So this was a quick year, huh?

Seriously how it got to be end of December is mystifying. I feel like it was just last month it was January. Anyway, it is the end of the year which means it’s time for a retrospective, time for the usual introspection. I bring up in tabs the review I did last year, and then the goals post (which I actually made this year). I quote myself and go over how it went.

How did it go?

This time last year I wrote this:

To be honest I could copy and past a lot of last years ‘year in review’ and it would apply. I’ve got to the end of another year and I feel like I’m no further forward towards my dream.

“I started the (2022 goal post) by saying that in my review of 2021 I had put “that I really didn’t want to get to the end of the year and be disappointed again – but I was.” – that is the dream and it is yet to be obtained.”
– 2022, YEAR IN REVIEW

And as I said – here I am again. Another year, another disappointment.

2023, Year in Review

Another quote before I begin:

I want many things. I always want a lot. Some years I say I’m “starting small” and deep down I know what I really want, and so pretending like I’m starting small is a polite lie. If I don’t get to the real dream then I still feel like I’ve failed …

… If I work solidly all year and end up with one draft I can publish then I will be pleased. If I have more than fantastic but too much is unknown at this point to be accurate on what is achievable.

Goals for 2024

Why did I quote both of those things? Because context.

A Year, a Journey
I started January rebooting my Science Fantasy. Everything seemed to be going fine. I replotted, reworked character arcs, worldbuilding etc. I then started redrafting Book One and was making decent progress. By the end of January I was almost at the end of Act One on the redraft.

February I maybe got a bit ambitious I don’t know and tried to add in art time and piano. My brain felt a bit clobbered and I kept having migraines. Progress slowed down but I still added 38k to Book One’s draft. In March I struggled to regularly do projects other than the writing but I did finish Book One’s draft.

In April for the most part I just did some art projects. I didn’t look at Book One until the end of the month when I felt like I had a good surprise, and it wasn’t as fundamentally broken as my first drafts tend to be… (more on that later). So basically no writing was done in April. I booked the beta/editor for July and in May worked on ‘edits’. Also did one art project.

June was a good month. I did piano practice, some sketching practice (head construction), worked on an art project, finished Book One edits, replotted Book Two and started drafting! I was feeling very positive and then July went from bad to worse. I barely did any writing. Did a little art, the practices just went out the window etc. August was worse. I didn’t do much of anything. My edits came back just after mid-month and I eventually looked through them and made some notes. That was about it.

September I started the revision. It was a struggle, shaking the slump wasn’t easy and I only logged just over 40 hours. As I said when I looked in April and had a ‘good surprise’ – turns out the book was far more broken than I had realised. The beta feedback was a tough pill to swallow but ultimately helpful (I hope!) but it did mean a lot of rewriting. October was crazy, I did 132 hours to get the revision completed. I then sent the draft to the editor.

November I recovered from October and then did some art. December I started planning for next year. With the feedback on Book One in mind, I went back to look at the abandoned Book Two’s outline, and started to rework that, but didn’t finish.

This is basically a short summary of a year’s worth of ‘end of the month wrap-ups’ off my WriYe thread. I did manage to update that every single week throughout the year. So I have a clear record of what I did – or didn’t – do.

What went wrong?
I’m going to start with this because it’s the easier question to answer. I had a couple of moments of hope, when things seemed to be going great, and then I came back to Earth with a bone-jarring thump. It’s very much the story of my life. I think I wrote that in last years post as well:

Usually every January I try and make some kind of schedule to be able to do it all everyday. I manage for a handful of days and then just can’t do it anymore.

Goals for 2024

I tried to be more reasonable about it this past year, to start slowly, to not try and run before I could walk. However, inevitably I got enthused when things started to go well (in June) and then hit a brick wall in July. The two things are not wholly connected as other shit happened in July that threw me off. However, I don’t know how long I would have been able to keep up with June’s schedule regardless. It is something that makes me very sad, and very scared, how I don’t have the spoons/mental stamina to do more. I keep hoping that I can build it up somehow but thus far it’s not worked out.

I never found the balance I wanted. I was either ‘all-in’ on writing, or on art – I never managed to do both at the same time. I was great for one month at regular piano practice and then I slipped out of the habit and didn’t reinstate it. It’s like it takes ages to get the habit, and only one day to lose it. In terms of Art I am very much once again at the end of the year disappointed, another year, another failure.

In past reviews I’ve pointed at external factors. In fact I think I have a quote for that too:

It always seems like there’s some kind of external reason, but a lot of that is just excuses. I have depression, I have intense anxiety. I am autistic. I have physical symptoms even if I am unsure if I have actual physical issues (the mind likes to screw with the body). Life can be hard.

WriYe 2023, Year in Review

In 2023 I started the year badly because of medication issues. I had surgery, and then emergency surgery. The year didn’t really have a chance to start until September and by then I was mentally not in a good spot because it was September! In 2024 I had nothing like that. There was no external thing (aside from the travesty of the US election /cough) that was outside of the norm of my usual fears (climate, politics, AI in creative industries etc.). I do struggle in the warmer weather which was a factor for July/August sucking, but again that’s just part of life – just excuses.

There was no reason for 2024 to suck aside from wrestling with my normal issues. It was as close to a ‘trouble-free’ year as I can remember. So there are no real external issues I can blame, any failure was entirely my own. This is a bitter pill to swallow but taking responsibility is part of retrospectives as well.

