dud. I could not get my Halloween story together in time, and I was disappointed by that. My other WIPs have gone slowly, and I am currently in the longest period without publishing since I joined the site.

But, when I looked at my author's page, I thought, well, hell, the first half of the year was great. I put up four successful submissions.

My entry for the 750 Word challenge, The Blowjob At The End Of The World was the top rated story in the Humor category for February.

Oyster River, a lesbian romance I wrote for the Pink Orchid event, did extremely well. It currently has a 4.86 rating.

I spent a long time writing Isabel, a spinoff from my Ranger Ramona stories. It was a labor of love, I just really wanted to write more of the character, and didn't expect a lot of interest in it. I certainly didn't think it was going to be a 4.90 story, but it was.

And my Mickey Spillane challenge story, The Last Time I Met Clara is at 4.68, which is very satisfying, considering that it is a story that I had previously bailed on.

I've got two WIP coming along, slowly, a romance for Pink Orchid, and a novella about lesbian roller derby stars in the 1950s. Hopefully, I'll get off to a productive 2023

 

[HeyAll]

My goal for 2022 was to 1) improve my writing quality 2) find new plot points to explore, ones that hadn't been explored before and 3) edit more of my old stories.

In my opinion I succeded. I love my new stories. Realistically, the results were pretty good in lesbian. With incest, however, the results were mixed. Some people didn't like the plots or things like that. But that's okay. I'm happy with what I've written and I appreciate the comments of people saying that it's something new they hadn't seen before.

 

[Emotional]

I didn't start writing until midway through the year.

I went from someone who couldn't even punctuate correctly, to (I feel) a competent writer.

I won the Halloween contest, and five of my stories are usually 4.9 or higher.

My lifelong bucket list is to have a book printed and in a bookstore, so will see what the future holds.

 

[CiaoSteve]

I set a target of a chapter/story a month and in 2022 I will have managed 6 standalone stories (the last one will go up in about a week), 7 chapters to multi-part stories, and one 750 word story... all together weighing in at more than 180k words.

The longer standalone stories were:
Incest - 1
Lesbian - 1
Romance - 2
Non-Human - 1
Group sex - 1

The Chapters / 750 Word Story were:
Anal - 1
Toys & Masturbation - 1
BDSM - 3
Exhibitionist & Voyeur - 1
Erotic Couplings - 2

So the highs have to be the end of Voyage and my Halloween Entry, both of which finished up above 4.8 in the rankings
https://literotica.com/s/voyage-of-self-discovery-ch-12
https://literotica.com/s/within-these-walls-1

And the low (maybe to be expected) is having my first story not even topping 4 . . . it was the 750 word entry
https://literotica.com/s/teachers-pet-104

And what else did I find? Well, year on year my writing is getting longer . . . over the last 5 years I have gone from an average length of 7250 words per story/chapter to 12,800 words, with my longest ever coming in 2022 at just over 26k words.

Am I a good writer . . . god no . . . I'm just me, plugging away, trashing the bad comments, replying to some of the nice ones, and having a good time.

 

[PeytonMirabelle]

For Literotica, not a great year. I only published four stories and while they were all received fairly well, I'm disappointed I didn't do more. I had a couple that just didn't get over the finish line (AKA, I wasn't happy enough with them to post).

On the other hand, I wrote about 250K words of fantasy this year and published two books, so I can't complain about that.

I guess it's a draw.

 

[oggbashan]

I didn't expect to survive 2022. So far? I have, and I have posted several stories (22 so far in 2022). My aim was to get to 500 stories. I haven't achieved that, yet, at only 461, but I am pleased with the number I have added.

I'll keep writing.

My aim is:

1. to get past Christmas 2022 and New Year 2023,
2. perhaps to my birthday in April, and to keep writing while I can.

 

[lovecraft68]

For me. I posted 5 stories to lit this year, the most I've done in a single year since around 2016. Now all of these were published for

One of those, "Oh, My God Bro" placed in April Fools, the loving wives effort is sitting at 2.82 as it was a pretty bleak story full of characters who were all assholes in their own special way. So those were my high and low, the other three did pretty much as expected.

