The Stars Say Stats
My 2024 writing year in review
Welcome to Deep Dives, a bi-monthly subsection of TMI! Here, I dive deeper into my thoughts about a topic that doesn’t fit in the weekly newsletter.
*NOTE*: Today’s Deep Dive may be too long for email, so be sure to click “View entire message” or read on the web or app to see the whole thing.
Well, well, well. What have we here. A Deep Dive? In this economy??
Indeed. And strap in, ‘cause it’s gonna be a long one.
As 2024 wraps up, I am once again taking a look at my writing stats for the year. I really enjoyed doing this last year, and have tried to keep even better track of things this time around. Also, I love having a numerical way to judge myself. I mean, obviously I can judge myself without looking at any numbers, but what’s the fun in that when I can quantify my efforts??
(If you’d like to check out my post from last year, here are my stats from 2023.)
This was my first year working 100% full-time as a writer. The first half of the year was spent working solely as a freelancer/being painfully underemployed. That ended in June, when I got an editorial fellowship with BuzzFeed.
I joined the Trending News team mid-year, and am now officially considered a Resident Writer™. I’m on a one-year contract, but I am employed full-time. So, after my layoff from Google in early 2023 (where I was employed as a technical writer1), it took me approximately 18 months to career shift into something new.
As I mentioned, I’ve done my best to keep detailed statistics on my work: submissions, rejections, and publications throughout the year. As I go through each topic, I’ll start with the goals I set out for myself last year and give myself a ranking, then, you know — dive a little deeper (teehee).
So, without further ado: Let’s dive back in to the numbers side of the words.
Substack
Last year’s goal:
I plan to keep up my every Friday posts here along with 2 monthly deep dives. I’d love to reach 100 subscribers, maybe double our numbers, or even hit 300 (major stretch goal!)
Grade: A
I didn’t miss a single weekly newsy again this year! Admittedly, some of them were shorter than others depending on how much time I had, but I still sent out a newsletter every single week. I also managed to squeeze out 8/24 predicted Deep Dives this year (including this one), before I had to take them off my plate once I started my full-time job2.
I did a couple of big pushes for subscribers earlier this year, too, and did manage to reach my goal of 100! TMI currently sits at 119 subscribers, and while I didn’t reach my stretch goal, I’m really happy with the growth. We’re almost at double the amount of subscribers I had last year (69, nice 😎), which I attribute solely to my consistency and incredible talent. 💅🏻
I’m kidding, of course. I attribute it to Bryan Johnson continuing to be a complete fucking weirdo, the internet being a never-ending source of unhinged brand collabs, and rats.
Fiction
I’m combining my short stories/novel writing recap under one label here.
Last year’s goals:
Finish my damn book!
Rewrite/edit my short stories and submit again.
Grade: D+
I wrote a couple of new short stories this year based on prompts from lit mags, and I did submit one of them a couple of times without any acceptances. I didn’t spend any time at all rewriting the existing ones.
Also, I absolutely did not finish my book. I did work on it, but that mostly consisted of copying a bunch of parts of it into a new Scrivener project and then poking at it with a stick for months on end. And reading craft books.
I do think the craft books helped emotionally, if nothing else. In particular, Refuse to Be Done (girl, you know that’s an affiliate link!) seems to be resonating with me the most right now, and I think if I can try to follow these steps I might actually finish something at some point. Maybe.
Non-Fiction
Last year’s goal:
I’d love to try pitching to some bigger outlets and writing some more in-depth researched pieces outside of these Deep Dives.
Grade: B
So, this kind of worked itself out, but not at all in the way I had planned. I’ve graded myself a B here because, well, I didn’t really take the initiative to pitch much to outlets this year.
Instead, I ended up doing one big self-pitch that resulted in me getting a full-time job at BuzzFeed, which has given me an amazing opportunity to pitch non-fiction work every single week (obviously only to a single outlet) — and I’ve gotten to write up that work and have it published as well.
I’ve had 70 pieces published at Buzzfeed this year over my six months of employment, which is absolutely bonkers to me. Obviously some of them are lower lift, roundup-type pieces, but there’s also some work I’m really proud of.
Here are 5 of my favorite Buzzfeed pieces I wrote in 2024:
I loved researching this piece and getting to insert some little jokes throughout. As a person with a BA in History, reading dissertations and historical documents for this piece was an absolute dream.
No One Should Ever Go Into The Ocean, And These Pictures Of Terrifying Sea Creatures Will Prove It
I love to be an asshole online.
I Joked About Brits Putting Tuna On Their Potatoes, And They Were Furious — So I Decided To Try It
Did I mention I love to be an asshole online?
Getting to interview people like Andrew and Myra, whose content I found on my own, was very cool and also pretty rewarding. My interview with Myra even got syndicated into Japanese!
And here’s a link to my author page if you’d like to see the rest of my work there.
Ultimately, my fellowship has been an excellent primer in pitching, and I know that when it ends I’m going to feel a lot more comfortable pitching in general. I now feel comfortable facilitating an interview (over email, at least) and finding interesting content that is likely to draw in readers. I’m definitely excited to see how these newfound skills function in a freelance environment in the future.
