It's time again to review the previous year's progress, personal and professional, and write goals for the coming year.

2022's focus was on rebuilding my creativity and pulling myself out of burnout.

I did this in several ways.

The first was by exploring my innate strengths, beginning with the CliftonStrengths test and continuing from there to the Better Faster Academy, a Strengths-focused resource created by Becca Syme, a success coach for writers. I'm not going to bore you with my journey through that, not least because it's ongoing; not even remotely have I exhausted all the resources Becca and her crew have made available.

The point is that exploring those Strengths helped me figure out what I need to fix and where I went wrong (i.e. what led to burnout). For example, I am high in what I call thinking strengths, which I discussed in last year's goal and recap post. I've spent the year learning about those Strengths and feeding them properly, by reading voraciously, seeking new experiences, and finding the quiet needed for deep thinking. While my annual word count dipped to its lowest ever (I just hit the 100k word mark for the year) and am still in burnout recovery, I'm satisfied with the progress I'm making.

2023's Focus

Now that I'm at a point where the words are flowing more freely (though again, I'm not entirely 100% yet), it's time to focus on publishing stories and not just writing them.

To that end, my focus in 2023 will be finishing and publishing stories and, to a degree, finishing series. I'm specifically speaking of novels here. Over time, my focus shifted from full-length stories and longer series to shorter works; the novella, for example, seems to be a natural length for the stories in my head.

With a few notable exceptions, novellas don't sell as well as novels and they're harder to market. So I'm hoping to shift my focus back to novels, particularly ones in existing series.

Long-Term Development

That doesn't mean I won't be looking at other potential story worlds. It takes a long, long time to develop Science Fiction and Fantasy story worlds, even those with contemporary or near future settings.

The Daughters of the People Series (Lucy Varna), for example, took three or four years to go from premise to the writing of the first novel.

Likewise, it took a full year to write the first Sunshine Walkingstick (Celia Roman) novel; much of that time was spent in worldbuilding.

These things take time.

So the worlds I'll explore through fiction in 2024 and beyond need to have their beginnings in the here and now.

Tonight, I brainstormed a really cool Epic Fantasy story world that I have no intentions of writing for at least two years, unless a miracle happens and there's an opening in my schedule. But I'm building the base for that story world now so that I have plenty of time to tease out all the nuances before committing words to paper.

Existing Series

Does this focus on finishing mean that I'll be completing open series in 2023?

Yes, sort of, but that will take time. I can't reasonably be expected to write the half dozen books I've committed to in those various series in the next year, not at the slow pace my writing is taking right now.

I do, however, hope to complete at least two full-length novels from those various series and publish them in 2023.

Some of the stories and series have gotten bogged down, or stuck, in various places, and those stuck places take time to unravel.

Two examples come to mind. The first is A Witch and Her Familiar, the second novel in the Vanessa Kinley, Witch PI Series (Celia Roman). This is the novel I was writing when I burned out last year. I've gone back to it several times since then, attempting to continue writing it. Each time, the story bogged down. It got to a point where I was genuinely afraid that I wouldn't be able to finish it.

I ran the first few chapters by readers, in the hopes that they could help me pinpoint any places where the story went off-track. That helped a little; I was able to write another chapter, then got bogged down again.

Finally, I realized that I had made a relatively minor booboo (nothing that would affect the reader experience; I simply left something out that I should've put in to explain something that will be crucial later on) at the end of the previous book (Between a Witch and a Hard Place) and needed to fix that before I could move forward. Once I tweaked Witch/Familiar to correct that oversight, the story flowed fairly well.

The second example of stuckness is with The Pruxnae Series (Lucy Varna). I went way off course with the third and fourth instalments in that series. My solution was to separate those books into their own, related series. This cleared up the stuckness-rut I'd been in for years and enabled me to pick up Sweet Surrender, the final book, and continue writing it.

A New Direction

The push to complete series is part of a new direction, and by that, I mean a new pen name.

I've wanted to focus on non-Romantic SciFi and Fantasy for a while now, something I've discussed repeatedly over the past few years.

2023 is the year for that to happen.

The reason I'm only planning to finish two books in old series in 2023 is because I want to spend at least some time writing stories for this new, as-yet-unannounced pen name. Now is not the time to discuss this move in depth, but you've probably already inferred what I'll be working on by the long-term development comments.

Again, I want to emphasize that I'm committed to finishing out old series, and always have been. These stories will be written, not least because I'd like to spin off non-romantic stories from some of them for the new pen name.

But I also have a real need to finish the series and put them to bed so that I can move forward without any baggage sapping my creative energy. So I'll be balancing the old and the new, and I'm certainly not discounting the appearance of new story worlds for existing pen names while I build the new pen name.

Recapturing the Joy in Writing

Right now, though, I'm jumping back and forth between working on A Witch and Her Familiar and Sweet Surrender, which has been fun. Nessa and Tyelu (the main female character in Sweet Surrender) are two very different women living in two very different worlds.

Yet they share some outstanding traits. Strength of mind and purpose, loyalty, a strong love of family. And they're facing some incredibly difficult times in which they must adapt and overcome.

I'm enjoying the heck out of writing both stories, which is so important as I climb those last few rungs out of burnout. It's been a long, long time since I wrote a story just for fun; writing became a chore to me, and that's not a good place for a writer to live in. It's a creativity killer, and I honestly need to find the fun again.

So that's something else I'm working on: recapturing the joy. It's been a huge mindset shift away from writing for profit and back to writing for fun. The irony being that the stories I wrote just for fun have earned the most.

Weird, right? But true.

Progress Report

I deleted previous quarterly progress reports and several writing posts because this blog was never intended to focus solely on writing; that's what my pen name websites are for.

I do want to quickly note that I did have several shorter stories published in 2022, including The Single Witch's Guide to Online Dating, a prequel novella to the Vanessa Kinley series; "The Witch in the Woods" (Celia Roman), a novelette published in the Shadow Magic anthology; a non-fiction records abstract; and the first two stories in my one and only Middle Grade series.

The final Middle Grade story will be published in February. I hope to also publish A Witch and Her Familiar and Sweet Surrender between now and April. My tentative plan is to rotate in stories planned for the new pen name as old stories are finished. I've got a list, I've got my tools and mindset in order, I'm working on nailing down a reliable workspace. Now I just have to stick to it.

Hence the focus on finishing.

Finally, I'd like to begin blogging again and hope to find other ways to discuss writing and connect with readers outside of social media.

Thanks for your patience while I worked through burnout and rebuilt my writing habit. Hopefully, 2023 will bring a lot of reading fun to you.

Happy New Year!