Writing Goals for 2025

It's almost the end of January, and it feels a bit late to do a post about my writing goals. But honestly, I've been busy making my goals a reality, so that's a win. Without further ado, let's talk about how my writing went in 2024 and talk about my goals and plans for 2025! Big things are happening and even bigger things are in store for 2026...

2024 Writing Recap

Let’s start with a 2024 recap. I had four writing goals:

• Read draft 3 of Project Prehistory
• Write and revise draft 4 of Project Prehistory
• Revise/edit one or two short stories
• Publish one or two short stories

Project Prehistory is my current work in progress that I’ve been working on since 2017. It's a coming-of-age story set in a prehistoric matriarchal society. I finished the third draft in late 2023 and last year my goal was to write the fourth draft. What I do after finishing a draft is to let it rest for a couple of months, print it out, and read it three times. I find that this is really helpful for me, because with each read-through I pick more and more things to fix. And with the fourth draft, there were a lot of things to fix.

I had beta reader feedback on the third draft that I needed to implement. There were two major issues. One was that the manuscript was too long: over 158K words. Since I’m trying to get this book traditionally published, that’s way too long for a debut novel. Another issue was that the second main character didn’t have clear enough goal and stakes.

I also had a paid beta reader who acted almost as my developmental editor. I didn’t always agree with her suggestions, but if she pointed something out to me, I knew that there was a problem I should fix even if I didn’t end up doing it the way that she suggested. Her feedback definitely helped to make this story stronger, and I highly recommend her services. She does developmental editing now, so head to her website if you’re looking for a developmental editor.

I spend the first two and a half months of 2024 reading the third draft and figuring out all the things I needed to change. After that, I could start the editing process and write the fourth draft. That took me from mid-March to early October. I cut about 20K words, which means that my manuscript now has around 138K words in total. I never could have imagined that I'd cut that many words, but the manuscript is definitely a lot better now!

The second two goals were about short stories. I revised, as I had hoped, two short stories, and I self-published one in August. In the Shadow of Death is an urban fantasy short story about love and loss, and it’s available on Amazon if you’re looking for a short emotional read.

I had considered publishing a second short story, but instead I wrote an entirely new novel. In October and November I outlined and wrote a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. That was a fun side project to embark on while I let Project Prehistory rest.

In December, I didn’t do any actual writing, but I did read two writing guides. June Casagrande’s It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences is a funny grammar guide, and Louise Harnby’s Editing Fiction at Sentence Level is a very detailed guide to line editing. I was hoping that these two books would help me prepare for the line edits of draft five of Project Prehistory, and they did not disappoint. You can find slightly longer reviews in my December reading wrap-up post.

 

2025 Writing Goals

And that takes us to 2025 and my writing goals for this year. This year, I want to:

• Read draft 4 of Project Prehistory
• Write and revise draft 5 of Project Prehistory
• Prepare for querying
• Publish one short story
• As a stretch goal: write draft 1.2 of Pride and Prejudice Retelling

I started the year by reading the fourth draft, and I’m actually still in the middle of the process. I read the draft three times. During the first read, I tried not to make any notes on the margins unless it was something that I know I’ll easily miss in subsequent reads, such as typos, wrong personal pronouns, and wrong character names.

After the first read, I read the book again more slowly and with more attention to all the things I should change. The first read already gave me a big picture idea of what needs to be changed, and at this point, there are no major changes needed. The story, the plot, the character arcs, they’re as good as I can make them. At this point, I’m focusing on line edits and polishing the prose.

I’m now on my third read-through of the manuscript. This is also a detailed read-through. I’m paying attention to all of the things that have slipped through the cracks during the second read-through.

In January, I also read The Power by Naomi Alderman. I read it hoping that it could be a comp title for Project Prehistory, because they both take place in a world where women are in charge, even though my book isn’t a dystopian. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize earlier that this book was published already in 2016, so it’s too old to be a comp title. I'm not too bummed, though, since this was great read. Click the link above to read my review of the book.

That's where I'm at right now. I hope to be done with the third read-through by February 2. Then I can start writing down my hand-written notes into a Word document. I have a lot of notes, so that might take me a couple of weeks even, but I should be able to start the edits by mid-February. I have no idea how long the edits will take because this book always seems to take longer than I expect. But if I edit two chapters a week, I should be done by the end of July.

That will give me plenty of time for the next step in the process, which is to prepare for querying. That’s scary, I’m not going to lie. I obviously know something about the querying process already, but I need to sit down and do some serious learning to get all the ins and outs of the process. 

I also need to get all the necessary documents in order. I need to write a query letter, to update my synopsis that I wrote a couple of years back, and to polish the first chapters, although that’s part of the editing process. I also want to get professional feedback on my query package before I send it to agents. I’m hoping to do all of that this year, and start querying next year.

I also have a few other goals. I want to try to publish one short story. Last year, I self-published a short story, but this year I’m thinking of sending one out to a publication. But as I'm not sure how long that process takes, I don’t know if I’m actually able to get one published this year.

And finally, my stretch goal. It would be awesome if I have time to go back to my Pride and Prejudice retelling. I wrote the story from start to finish in November, but there are so many things that I need to change that I’m not calling that draft “done.” I actually haven’t even read what I wrote in November, so there might be a lot more things that need to be fixed than I'm aware. 

I’m hoping that later this year, I have time to start making some of the changes. I’m calling that draft 1.2. It would be nice to start the process, so I have something to work on while I query Project Prehistory in 2026.

So big things are happening this year and even bigger next year! Stay tuned to see how my goals and plans turn out. And if you want to hear more about my goals, you can watch the video below!