It’s stats time! This is the eighth December round-up for Black Cat Editorial Services and 2025 was the tenth year of my freelance career.

My trusty spreadsheet tells me that my 2025 projects had a combined word count of 2,944,426, which is a slight increase on 2024, but the overall trend of completing around 3 million words a year seems to be holding. This does mean that I am now within touching distance of 25 million words as a career total so far – a number that would have seemed ridiculous when I was starting out in 2015. It has been a pleasure to welcome seven new clients in 2025, and I’ve been delighted to see my returning clients continue to thrive.

What I’ve been working on

I am aware that I have slacked off on my ‘monthly’ round-ups this year, so I’ll take this as an opportunity for a little summary. I’ve been fortunate to have a wide range of projects cross my desk in 2025. I copy-edited the debut romantasy trilogy for one of the UK’s leading independent publishers, and I’ve started working with one of the foremost literary consultancies in the world.

My indie clients have continued to bring me some wonderful opportunities too. Some have expanded their existing series and some have launched new projects – I’ve had a blast working on sci-fi, fantasy, crime thrillers, action thrillers, comedies and historical sagas. Their books have won awards and been picked up for special editions in notable book boxes. I am thrilled to see them getting the recognition they deserve and that they have worked so hard for.

Looking ahead

My resolution for 2026 will be to get back to blog writing – I have a plan to ring-fence some time each month to produce my round-ups and, hopefully, some more posts on techniques for fiction writing. Let’s see if it works out.