Reflections on my 2025 Writing Goals: Three Months in
Despite having near delusional aspirations of being a published author, I have never written a complete draft of a novel before in my life. So my main goal for this year is to simply finish a draft of my current fantasy WIP. Now I am 3 months into 2025, how am I actually doing?
To achieve this goal, I gave myself a daily task of working on my WIP for one hour everyday, usually split up into three 20 minute sprints. I figured this would be flexible enough for me to be able to achieve, even on days that I was busy. I’ve been keeping a calendar to track this daily goal, where I mark if I fully completed it, failed to complete it, or met my goal partially. I did this to keep myself accountable, and to be able to review my progress.
So how has the writing been going for me?
Well, as is typical for most new years’ resolutions, for the first two weeks of January, I was on a winning streak with working for at least an hour.
Naturally, what should happen next is that I would go at least 4 weeks without writing once. Of course, some weeks were less consistent. Sometimes I would get at least 20 minutes in. Other times I would complete my goal multiple days in a row. But definitely nothing as glorious as that honeymoon period in January.
Of course, there are some valid reasons for why my progress looks like this. The obvious one being school. With the first two weeks of January, I was still on holiday break, and so had lots of time to write. When my semester of university began, naturally school had to take the forefront of my time. I would try to write when I could, like late at night when I would’ve just doom scrolled anyways, but I could never make it stick as a routine. I think it’s because writing makes me energetic, especially after a good writing session. So if I spend an hour at night writing, then I’m going to take way longer to fall asleep. Perhaps writing early in the mornings would work better, but that would mean that I’d have to get into the habit of waking up early, every single day. Sometimes I’m so busy, that I’m genuinely too tired to focus on writing.
Looking at my goal tracking calendar right now is brutal. January shares an equal amount of days where I completed and failed my daily goal, but February and March is a bloodbath of my own inadequacies. It’s pretty discouraging. Some people might say that I need to really lock in and start writing consistently, but tough love doesn’t always work on me. I also have to be realistic. Sometimes you don’t have time to write. Sometimes other stuff has to be taken care of first, whether is be school, chores, another job, or even just touching grass and maintaining relationships. If I were writing full time, then I’d definitely be harsher on myself. However, as a university student who wants to make room for making memories, not failing my classes, and also searching for a summer job, I know that beating myself up for not maintaining a streak isn’t going to help.
That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t strive to improve obviously. Really, I’ve just been looking for chunks of time to work on it, and every session is different. Sometimes I barely write any words within the hour; and other days I’m writing so much and going overtime. My end goal isn’t to get a perfect score on my calendar anyways. The true boss fight is to finish the actual draft of the story I want to tell.
And has that been going well?
Honestly…yeah.
I don’t want to share details of my WIP, for fear of plagiarism, but also because nothing’s set in stone. But I can confidently say that I love this story. And one thing I’ve actually been really good at doing so far this year, is staying interested in my own story, and knowing what to do next. In the past, I would write with ease until the midpoint. Then I would have no idea what happened next, or I would get bored or intimidated by the book, and stop writing entirely. This year is dedicated to solving that. I have all the classic methods, like my Pinterest board, and a playlist of music I listen in order to get inspired. I also have adopted a plantsing model that has been really working for me. I write as much as I can, and when I get stuck on something plot or worldbuilding related, I stop. That’s my sign to go to my makeshift outline, where I plan out the next few events of the story, or where I flesh out a worldbuilding aspect. That way, I can return to drafting, with the knowledge of where things are going, so that I actually get the words down. Although I’m not sure what the word count will be when the draft is done (and I don’t want to worry myself over the numbers), there are still nine months left in the year…I feel fairly confident that I could actually do this.
At the time that I’m posting this, I’m really close to 40k words, which is only 10k words away from 50k, which is a milestone I have never reached before. But I can actually visualize myself reaching that milestone, even though I’ve never done that before. That’s how I know that I’m on the right track.
If you’re working on a novel or writing project, how has it been going for you? I’d love to hear about it, and I wish you all the best at beating your writing goals like a knight in a duel!
For now, may our digital paths intertwine another time…
Thumbnail from Aaron Burden on Unsplash