My nudge word for 2025 was balance. It’s difficult for me to remember a year that’s been so divided between moments when, in a cold sweat, I’ve thought, “I have no idea what I’m doing” and those when, in tears and triumph, I’ve thought, “I absolutely know what I’m doing.”
Is that balance? Who can say! Let’s review.
Continue reading “2025 in Review”
To complete my look back at 2024 (see my year in review post and my stuff I really liked post), I wanted to revisit my 2024 nudge word: hungry. I spent the year reminding myself that it’s good to be ambitious. That it’s better to take risks and fail than to preemptively not go for stuff simply because I might not get it.
This is probably not a lesson that most people need to learn, but graduate school and some career bumps drummed the audacity clean out of me. So I spent a year trying to get it back.
I don’t know that I’ll ever be a truly bold person–though it was fun to spend a year writing Scarlett, the protagonist of Bold Moves, who has enough courage for a half dozen people. But I would settle for being less afraid of failure.
One thing that does scare me about the coming year is falling back into the malaise in which I found myself in during the previous Trump administration. So my nudge word for this year is balance.
I need to find that calm center where my day job and my writing and my life serve as counterweights to each other, in equal and correct proportion. Where I give myself time to rest and relax, where I don’t consumed by every news story and scandal, and where I don’t lose hope. That’s my aspiration for 2025.
This is a difficult year to take stock of because outwardly, I tried to project a sunny confidence that I did not feel. I didn’t talk about the hardest moments online. Suffice it to say, I spent more time sitting with family members in hospital rooms in 2024 than I could’ve predicted. Everyone is better now, but it was immensely challenging–and that’s setting aside the state of the world.
My nudge word for the year was hungry, and I did in fact go for it, even when my instincts were screaming for me to diminish and go into the west. I was rewarded in some ways, and I fell short in others. All together, it was a gratifying year…and it was a trial. The best I can say is that I persisted, and so let’s review.
In 2024, I:
In terms of my 2023 goals, I didn’t write two books and finish a third: I wrote 1.3 books, plus some bonus material. All together, I’m north of 140K new words for the year. I suspect 140-160K in a year is my sweet spot these days. As I make goals moving forward, that’ll be my target.
Next year, I’d like to sign some new contracts and to write 1.5 books. I’d like to be chill about my 2025 release. I’d like to be on social media less, and I’d like to move and stretch more–intellectually, creatively, and physically. And I’d like to read more.
May 2025 be a year of growth and love for us all. xo
(I’ve been producing some version of this post for as long as I’ve been blogging my writing. You can read about my 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013 respectively.)
I’m about to do something shocking. I’m going to pick a word for myself for 2024.
I have never done this before because it seemed…hubristic. Maybe it’s something that could be done in retrospect. Looking back at a period in my life, perhaps I could tell you what the theme had been. But to try to project a theme into the future? Not for me.
Except the more I thought about it, the more I realized that what held me back was fear, the fear of not getting it. If I declared that I wanted cake, and I didn’t get cake, that would be mortifying.
There was a season in my life when I wasn’t this afraid, when I wanted things for myself and when I pursued them. But quite frankly, that was followed by a period where I did not get the things. And it was not super pleasant.
But a few days ago, I was reading Finishing the Hat, and in it, Sondheim says of Leonard Bernstein that what he taught young Stephen was to never fall off the bottom rung of the ladder. You’re going to fail sometimes, but don’t fail small.
What on earth do I want, I wondered. What wasn’t I going after that I ought to be going after? Which of course made me think about Mary Oliver: “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
So I’m doing it, folks. I’m picking a word for 2024, and it’s hungry. Because I want to be brave enough to be hungry again. To let myself admit that I want what I want. And not to be so afraid of falling that I won’t climb up the darn ladder in the first place.
No matter how you slice it, 2023 was a good year for me. But the way I know that is not simply my accomplishing several tasks, it’s my hungering for 2024. At the close of 2022, I was buzzing with anticipation. I had worked so hard on Chick Magnet and Funny Guy, they were finally going to see the light of day.
The sun has risen and set on them now. I love these books. I love what they taught me and how I had to grow to write them and revise them and market them. But what I’ll always be most grateful to them for is that they helped me see the future. They weren’t the highest mountain, it turns out, but having climbed this hill, I can see it now, in the distance. I just have to keep going.
Let’s look back first, though.
Continue reading “2023 in Review”
Following last year’s example, I’m going to make my writing goals public for accountability. I’ve focused on things I can control rather than the things I wish might happen. Those, I’ll keep to myself.
And that’s my plan for the next 12 months!
Going into 2021, I had three goals: play the piano everyday, sign with an agent, and get a book contract. I did not play quite everyday; on Twitter, I logged my progress using the #RomancePianists hashtag. I got off with my numbering a bit, but I think I missed 3 days when I was away from my instrument. In terms of my other two goals, well, it was mission accomplished.
Given my relative success, I wanted to set a few more goals for the coming year.
And that seems like an ambitious enough year for me.
The last twelve months have been strange, which is to say stranger than normal because the baseline in my life is, well, strange. At the start of the year, I had many goals and most have not been achieved. But here is what I did do!
But for the past few weeks, I have been feeling very doldrum-y. My writing and creative process is like a tide. I’m the sun-bleaching-the-coral moment, waiting for inspiration to sweep back in. I know this: next year, I want to read more words, to write more and better words, and to work more productively and consistently.
As Yul Brynner once said in a movie, “So let it be written; so let it be done.”
I’ll see you in 2014!
Golden Heart nominations are being announced today. I didn’t enter so this doesn’t directly involve me at all. But if I haven’t signed a contract, I hope that in a year it will involve me. I can’t make finaling in Golden Heart a goal — after all, there’s nothing I can do to make that happen other than submitting a manuscript — but here are things that I’d like to accomplish before next year’s nominees are announced:
The other day, I had a conversation with a potential critique partner. She asked, “What kind of books do you want to write?”
I’m embarrassed to admit, I was a little stumped. What I eventually said is that I want to write historical romances that show as much interest and enthusiasm in American history as the best European (read: British) historicals do and that I want to write sexy, youthful contemporaries that capture what I feel like is missing in the market today (e.g., romance between smart, ambitious professionals, etc.). The manuscripts I’ve completed so far are all pretty serious. I’d also like to lighten things up a bit and have a little more fun, while remaining true to myself and my voice.
In the next year, I’d like to finish The Easy Part and revise it. I want to finish the revisions of Brave in Heart and Together is Enough. I want to write a full-length book for the Dauntless Love series plus one other manuscript (either the next book in that series or a sequel to The Easy Part). I want to win NaNoWriMo, either with one of those manuscripts or maybe with a third project. I want to send out query letters for Brave in Heart and The Easy Part. I want to get ready to enter a manuscript in the 2014 Golden Heart. If I haven’t been able to find an agent or a publisher or to final in Golden Heart, I want to prepare to self-publish in mid to late 2014.
Most of all, I want to improve my craft. I’m a better writer now than I was 12 months ago. I want to be a better writer still 12 months from now. This means writing every day, focusing on showing versus telling, keeping my dialogue realistic and light, and becoming a better planner.
What are your 2013 writing goals?
Emma Barry 