I also wrote my first-ever tips piece for The Belladonna: How to Humor: Dealing with Rejection. It’s been a very long time since I’ve written anything intended to be instructional that wasn’t a technical document, so this was a fun exercise — and I got to share some of the lessons I’ve learned the hard way over the last few years.
Satire
Last year’s goal:
Keep writing satire.
Grade: A+
I had 21 (TWENTY-ONE) pieces published this year, which is a far cry from the 10 I published last year. And here’s the crazy part: I stopped writing satire in June when I started my full-time job. So that number covers just half the year.
As with last year, I’ll break this down into two parts: satirical pieces and fake news.
Satirical pieces
Here are my published pieces from this year:
The Belladonna:
Points in Case:
This piece was chosen by readers as one of the Top 10 Favorites in 2024 🥰
Weekly Humorist:
As you can see, my satirical pieces were much more limited this year overall. I have a bunch of partially written pieces that I haven’t gotten around to finishing, and I definitely benefitted from the pitch system at the fake news outlets.
Fake news
This year, I joined End of The Bench Sports and The Musk Mag (Instagram headlines only), as well as keeping up with Hard Drive and Hard Times.
End of the Bench:
Guy Who Grew Up With Pool Table in Basement Surprisingly Bad at Pool
Aging Millennial Still Blaming High School Soccer for Tight Hamstrings
Fantasy Football Team Saves Best Performance of the Year for 3rd Place Game
Hard Drive:
Here’s Every 1 Star Yelp Review of My Rollercoaster Tycoon Amusement Park
Guy Ignores Eclipse in Favor of Destroying Vision by Looking at Screens 16 Hours a Day
All the CIV VI Leaders Ranked by How Well They’d Do in the 2024 US Presidential Election
Boeing Reminds Passengers Planes Are All Still in Early Access
Hard Times
Rude! My Friend Invited Me to Meet Her Baby and the Baby Showed Up Completely Unprepared
Uninsured American Hoping Doctor Duets Their Video of Weird Rash Before TikTok is Banned
George R.R. Martin Admits “Winds of Winter” Delayed Due to Writing 8,000 Letters to Harry Styles
Sad: I Carried A Really Heavy Package All By Myself And No One Saw
How to Work Out Using Just The Crushing Weight of Your Own Existence
Duck With Corkscrew Penis Assures Girlfriend They All Look Like That
Unfortunately, my ability to write satire has been majorly hampered by restrictions at my day job — partially because they have strict requirements that require us to get permission before writing for any other outlets, and partially because I’m struggling to focus on anything more than what I have to write on a daily basis.
The first half of the year was incredibly productive, though, and I’m sure this is something I’ll get back to in the future — though maybe not at the same pace.
Rejection
I wrote ~135 headlines this year, and 18 of them were accepted.
I wrote a packet for Reductress (my 6th time applying) but none of my headlines were selected.
My short story, “A Monstrous Meal,” was rejected twice. I pitched Cake Zine unsuccessfully. I also applied to get a meeting with an agent at AWP, writing a bio and sharing a portion of my novel. I did not get selected.
I wrote a packet for The Onion’s fellowship.
I applied, even though I knew it was a stretch, for a job at Defector. I do think, however, redoing my resume for that gig and pulling clips actually prepared me for the BuzzFeed application process.
Money, honey
Okay, okay. But what does it all mean FINANCIALLY??
Well, not a lot, if I’m honest! I’ll focus on the freelance work here, since my job pays me a salary. Most satire outlets pay either nothing, a flat fee, or use the Medium paywall. Hard Drive also pays per entry on list articles ($1 per entry, $2 if you source your own images). I also edited part-time for Hard Drive (up until June) and made $10 per edited piece (this included copyediting, sourcing images, and scheduling in Wordpress).
Regarding my full-time gig — if you’re wondering what it’s like to make a career shift after more than a decade in one industry — well, it’s rough. I’m making just over 1/3 of the salary I had at Google. It’s an entry-level role, and it pays like one. But hey, at least I’m not miserable at work. I’ll take it.
Here’s the freelancing specifics:
Substack: $55
Weekly Humorist: $20
Hard Times/Hard Drive writing: $638
Hard Drive editing: $140
End of the Bench: $90
Points in Case: $35
Medium (Belladonna): $8.22
TOTAL: $986.22
In comparison to last year, where my total was $158.03, this is a massive increase. The year prior to that, I’d made about $50, so things are definitely on the upswing. And again, this is just for half the year, so I imagine I could have done even better if I hadn’t gotten my full-time job.
Things that went well
I am absolutely blown away by how much work I did this year.
21 satire pieces + 1 tips piece + 70 BuzzFeed articles + 60 Substack posts = 152 (!!) total published pieces in 2024
If that 10,000 hours thing is true, and there were 10,000 hours in a year (I did the math3, it’s only 8,760), I definitely would have hit it this year.
That’s just the stuff I had published. It doesn’t include the pieces I started but didn’t finish: at least 3 joint works (sorry ladies, lol), stuff I wrote for prompts that I either didn’t submit or couldn’t get in in time (bite me, HAD submission calls), or thought was a good idea for 5 minutes before I looked at the workload before me. Whew!
