An ending. An arbitrary ending, but an ending nonetheless. The house lights are coming up. Last orders at the bar. A few minutes left to take a quick look around, exchange some numbers, maybe take someone home, before you’re being ushered outside, dawn’s approaching, sleep’s calling, today has been well and truly used up, enjoyed, spent, taken for all it’s worth, and tomorrow will soon be upon us, demanding just as much attention as today. A chance to start again. A chance to do something different.

The end of a year. The end of a story. The end of a book. This book. Any book. A new chapter. A new author. A new genre, if you so wish. New year, new goals. Wipe the slate clean. Start again. New direction. Same direction, this time with more focus. Different focus. Recalibrate. Reboot. Check the map and redefine the route. Choose a new destination. Burn the map altogether. You decide.

The sun is rising. Time to start it all again. Where are we off to this time, Boss?

But before we plot our new course. Before we plug in our coordinates and go full speed into the great unknown, now is as good a time as any to take stock of where we’re at. Where we’re standing. What we’ve achieved over the last year and what we’ve let fall through the cracks, and have a think about where this circus will be headed come morning.

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So, in the spirit of honest goal-setting and finding creative direction, let’s take a look at what I’ve achieved this year. Creatively and personally. The defining wins and losses scattered through the seasons. The little steps. The big steps. And the side steps in between.

And, as with any well-meaning constructive criticism, let’s start with the positive. Always a harder place to start:

• I wrote. A lot. More than I’ve ever written before. 93’000 words for one. The longest thing I’ve ever written.
• I completed things. Short things. Long things. Lots of different things. But I wrote things with endings. That’s new for me.
• I got my first ever story published!! Twice!! First in May with Lost in Translation, and then again in November with Take Out Chinese. That’s a pretty damn big milestone! I was paid real money for my fiction! Dollars for my words!! Gold for my thoughts!! My words were read by people who know a little about words, and they liked them enough to print them online and in an actual godsdamn book for other people to read!!
• I won an award for my fiction!! I was judged alongside hundreds of other authors, many of whom have published books before- real books, with spines and covers and blurbs and everything – and I won!! I’m still coming to terms with that one.
• I broke the 300’000 word writing goal I set myself five years ago. 300’000 words to find your voice. To get the bad words out. To get better. Does that mean I’m better? I have no idea. But we’re on the other side of it now.
• I stepped back from freelance and focused on fiction.
• And I wrote quite a few things that I genuinely like. That I’m genuinely proud of. I’m not entirely sure what to do with them yet, but they exist. I created them. I finished them. And they are patiently waiting in my desk drawer (virtual drawer, but a drawer all the same) for me to find them a home.

• I moved to the city
• I moved back to the ocean
• I found an apartment in that city and furnished said apartment with a fancy new desk and a bookshelf my younger self would be jealous of
• I started a new job
• I lost twenty pounds
• I bought a pair of Dr Martens that make me feel like a badass
• I started therapy. I feel like it’s helping
• And I drank better coffee. A lot of it

I read more. I read often. I found new music and new clothes that make me smile. I wrote for me. A whole bunch of things just for me. I found a process that worked. For about two months, it worked. I lost the process, but I had it, and I’m pretty sure I know how to get it again. I created work I’m proud of. I created work I’m still trying to fully understand. I made lists. Some of them I followed. I learnt new words. I used them in a sentence. I learnt tactics for pushing through a first draft. I got better at killing my darlings. I looked up. I looked around. I look out the window at the city now. I took a breath. I took a minute. I made a home.

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And now… to honour the process of creating a fully-functional shit sandwich… there were also some things I did not get accomplished in 2024:

• My blog petered off around the middle of the year, which coincided, not coincidently, with not writing my daily writing journal as often as I once did. Less time to sit and think, less time to think of something interesting to say.
• I submitted far fewer stories for publication in the latter half of the year, which, of course, meant less rejections and less opportunities. I wrote more, but those pieces have yet to find anywhere to be.
• I found myself wasting hours, days even, on research and submission requirements, only to have a rejection sent a few weeks or even months later, making all that time feel utterly useless. Maybe I need to keep better notes so I don’t have to repeat my research every time. Perhaps I just need to shotgun scatter my new work at the internet and see what sticks. The answer is likely a combination of both.
• Sending things out is a mess of anxiety and frustration, and getting those rejections feels a little like progress and a lot like failure. But I am getting better with it. Slowly. Not letting it hit too hard. Just a little papercut to start the day. Earning your stripes. Putting in the work. You’re not a real writer unless you’ve been rejected, right?

But despite submitting less, and by default, having less interaction with the literary community outside of my own head- the purpose of all of this feels more defined for me. This whole ‘be a writer’ thing has more structure, more purpose, than it once did.

Publication is great. Having people print my stories is incredible. But I’m not going to become a full-time author by selling a few short stories. Short stories are incredibly fun to write—exciting and freeing and easy in a way longer works aren’t. But once they’re finished, what do I do with them? Where do they live? Where do they go? People love short story collections by well-known authors, but I don’t know of many well-known authors who made their name JUST writing short stories. Short prose is a love. A soft, warm, safe lover I’ve known for years. But I think it’s time we have a little break. Have a look around to see what else is out there. Spice things up a bit. Throw a wrench in the works. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and all that.

