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Jan 15

Back 2 Work…But Leave Room 4 Surprises

I’m still bumping along in my WIP (work in progress). I’ve given it a codename, “The Brownings,” because it is slightly inspired by the letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. I’m hoping to be finished with this first draft soon. It will be a closer to novella length, but as I have said before, I just need a beginning, middle, and end.

This time of year is notoriously hard because we are all back to work now. The holidays are over and we all return to the routine. The first Monday of the full work week is call “Blue Monday” for a reason.

As I write this time around, I’m trying to follow more of an outline. I read the book “Forest for the Trees” by Betsy Lerner years ago. I try to keep the big picture of the story in mind. Too many writers are guilty of only focusing on the trees. The word. The sentence. The scene. And while those are important, I also want to make sure the story is going somewhere (aka the forest). In my last attempt at writing a book, I wrote tons of scenes, but I felt like the book wasn’t going anywhere. The scenes were great, but the story was lacking.

Now I have a road map as I write. I am heading somewhere in this story. Scenes are important, but they have to build toward something. I’m trying to write each scene the best I can, but I still find surprises along the way. The scene I am in the middle of right now kind of sprung up on me. It works and I feel as if it is needed for the overall story I am telling, but it wasn’t in the outline.

That’s fun.

That I like.

I guess I am a pantser, who is moving to be more of a plotter. A plantser, if you will.

Honestly, I just happy that I can still write longer works. I think it’s giving me more confidence, because the last two stories I finished, were noticeably longer than my normal short stories. The challenge is if the story can hold together. So far, it has.

Well, I’m back to work. Happy writing everyone!

Jan 1

2024 Writing Recap & 2025 Writing Goals

It’s 2025! Happy New Year!

But before I launch into my writing goals for the new year, I thought it would be best to have a brief overview of what I wrote and accomplished this year.

2024:

  1. I set a goal to publish 6 short stories this year. Four were self-published and two were traditionally published. I had been saying for years that I wanted to self-publish some of the short stories that I had written and published years ago. This goal pushed me to do so and also got me back into submission mode. By April, I had my 2 acceptances and the rest was me sitting down to do the other four. Happy to say, I did it and knocked this goal out.
  2. Write a finished draft of my WIP novel. Well, this I didn’t accomplish. My WIP is still not finished, but I am moving into the last third. I think if I hadn’t take the time to finish two other stories I might have made the deadline. No worries. I haven’t given up and will plow ahead in the new year with this novel.
  3. Wrote 13 blog posts! The total words was 7, 135. In the past, I have barely updated this blog, but this year, I had lots to talk about and I tried to put myself on a schedule.
  4. I finished 1 new story and rewrote 1 older story. The new story is turning out to be a longer work, but I’m happy that I finished one new project this year. Also the short story I rewrote had been neglected for too long and I had hoped to submit it at the end of the year, but I’m still not quite happy with it. (See 2025 goals for my plans.)
  5. I started a Youtube channel! As of this writing, I have 14 videos and 12 (?) subscribers (I got a few in the last day of the year.) I’ve had fun filming and learning the ropes. If you haven’t seen my videos, here is the video of my 2024 recap.

Goals for 2025

  1. The first half of the year, I want to finish a draft of my novel that I feel comfortable submitting to literary agents. Yes, I want to pursue traditional publishing for my novel. I consider myself a hybrid writer and will continue to self-pub some stuff, but for my novel, I want to try the traditional route first. So, hopefully, by the end of January, I will have finished the 1st draft and will be planning on how I’m going to rewrite. The beginning has changed since I started, so I already know where changes are needed. Six months feels like a good amount of time.
  2. Rewrite and submit out the 2 short stories I have in the wings. One of those stories is mentioned above (the one I rewrote at the very end of the year) and the other is a story I haven’t looked at since very early 2023. I plan to rewrite them and start subbing them this year.
  3. The second half of the year will be for the new work (probably a novella, maybe a novel) I finished in 2024. The story was supposed to be a long short story, but I had so much to write and ended up cutting out a lot of scenes. When I workshopped it, my fellow writers said that it felt like a longer work and I agree. So, July 1 – Dec 31 will be devoted to whatever this story wants to be. It would be hilarious if it ended up being another novel. The girl who spent that last decade or so writing short stories, now can’t stop getting novel ideas!
  4. Read 24 books this year. My reading has fallen off! So, 2 books a month and maybe I can whittle down my TBR pile this year.
  5. Commit to 2 blog posts a month. The 1st and 15th of every month will have a new post. Along with that, I am joining Substack to start a newsletter which will go out on the same day. If you already follow this blog, no worries. It will be the same posts, but if you prefer a Substack, it will be available. I will be setting it up on January 1, so over the weekend of the 4th and 5th, I will update with the link in the About page. (I have to work the 2nd and 3rd, so I may not have the time.) I’m doing this to grow my audience and there are a lot of writers on Substack, so I will try it out. For now, everything will be free. If I decide to charge in the future, there will always be a free tier. (But for now, I’m not even sure if it is right for me.)
  6. Commit to 2 videos a month on Youtube. I would love to be monetized this year, but I don’t have control over that. Instead, I will do my best to be consistent and post regularly. However, the fiction writing has got to come first. If I don’t write, I don’t have much content. So, writing will always be the priority.

Here’s the video version of my 2025 goals:

*Bonus Goal:

If I find myself crushing my goals, I may lose my mind and self-pub a collection of short stories. My mom mentioned a few months ago that it would be great to have a physical copy of my stories, so I got it in my head that I should do that one day. If I do this, it wouldn’t happen until the summer. The priority is the novel-in-progress. Maybe I want a palette cleanser after the novel and before I start on the other longer work. Not sure, but it is in the back of my mind. Mostly because I wouldn’t need to write any new fiction. It would be more of a formatting and organizing writing project. We will see. I’m not so sure this is a good idea, but I’m not going to completely dismiss it.

Well, that’s it. My 2024 achievements and my 2025 goals. It was a great year, and 2025 is shaping up to be an ambitious year too. If you fell short of your goals, please don’t feel like you didn’t do anything. Trust me, I’ve had those years where just making it to the end is an accomplishment. You survived 2024! Take time to celebrate that and see how you can make 2025 better.

Don’t compare your chapter one to my chapter ten. Writing is an accumulation of small steps and before you know it, you are much further along than you realize.

Here’s to a great 2025! Happy Writing.