This year was hard, and I didn’t achieve any of my personal goals. But there were a few amazing things to celebrate, and I’ve tried to spend some time focusing on them instead of mourning what I didn’t do.
So here are the few things I did manage this year.
- Developed and taught two character creation classes, with two more ready to teach when the new semester starts. This has been one of the hardest and most rewarding things I’ve professionally done, especially since I’ve also been teaching my other fiction writing classes for teens. Every moment has been amazing, and I’ve had the best time sharing creativity with youth. 💜
- Outlined a 50-chapter book (hoping it’ll be around 80k words when it finishes), and since Christmas I finally wrote the first 4 chapters. The rush has been amazing, and I’m so excited to keep working on it. 😍
- Created/joined a small writers’ ring. This may have been the main driver I managed to start writing my novel. They’ve inspired me and encouraged me, reminding me just how desperately I wanted to write and share stories when my everything was sapped by work and family. 🎉
- Wrote 9 months of weekly 250-word flash fiction for Wednesday Words. I meant to write a full year, but the past few months have been a lot, and I just couldn’t do it all. I did manage one for the last week of the year though. Actually, I wrote two because I wrote for the wrong prompt the first time. 😅
- Started organizing a database for my novels, short stories, and flash fiction. It’s far from finished, but I’ve got my more recent short stories and all my flash fiction in there now, and it’s given me a way to track different stories for calls for submissions. I’ve even submitted 2 stories because I knew what I already had ready to submit due to my database. 🦾
- Attended 2 local writing conferences. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to attend a local writing conference, and being able to attend just 1 or 2 days has been more manageable for my health instead of traveling for half a week to a full week at a time. I met some amazing writers from the East Coast and reconnected with a few friends, and I can’t wait to see them again at the next conference. 🤞
- Enjoyed my children and have watched them grow this past year. There were some hard moments, especially with one of their schools, but everyone is loving life and eager to spend another year in Virginia. And I’m so happy that my kids can be happy. ❤️
It really has been a great year, even if it’s also been one of the hardest. May 2025 be another step in a better direction.