Working at BuzzFeed has given me the opportunity to learn how to do a bunch of different things I hadn’t done previously (like interviews and in-depth research). I think my writing’s gotten better, and I’m definitely a lot more confident in my work.
Plus, being published regularly has stopped me from giving two steaming shits about people’s comments online, which I think is another important skill. I fully released my feelings into the ether after like two weeks into my job at BuzzFeed when someone commented that I should be fired because I described a disgusting sea creature that’s never even seen a fucking website as a “freak of the week” with a “lure for a goatee.” Get on an OceanGate sub and go visit your creepy little friends, sir. I have no time for your antics.
I attended AWP and the Erma Bombeck Writer’s Conference. Both of them were great for different reasons. I would like to go back to AWP when I am agent’ed and/or have a book deal. I would like to go back to Erma every two years until the end of time, as long as my friends are going to be there.
I absolutely adored meeting my online friends in person. Everyone is basically exactly as I expected them to be except somehow more wonderful? I didn’t know that was even possible. I wish we all lived next door to each other in a giant writers’ compound.
Things I wish I’d done differently
I wish I’d focused on larger projects. Again.
I hope I’m not writing this again in 2025!!
Literally please don’t let me work on anything else
I also wish I’d done a better job of figuring out how to work on personal projects when I’m also working writing full time. It’s not easy to manage my time when I am doing writing literally all the time.
This last one is a little embarrassing: I wish I’d done like, a single hobby.
You can scroll up slightly and see just how much work I did this year. I was an absolute madwoman. I think it is good, but I also think it is bad.
I’ll be honest: As I’m a little older than many of the folks I work with — at BuzzFeed, and in writing groups — I tend to feel a bit behind. I think that really makes me work like an insane banshee at a breakneck pace. I barely watch TV anymore, which used to be my favorite past time. When I do, it’s some junk I can have on in the background while I work. I don’t really have much time to read, either. I should spend more time going out with friends, hanging out with my husband, or just…not on the computer.
I’m sure it isn’t entirely healthy, but I’m also not sure how to stop doing it. I have some big goals I’d like to reach one day (writing for TV, publishing a book) — and I see most of my daily work right now as means to those ends. If/when those things happen, maybe I will actually rest…?
Goals for next year
One kind of interesting side-effect of working at BuzzFeed is that it’s helped relieve this constant pressure I’ve felt to have my work published. I was overwhelmed with this sense of urgency to get my work into the world, and it’s just…dramatically eased up because I’m getting published a few times a week.
My fellowship is set to end in mid-2025, and I don’t know whether or not they’ll have any full-time opportunities available. Right now, I am not taking the experience for granted, and intend to continue to work on projects that are meaningful to me and build out the best portfolio/bylines I can. Overall, I think having this job will help my other work be more focused and less frantic.
Here’s what I’d like to do next year with the expectation that for the first half of next year, at a minimum, I’ll be focused first on meeting my goals at BuzzFeed:
Substack
I intend to keep up my weekly publishing schedule and would love to toss in a couple of Deep Dives if I have time.
I’d love to reach 300 subscribers in 2025, but would be happy to get over 200!
Non-fiction
I would like to finish the book proposal I’m currently working on and begin sending it out to agents.
If I do end up freelancing again, I’d love to get some new and exciting bylines!
Fiction
I want to keep submitting to lit mags — old rewritten work and new stuff.
If I don’t finish my novel I’m going to jump off a bridge.
Satire
I want to focus on quality over quantity. I’d love to crack some outlets I haven’t gotten in to yet — but since I don’t have control over the actual acceptance part of the deal, I’d like to just write and submit a few pieces I’m really proud of to these spots.
Other
I’d like to apply for a residency! St. Nell’s is definitely on my list, but I’m going to check out some others as well.
DO SOMETHING ELSE FOR LIKE, FIVE MINUTES.
Seriously. I need a hobby. Can anyone find me one?
Phew. Okay, that’s all of it! I showed you mine, now you show me yours!
How did your writing (or other creative/personal projects) go this year? What goals are you setting for next year? Have I revealed too much? Are you judging me now, more than I’m judging myself? (Don’t answer that.)
As a technical writer, I wrote documentation for engineers. Prior to my job at Google, I’d worked as a software engineer, systems engineer, and in IT.
I think it’s fairly easy to see that some of my favorite BuzzFeed work would probably have lived in the Deep Dive realm without that outlet! And of course I still have some good stuff up my sleeve for TMI once I have the space again. The biggest benefit to me publishing on my own here is I don’t have to be even remotely ~*professional*~.
I googled it.
Love a good round up like this and you accomplished a lot! I think the balancing of writing with a day job is always a big challenge for me too.
This is amazing, Kelley! What incredible work this year. I particularly appreciated hearing about the job search length (as I'm about halfway though that 18 month mark right now!) and the salary difference in shifting fields. I hope you're able to find some more balance with working and chilling in 2025 and I should probably check in on my writing stats, too!