Continuing my 2025 reflection posts (see my 2025 in writing post here), I wanted to return to last year’s word: balance.
Continue reading “My 2026 Word”My 2026 Word
Tag: Goals
2025 in Review
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”My 2025 Word
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.
2024 in Review
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:
- Wrote and edited Bold Moves. This is my longest first draft to date (97K) and the longest of my revised books (95K). The revision process was also, quite frankly, a bear. If Bad Reputation was a book I wrote to the market, this was a book that I wrote just for me. I guess we’ll see how people feel about that choice in April 2025.
- Promoted and released Bad Reputation. Thanks to the Amazon First Read, this book is on more people’s Kindles than anything else I’ve ever written. Cole and Maggie have been with me since 2015. I adore them, and I’m glad they’re out in the world.
- Revised the first two-thirds of and finished drafting a thriller with romantic elements (aka the academic conspiracy book). This is a project I’ve been working on for THREE YEARS–I’m writing it on spec, so I had to fit it in between contracted projects–and it grew out of a seed from five years ago. It still needs a lot of work, plus my agent and I have to sell it, but the fact that it’s done is a massive relief. Watch this space for updates, I hope!
- Drafted and submitted three proposals for contemporary romances. I didn’t think I could love an idea more than the first one, at least until I wrote the second one. And that was the idea until I finished number three. My heart is full with all of these characters, and I’m hoping someone will give me the go-ahead to write one of their stories next year.
- Wrote 5K for a bonus epilogue for Bad Reputation, but it isn’t finished yet. So if you’re curious about Libby and Jack’s love story, I’ll have it for my newsletter subscribers, likely in a novelette length around Valentine’s Day.
- Read 45 new-to-me books, and I’d be delighted if I could finish a couple more today.
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.)
My 2024 Word
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.
2023 in Review
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”2023 Goals
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.
- Finish revising the thing I’m working on. Let’s call it Snowshoe. I’d like to get that done and to my agent in January.
- Return to the secret book, revising what I have and finishing it. I’d like to complete this by June.
- Write another book in the second half of the year. I have a veritable cornucopia of proposals, and I hope by summer, it will be clear which one I should work on next.
- Survive not one but two book releases. I haven’t had two full-length books come out in a single year since 2015. So I need to remember how to get through this with my sanity intact.
- Continue to play the piano most days.
- Restart jogging. No really, I mean it this time.
- Continue to use social media less.
And that’s my plan for the next 12 months!
2022 Goals
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.
- Play the piano most days. I’m going to keep using the hashtag–and everyone is free to join, whatever instrument you’re playing and however often you practice–but I’m going to cut myself a bit of slack. I’d like to log six sessions a week (or 312 practices) next year.
- Write two books. One of these is contracted, planned, and started, but I’d like to write another in the second half of the year.
- Complete the work for my secret project. More on this later!
- Start jogging again. I fell off when I sprained my ankle and upper foot in 2019, and I want to get back to it.
- Cut back on my social media use. Sincerely, I’m on Twitter less than I used to be, but I’m going to start aggressively using the tech blocking software on my phone. My plan is to log on for a few minutes each day to update my piano hashtag and check in, but then to log off again. I need my mind and my time to get the rest of this done.
And that seems like an ambitious enough year for me.
2013 in Review
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!
- I wrote about 100,000 words of fiction, which included finishing the book that’s now called Special Interests, writing a sequel to it, and starting three other projects. I also wrote innumerable words of non-fiction, emails, and blog posts (some highlights of the latter).
- I sold a book and then, because that had been so much fun, I sold three more.
- My first novel, Brave in Heart, came out in July, whereupon I discovered convincing people to read your book might actually be more difficult than writing one.
- But the sting of that faded because working with critique partners, beta readers, and editors who take you and your work seriously is awesome.
- I revised Special Interests and now I can’t wait for you to read it (April 7, 2014; mark that down someplace).
- I read many wonderful books, and even more articles, blog posts, and tweets about books. I generally came to feel like contemporary print culture is a vibrant place that I want to contribute to in as many ways as I can.
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!
It’s Good to Have Goals
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:
- Finish revising The Easy Part
- Finish writing and revising August and Matilda’s novel (the sequel to Brave in Heart)
- Start, finish, and revise Alyse and Liam’s novel (the sequel to The Easy Part)
- Submit The Easy Part and August and Matilda’s novel to a contest this summer
- Continue querying and submitting to agents and editors through the summer and fall
- Submit at least one manuscript to the 2014 Golden Heart
Emma Barry 