My mind continues to be my biggest obstacle. It avoids, it struggles to start. I feel tired. I don’t have the spoons. On one hand I feel like I must not be trying hard enough, but at the same time it also feels like telling a baby to bench-press 300lb. If I could browbeat myself into doing stuff I would. It just doesn’t feel possible, but with it being my mind, there is always that question of ‘could I just try harder?’. I doubt the validity, I feel like I must be a fraud. It’s sad and frustrating. I wish to do better.

What went right?
I do have a completed first draft. That it’s not 100% edited, and formatted ready to publish, isn’t my fault. My editor initially said I’d have it back start of December, and then maybe they’d need until mid-December, and then when it got to mid-December they said they’d thought they’d have all of December, and didn’t due to an unexpected trip and that it would be mid-January. I like working with them. I find their comments valuable and also the draft was 30k longer when I sent it back to them, so I take partial responsibility there.

Am I happy?

Not entirely. It goes back to the ‘polite lie’ I quoted earlier. My pace at the start of the year was solid and I started to think that I would be deep into Book Three by this time. Being in the weeds at the start of Book Two isn’t what I wanted/hoped for and that is disappointing. I said I would be ok if I had one and then I got my hopes up.

BUT let’s put it in context – I have a revised draft. It’s the longest novel draft I have ever written (almost 125k). I don’t have confirmation that my changes are any good because I haven’t had the book back yet. It’s a little nerve-wracking to be honest. I hope I addressed the feedback and the book is good now but I don’t know for sure. Even if she says that it has corrected the issues she flagged, that still doesn’t guarantee it’s good enough. I won’t know that it passes muster until I try and sell it, and hopefully I get readers – which is a whole headache all on it’s own but more about that in my ‘Goals for 2025’ post.

What did I learn?
This is the takeaway from retrospectives right? While it’s nice to self-congratulate (if there is anything to be pleased about), the main point is to identify what went wrong, and then brainstorm ways to do it better. While I could do that (and will obviously reference it) in my goals post, I want to write about it here this year.

As always I feel like a lot of my ‘lessons’ are ones I have learned before. I said this last year too:

Let go of what I can’t change
This is an important point. I think I said in my review post that I have such anxiety over the state of the world (politics, climate, AI in creative industries) and I am afraid all the time. But I can’t do anything really about the world. Just as I can’t change the past. I can’t go back and have the last 10 years again, I can’t get that time back, I can’t make better choices. Stewing in misery and fear is a good way to lose yet another year. I don’t know if I will be able to make the mental shift to be more positive, to not be constantly afraid, to not be so self-loathing, but I need to try. I have tried. It’s not like I haven’t known this is a problem for me for years. But I really hope that in 2024 I can find a better path forward for me. The world will probably always be a dumpster fire but so long as the world keeps turning, I have to live in it, and I need to find a way to live in it.

Keep showing up scared. It’s all I can do.

Goals for 2024

I did try this year but I think this ^^ in particular is one of those ‘life-long lessons’ that I will need to keep trying every year. Fear and despondency is still a real issue for me.

With summer I miss the comfort of blankets/lots of clothing layers and it makes me cranky. I sleep badly. I get anxiety over having to open the windows (I have fly screens but there are still bugs on open/close and sound comes in). I’m not sure if there is anything I can do. Perhaps wear headphones more? Although that would make my head hot so I don’t know.

With the Art I need to practice, but then I have ‘projects’ and I can’t do both. The answer there is less projects and I didn’t sign up to the Bering & Wells exchange this year – progress, but I have decided to make a big present for my mum – that’s a huge project. Also I like projects because they are the WHY that is the reason for doing art in the first place.

For the Writing I would have done better if I hadn’t taken so many months off. April was intentional, as I had art projects, but that was also a mistake. I can’t say writing is my priority and then just not do it. Then July and August I did very little and I think this partially (writing-wise) might have been because I was waiting on my Book One edits and it didn’t feel right to be working on Book Two (I am very linear). So the answer to that is to have a side project (more about that in my Goals post).

I know there are only a certain number of hours per day (and less if I consider my spoon issues). I know that if I ring-fence writing every morning for instance, then that is a problem for getting art projects done. Mum’s Christmas present this year took 50 hours and so a lot of November. It’s easy to say I need to find a way to fit it in around the writing ‘job’, but aforementioned spoon issues. I really don’t know.

Conclusion
This year wasn’t bad. The words I logged for WriYe was 143,291 BUT that is the most incomplete picture in the world. I didn’t know how to easily log revised words, so all I did was subtract the old draft total from the new draft. That didn’t take into account all the changed words (of which there were many). So I wrote a lot more than that total includes.

I also have a revised draft – that’s a learning experience all on its own! I think if you go back to past review/goal posts I say that I feel like my writing skills got worse because I didn’t have that analytical look. I started to revise a draft last year, but this is the first draft anyone other than me has read since 2016 – the value of external eyes can’t be overstated. That was a big leap forward. I have got to a stage in novel writing that I haven’t been at in eight years.

I was very resistant this time last year to calling 2024 a ‘rebuilding’ year because I felt like I’d been saying that about years for a long time. I was sick of it being a ‘rebuilding’ time – I wanted it to be the year where I actually got to where I was going. BUT for the first time ever really, I think I can say that 2024 was a successful rebuilding year. It wasn’t smooth. It didn’t go perfectly. The foundation on routines definitely still needs work but I did accomplish something – I have that bare minimum one novel completed.

I ended the year further forward than I started, having at least taken a step towards the end goal. That’s huge for me. I am still a little disappointed it wasn’t more but it was something, and something is better than nothing. I have somewhere to build from now.