2025 Writing Goals and Progress

I can hardly believe the end of February is already upon us. While January was a crawl to the finish line, February has been a test of keeping pace. At the end of January, I set aside time to review the month ahead and determine some milestones. With the year passing me by, how will I achieve what I set to - what I wrote about in my first blog?

Anyone who knows me, knows I often set ambitious goals for myself. I tried to dial it down for 2025, but even now, I’m realizing the mountain I have set myself up to climb.

For my reading, I’m planning for a solid 50. I also consider other genres in that count, such as essay collections, poetry collections, or even scripts and plays. Beyond that 50, I’m also counting more shorter forms I read - poetry, short stories, shorter essays - because it all ultimately adds up to how I have enjoyed what others have created.

​I think that’s my favorite part of reading and writing communities: the way they uplift one another. 

Given my track record for reading, the writing goals I set for myself are the most ambitious ones. In my first blog, I included that I plan to complete and/or post online: 

• 12 blogs
• 24 poems
• 1 book draft
• 1 script draft

I’m happy to say this is my 6th blog! I haven’t posted that many in a year since… 

Wow, actually ever.

I produced 9 articles about writing in 2016 for Odyssey Online before I became Editor-in-Chief for our local chapter. After that, my time was spent editing and supporting my team of contributing writers so that they posted every week instead. I reposted all of those “Wrong, or Write?” articles to this blog in December 2016, but that hardly counts as this blog when I really look at it.

Hindsight is terribly revealing sometimes, isn’t it? 

The truth is, this style of writing takes less time than the ambitious 4-book romantic fantasy series I have planned, or even the script I partially drafted in 2023 (which I have yet to revisit). Even with designing the posts for my social media accounts, blogging as a whole requires less time and effort. It comes from a more simple place. 

Me, with my hopes and dreams and passions, just trying to connect once again.

Maybe the book and script writing comes from there too - deep down - but it’s muddled by a pressure I subconsciously place on myself. I started publishing when I was 20 years old. Short, little pieces locally before collaborations published internationally. Contests, too. I’m forever grateful for those experiences. I learned about my process, my preferences, and my perspectives on different genres. 

It would be fair to say that all that has changed, or that I am open to the fact that how I work and what I enjoy isn’t exactly the same as it was more than 5 years ago. This year, I return to my writing like a grown adult returning to a childhood haunt. What’s in front of me is part familiar, part foreign. 

Engaging in the process again means giving myself over entirely to it. In author and professor Brandon Sanderson’s first recorded lecture as part of his science fiction and fantasy writing course, he asks the question: 

What makes you consistently do the things you want to have done? 

I’ve listened to him ask that question probably a dozen times, mulling it over, and it reinforces my desire to attend writing groups and carve out time for writing in my day like I used to. Stolen moments on napkins, scrap pieces of paper, even the Notes app on my phone. In the state of revision I find myself in for my book series, blocks of time are better than chunks, but chunks of time are better than nothing at all. 

It’s what I have. So I’m working on giving myself the gift of time again. 

So right now, this is what I have in mind, subject to the natural change and demand of life:

• By the end of April, I will have a more detailed grasp of the overarching plot and the character developments for the series as a whole. To me, this means the primary and secondary character histories, goals, motivations, and conflicts are more clear. This also means I have a more organized understanding of the timelines at hand for each book. After speaking with an editor I met last year, I’m realizing how large of a mountain this series is—how steep of a climb plotting will be.
• By the start of May, I am beginning to write the next draft of Book 1. 
• By the end of July, 91 days later, I will have completed the next draft of Book 1. 
• By the end of August, I will have replotted my 2023 script idea or created a new one. Depending on the state of my book draft, I will also send this to others for discovery feedback. It won’t be ready for publishing, but revising again… Oh, yes.
• By the start of September, I am beginning to write the script. Whatever it may be. 
• By the end of November, 90 days later, I will have drafted that script.​

​It’s a nice plan. Still, I might toss the script draft out the window entirely in favor of my series. With two jobs and other priorities, it’s hard to say how this plan will unfold. Already, February has been plagued with sickness and ripe with healing. I won’t know what pace makes sense until I begin - until I am in the thick of the process, and in the thick of life - but I’d like to think I’m well on my way. 

Until next time!