I retook the third spot on the fav author list, and my story That's What Friends are For" cracked the top ten all time faved story list and will slip into the #9 spot shortly. Its currently the highest faved non taboo story on the site.

Off lit, I published 11 e-books, hit 25k sales on SW's main site and published my 200th e-book(now on #204)

All in all a good year and my only real goal was 12 e-books to average one a month and if all goes well that one will be done in a couple days.

Not sure on next year, like many I'm waiting to see what happens when SW is completely merged with D2D because the pessimist in me expects them to have lied and immediately adopt amazon's content policies and no longer allow any taboo, non con, beastie or other things they're deathly afraid of even though they now have their own storefront so we'll see.

As for here, nothing in particular, I think I've maxed myself out milestone wise. One more contest placing would give me 10 so that's a loose goal, other than that I'm not setting any goals.

 

[Blind_Justice]

Well, I did manage to write publish more than in 2021. That year was a major shitshow in terms of my output, thanks to a major flare-up of depression. All I really managed was my annual Geek Pride Day submission.

This year, thanks in large part to @LoquiSordidaAdMe , I managed to tick the "sword'n'sorcery chainmail bikini story" off my bucket list and publish that for GPD '22, then I used the positive momentum to not only finish my long-running "Mud & Magic" arc, but kickstart the next one as well. I'm putting the finishing touches to "Inns & Invocations 02", but writing a crazy foursome is a bit trickier than I anticipated. If all goes well, I'll squeeze that out before New Year's Eve. That would put my total to four stories/chapter published in '22, three more than last year and a far cry from the deluge of stuff I published in 2018/19.

 

[SamScribble]

I think that I completed my 'retirement'. For the first time in many, many years I didn't write any published non-fiction. For real world consumption, I completed a dozen short stories and three novellas. And I posted 12 short stories to Lit.

Like Ogg, I have been living on borrowed time - in my case since 2011. And yet I somehow managed another birthday. Does that count?

 

[AwkwardlySet]

This year is definitely special for me, as it is the year when I first started writing. Looking back the whole four months of my incredible writing career, I realized I suck considerably less than I thought I would, which is quite an accomplishment!

 

[SyleusSnow]

Oh, what a question. I didn't have any set goals, but got 4 stories out (five, soon), which is about average for me. One of them (Top Floor to Ourselves) was a hit, but it was in I/T which is almost too easy. And somehow I got two stories out for Summer Lovin', both of which have done well and resonated with readers. And finally I crossed into that fabled land of 1000 followers, so yes, 'twas a good year.

If I were to have a goal, it would be to write more. But after nearly six years of doing this, producing each story is still like passing a kidney stone. Maybe I should take up an easier hobby, like gator wrestling or diplomacy.

 

[Mnkinkcpl]

Actually been a pretty good year, survived two minor surgeries, published two mainstream e-books, completed, edited and published ten stories here and all are above 4.0.

Since I don't set writing goals I think I had a good year.

Also have to add thanks to the forum Anne and I found a wonderful new playmate who is a joy to be around and play with.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I started writing again for the first time since a class in college almost 30 years ago. So far, so good, I think.

 

[Seadog777]

My goals were to publish my first story and get to know some people.

I got 12 stories published(it will be 13 tomorrow) maybe more by the end of the year.

I started to get to know some people on here, then my team's season lasted longer than we anticipated, and I didn't get home until late October. Now I can't get anyone to really conversate with me since I got back.

Hopefully, I can start making progress again with people again.

 

[Voboy]

I don't really set goals in my writing here. I let the words come when they want to come and ebb when they want to ebb.

But I started the year with my Dry, No Lube series on my mind: I wanted to maintain the quality, but I was KEENLY aware that I was in danger of running out of good ideas, and I was beginning to feel pressure. I didn't like that, so I decided to end the series. I am happy I found an ending that I like, and that my readers seem to have responded to.

I'm also WAY ahead in themed entries for the next year; I'm about four stories ahead, and I've even got an unwonted April Fools story ready to go. So I'm pleased with what I produced this year, overall.

Dipped a toe back into the marketplace too, at my publisher's request. That was a nice experience as well.

