The start of a new year always puts me in a reflective mood. I’m often surprised when I look back at the year that passed and see all the things that happened which I could never have anticipated. 2025 was no exception, but this year I’m stunned by the sheer productivity that took place.
My writing career hit some major milestones and I also wrote over 140,000 words (which includes two full length novels and doesn’t count multiple rounds of edits!) To get full perspective on all that went down on the writing-front, I sat down and made a bullet point list of the highlights:
- I ran the second Homeschooler’s Guide to Book Publishing course
- I operated vendors booths at 3 different homeschool and/or faith-based conferences
- I had my first in-person speaking engagement at the When Words Collide festival in Calgary, AB
- I wrote 2 complete first drafts of two different books (Talentless and The Changeling Prince)
- I completed multiple rounds of edits on both manuscripts
- I launched my second novel (Clanless)
- I recorded the audiobook for Clanless
- Wingless won the Realm Award AND it also won an Award of Merit from the Word Awards
- I Jumped into querying The Changeling Prince
That’s far more productivity than I anticipated this year, especially considering I was teaching piano part-time and raising my now-18-month-old daughter. A lot happened in my family’s personal life too, though I won’t get into that here. Needless to say, I was feeling drained on the creative front by the time I met my editing deadline for Talentless in mid-December. So with a sigh of relief I put everything writing-related on a shelf and ignored it for the rest of the year.
The break was glorious, and even spawned a totally new story idea for another romantasy project that I’m looking forward to brainstorming and outlining over the course of the next year. But I’ll be taking things distinctly slower on the writing-front in 2026 (I hope, anyway).
Why the slow-down, you ask? There are two main reasons.
The first is that I learned a lot of important lessons this year when it comes to stewarding my time and creativity. I wrote the first draft of The Changeling Prince in 3 months, with the majority of the words getting typed up in a single month. Looking back, I now see that was a deeply unwise decision and one I’ll be taking pains never to repeat again. It landed me with a case of tendinitis in my wrists that’s still not fully recovered. It also drained me and took away from time with my family and from my other responsibilities.
Why did I push myself like that? I had set myself a self-imposed deadline–I wanted to have something to pitch to agents at the Realm Makers conference and the When Words Collide festival.
Realistically the manuscript wasn’t ready to be pitched yet, even though I finished it in time. It needed to rest and go through multiple rounds of edits. On a professional front, I knew that. But I was impatient and wanted to push myself anyway. The result? I didn’t get an agent as quickly as I’d hoped. And now I have plans for further edits I want to complete on it before I do anymore querying anyway. Lesson learned.
But I mentioned another reason for my slow-down: as I type this, we’re in the midst of moving to live out on a farm. So I’ll be learning how to raise ducks, goats and pigs this summer, which I imagine will take up a big chunk of time! I’m excited for the change–I think it’ll be great for our family. But I’m also a very routine-oriented person so I know I’ll be feeling taxed for the first few months as I figure out what my completely different routine is going to look like.
So what are my plans on the writing front?
I’ll be finishing up edits on Talentless and it will get sent for printing. I’m hopeful I’ll have early copies of it in my hands in the fall sometime. I’ll also be outlining and drafting the final book of the series, the title of which I’ll be sharing later this year.
I’m planning to finish editing the Clanless audiobook by the end of January, and hopefully publish it not long after that. Then in-between edits of Talentless I’ll be working on the next round of edits for The Changeling Prince, and jotting down ideas for that new project I mentioned. I’ll likely dive back into the querying realm for The Changeling Prince at some point this year too, but I’m not setting myself any hard-and-fast deadlines for that.
Oh, and I’ll be hopefully running this blog as well–I’ve been meaning to start it for over a year now so that’s one thing I didn’t get to in 2025.
Here’s to fresh starts and new beginnings throughout 2026!