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2024 Recap

Posted on by GC

In my 2023 Recap post (read it here) I set three goals for all of 2024, I thought I might do Quarterly updates throughout the year but, as expected, those never happened. And, as usual, my recap posts are tardy, so here we are, looking back on 2024 while already well into 2025.

Old Goals

The goals I set for 2024 were:

  • Writing – finish writing my work in progress (WIP) first draft
  • Writing time – keep focused during writing time, limit other writing/ reading projects to prioritize WIP writing
  • Reading – read 24 books. For most of these, I planned on rereading through Michael J. Sullivan’s books, which are some of my favorites.

If you want to skip to my goals for this year, scroll down to the New Goals header. If you want to know how my progress went in 2024, read on!

2024 Recap

At first I had a hard time remembering what even happened in 2024, but once I got myself back into it I realized that I had more to reflect on than I usually to. So this post is a little longer than my usual Recaps, but it really gets across where I’m at with things in my writing journey.

WRITING

The first draft of my WIP is still far from done. In 2023, I typed up the 20 handwritten chapters that I had and ran a loose edit on them; it was awesome to see it come together, for it to make sense as I read it, and to finally have a wordcount (a number that many writers gauge their progress by). But then in 2024, my thoughts had a hard time settling back into writing new chapters. There were times when I had absolutely no idea what to write, I knew where the story went next but what actually to write next just didn’t come. There were other times when a scene from a different moment in the world I’m building took hold of my thoughts and wouldn’t let go until I had written it down. So, I didn’t finish my WIP in 2024, but I did get quite a bit of writing done, completing eight new chapters.

Eight chapters feels small when I say it, but when I look at all the work that went into those chapters, it doesn’t feel so small. Completing only eight chapters when my goal was to complete my WIP feels like a failure when I say it, but when I look at how far I’ve come since beginning and that I don’t really know how far I still need to go before finishing, it doesn’t feel like a failure. It seems that every year I’m telling myself: “I want to finish my first draft this year,” and every December I’m kicking myself that I still haven’t finished it. But I’m realizing that, to set it as a goal with a specific time window is rather impractical for my situation – I really don’t know how far I still need to go, and my time availability for actually working on it each week can swing between very little time to no time at all. Moving forward I need to rethink this goal and focus more on the process and progress of writing than the actual completion of my draft – if I continue strong with the process, then the completion will ultimately come.

WRITING TIME

I feel pretty good about where I’m at with this one. If you’ve been reading my Recap posts for a while you might remember that I get most of my writing done late in the night (think: midnight and later), I had a consistent schedule that worked for a while but as my life shifted and changed over the years, it no longer worked for me. During 2024 my scheduling of these work nights fluctuated as I narrowed it down to new specific days and times that worked, since then I have again been consistent with setting those worknights aside for writing. I wasn’t always as consistent in staying focused during that time (primarily due to my having a hard time settling back into writing this year), but I did limit my other writing and reading projects so I could commit more of that scheduled time to writing.

READING

Because I limited my reading time to prioritize my writing time, I did not read 24 books in 2024, and I’m totally OK with that. My reading goals tend to be more of an “ideal goal” to encourage me to pick up a book more often in the little moments – if I have a low count reading goal, I’m a less likely to read during the short down times of a day, and more likely to only read when I know I have a large chunk of time to dedicate toward it.

Also, I like to review each book I read, which I have to think about when I look at my read count because writing and posting reviews actually takes more time than it sounds like it would. I posted 7 book reviews in 2024, one of which (Bolivar) is a graphic novel. I read more graphic novels with the kids and wrote reviews for 3 of them but haven’t posted them yet for the sake of time. So adding the 3 books with reviews that I have yet to post to the 7 with reviews I’ve posted, as well as the 1 Beta read and 1 proof read that I completed, I get the read total of 12 books for 2024, which I’m pleased with – and is actually 1 more I read in 2023, which is surprising.

I am however disappointed that I didn’t reread more of Michael J. Sullivan’s books like I had planned. His Riyria Revelations series is my favorite read and I have been wanting to reread all of his books for a while now, but I kept picking up books that I haven’t read yet so they stopped staring at me from my bookshelf reminding me that they were unread (particularly a few books that had been gifts). I did however, finally pick up Sullivan’s omnibus Theft of Swords late in the year and finished the first book in it, The Crown Conspiracy – boy was it a warm homecoming. But then 2024 came to a close before I finished the omnibus and, disheartened by my failure to finish the first draft of my WIP, I’m now considering not reading anything until I finish it, which means more time for writing but also sadly means that my reread of Sullivan’s work will continue to get put off. All the more motivation to finish my WIP.

Click through the following links to read the reviews of my 2024 reads (once they’re up, I’ll add links to the three reviews that I haven’t posted yet).

New Goals

Looking forward to the rest of 2025, I’m going to be working on the following goals:

  • Writing – complete one scene a week
  • Writing time – schedule two work nights for focused writing (usually one of my scheduled worknights goes towards chores and other miscellaneous tasks)
  • Reading – excepting Beta reads and the like, as well as books read with the kids, I will be holding off reading until the first draft of my WIP is finished. As soon as that’s done, whether in 2025 or not, I will be restarting Michael J. Sullivan’s Riyria Revelations series.

I feel like these Writing and Writing Time goals can bend and shift with me as my schedule bends and shifts – which is very important, since writing a book is a “long game” goal and inevitably my life and schedule will change during that time.

I’m hopeful (as always) that I’ll complete my WIP this year, and if it happens I’ll be thrilled, but I’m just along for the ride with this book – wherever it takes me and however long it takes me to get there.