 

[jaykaythree]

I submitted three this year:

* a First Time, in January.
* an NC/R, in October.
* a Non-Erotic Fiction, a week or so ago.

No red H's this year, but I'm cool with that in that each of the stories brings something unique to the table, appealing to different people in their ways.

Also, as last year, I went across three categories, two of which I did not do in 2021. It's good to test my wings that way, n'est-ce pas?

For 2023, I have some other ideas knocking around, and will see how they go -- here's to running things up the flagpole, and enjoying the salutes.

 

[Bramblethorn]

2022 will be the first calendar year since I joined that I haven't posted any new stories. I've had a lot going on – some good, some bad, all exhausting – and it just hasn't left me with the time or focus to get a story out. It's unfortunate, but taking care of myself and my loved ones come first.

I won my first 'W', which was quite unexpected and very gratifying.

 

[Alitaptap]

It’s 50/50 year for me, a half-empty, half-full kind of feeling. It’s my first time sharing my writing so publicly so I’m happy about that.

It scares and excites me at the same time, quite a heady mix. Because of that, I’ve gotten quite obsessed with writing, getting a few lines jotted down in between work.

This isn’t good for my real work TBH, since my deadlines are falling behind. I haven’t quite learned how to balance this newfound obsession yet.

So my logical brain is unhappy about it, but my soul is ecstatic, if that makes any sense. So I guess, it’s a half-full kind of year?

 

[TheRedChamber]

This technically wasn't my first year on Lit because I published a couple of stories back in 2014, but it was the first year I got into consistently writing and publishing. I've published 18 stories and have another two waiting for the competition to open or going through beta reading. On that basis, it's been good.

The year really feels split into two. The first half I was planning, writing and posting stuff very quickly, focusing on one sole story and usually getting through the whole process in a week or two. After my first couple of stories, i was consistently hitting Red H's two out of three times, and getting more ambitious with length, plot and characters.

The second half has been slower and a little more frustrating. Part of this is a result of moving away from mid-length (10-20k) one shot stories into more complicated works. I did a whole bunch of development work on an episodic series over the summer and have a series bible of about 50 plot bunnies varying from single sentences to whole page synopsis, at the same time a one-shot idea became a two-part idea and then, during the writing process became a four-part story and is now clearly going to be a novel-length work - I've gotten about 36k words through a first draft and am only half-way through and also need to rework significant parts of it. I'm findign that a 60k story isn't three times more complicated than a 20k story, it's at least nine times more complicated because everything is interrelated, supplimentary characters need to be better defined and later developments need to be foreshadowed (and then unforeshadowed after you remove them). And while it's easy to get a weeks focus to power through a short story, over months the amount of time I can spend writing varies wildly and its hard to keep up momentum. Finishing the novel will be a major goal and, while this paragraph may sound like a whine, I'm still positive the story as a whole, it's just been a more substantial challenge and its doesn't have the immediacy of writing, publishing and then watching the views and votes roll in.

During this period, I've written a few shorter stories and I've only hit one H out of five stories (althought two are hovering around 4.4). A couple of stories I thought were good, got scored around low 4. Not a huge issue in itself, but as I'm publishing much slower there's less opportunity to bounce back. At one stage in the middle of last year, I was hoping to set a goal of getting at least half of my stories with a red H and I'm currently sitting at 8/20, but I'm also realizing that, as I get more familiar with what scores and what doesn't, I'm increasing realizing that I'm not going to necessarily change what I write to get those H's, so I should probably drop this as a goal. (For example, my recent story got one-bombed probably for having a sex work positive story line and I've got more similar stories coming up)

I'm currently having a good couple of weeks having written three short pieces while waiting for the novel to be beta read and while planning the next stages and I'm also starting to work through my drafts folder and seeing if I can wrap up any half-completed stuff before the end of the year, so I can start the next one with a cleanish slate.

 

[KeithD]

I only had two loose expectations for erotica writing for 2022: to hit my usual goal of 500,000 words in at least 12 works (one per month) published to the marketplace and to have at least one entry per week (52) published to Literotica.

13 works, totaling 1,039,951 words of erotica were published to the marketplace in 2022.

68 entries were published to Literotica in 2022 (so far. There will be at least 3 more submitted for 2022 posting).