Speaking of writing with purpose; where does this blog fit in? Writing it is fun; it’s a great way to limber up those writing muscles and play around in WordPress, but what’s the end goal? Build a portfolio? Check. Create an online presence with samples of my work? Check. Fill a webpage with things that show prospective readers/publishers the kind of thing I do? Check. So what’s next?

I enjoy writing this blog, but I only really see the merit when I have something to say. If not, it feels like writing for the sake of writing. Saying something not because you have something to say, but because you want to say something. Say anything. Which, unsurprisingly, produces garbage if you’re not careful.

As I said when I started this blog, the original intent was to catalogue one writer’s attempt to make a career out of what they love. And to that end, it is still succeeding. I don’t always have to write something profound about the craft. Sometimes, I can just write a post like this. Be honest. About my wins and losses. About the parts of this journey that are going well, and the parts that are harder than I thought they’d be. Becasue this is the journey, after all. From writer to author. Ups and downs. Publication and rejection. And choosing where to focus your attention and what to spend your time writing is part of that journey.

The other major thing I didn’t get completed in 2024- the big one that’s been keeping me up at night- is my novel. Or novels, to be more accurate. Both of them. Either of them. They’re both still in pieces, a mess of scribbled notes and vague ideas scattered in fragments across books and scraps of paper and hastily typed notes. And not one word longer on the page. On any page.

But that’s ok. Wins and losses. This is the process.

And we did accomplish things this year. We accomplished a lot of things. I clarified my goals and took a step back from freelancing. I focussed hard on my fiction and won a frickin award! (still need to pinch myself about that one). I wrote some stories under the guise of fanfiction that ended up being some of my favourite pieces I’ve ever written. I found a few people online that like the things I write, and a few people in person who do the things I do.

Small steps, but steps nonetheless. They may not be stepping stones, but they’re the little rocks you fill in around the stepping stones to make the path look pretty. Still part of the path. Still progress.

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So. Having added up my successes and failures, weighed my sins against a feather and then thrown the feather clean over the side of the balcony, where do we go from here, Boss?

2025. The year of the Racoon. (It’s not, but it can be. At least for me)

This is the year I write my novel. A novel. Any novel. A book. A long short story. 80’000 words. Whatever you want to call it, it’s happening this year. It’s in the diary. Written in pen. Underlined in pink. Gone over in Sharpie. I’ve been flirting with it for years, playing around in the sandbox, and the time has come to sit down and do it.

Z is for Zombie, right? It doesn’t matter how godawful the first draft is. All that matters is you write it. Get it down. Get it out of your head and onto the page. Any page. Barf it out and take a step back, and then see if you can mould it into something that resembles a story.

But that all comes later. Now, step one, the first and potentially only thing on the list… is to GET. IT. DONE.

Sit down and try. Sit down and succeed. Write something. Write anything.

I have no idea how this is going to go. I’ve never honestly, wholeheartedly tried to write a novel before. Beginning, middle, end. So the time has come to step up to bat, put my money where my mouth is, and Get. It. Done.

This blog is still helpful. Still useful. Still fun. And I’ll dip back into it now and again when I have something to say. And I’m sure over the process of writing a novel, I’ll have quite a few things to say. But producing content for the blog is not currently the priority.

The same goes for submitting to publications. Important? Most definitely. Something I need to do if I want to make progress? Absolutely. But something that needs to be done now? No. Not right now. My ‘bottom drawer’ of stories will still be there in a few months. There’s no expiration date on cute gremlin fiction. Would it be helpful to find a way to do both at the same time? To spend an hour submitting, an hour researching , an hour editing a blog post, and a few hours writing? Of course it would. That sounds very much like the work habits of a brilliant and successful writer. And I plan for that to one day be in my future. Do a splash of work, a splash of self-promotion, a dollop of writing, a sprinkle of internet engagement, and then sit down with a tea and get lost in a few hours of BG3 before getting 8 hours of sleep and doing it all over again. Ahhh, one can dream.

But right now, my brain seems to work best with one goal at a time. One focus. One direction. Let’s do one thing. And get that thing done. Get it written. Frankenstein the shit out of that monster, get it breathing, get it thinking, get it existing outside of my head, and then I can come back to all that other stuff. A hiatus, if you will, from all the other projects I’ve got on the go. A hiatus from the leg-work, from the very important, arguable more important aspects of working as a writer, to spend some time on the words. The words, and nothing else.

The website can wait. The blog can wait. Submissions can wait. My short story collection can wait. Finding an illustrator for my vampire comic/graphic novel/definitely-not-a-kids-book kids book can wait.

For the next six months, we’re going full hibernation. Vegas or broke, baby! Where Vegas is a finished first draft and I’m Hunter S Thompsoning it all the way there- with less psychedelics and hopefully more coherency. Heads down, phones off, I’m out of the office, Julie in HR will take your calls, this voicemail box is full, please don’t call again.

One goal. One finish line.

Do the thing.

Get it done.

I’ll let you know how it goes.