2025 Goals: Finally, A Writing Goal That Fits My Life

Every year I set myself a writing goal (check out my 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 goal trackers). This year, I’m going to try something different. I’ve come to the conclusion that result-based goals, like finish this, achieve that, etc., are unrealistic to my current situation. So what goal can I set? The answer is: optimizing my time and capturing the maximum creativity.

I’ve come to the conclusion that wasting time has become my biggest enemy. Here’s how I’m going to combat this problem.

Adjusting writing process to my present life situation

Between personal life, family obligations, and my day job, I have always been stretched thin and had to fight to create time for creative work like writing or drawing. I thought it couldn’t get worse than what it was. It did. In the past few months, my already scarce free time has significantly shrunk, making all progress slow down to a crawl. It doesn’t just take me months to finish a book now. We’re looking at years.

An additional problem is that after working on one project for several months, I get burned out. In an ideal world, whenever I feel burnout, I should just switch to another project. Except, every time I come to the moment when I feel I should switch, I feel intense guilt and think, “But you’re almost finished!” and “What about your goals?” And I end up delaying the inevitable. During this delay period, NOTHING gets done because I’m too burned out to continue the current WIP and feel too much guilt to work on another WIP. This needs to stop.

To recap, we’ve got:

• Less time,
• Burnout,
• Guilt over the opportunity cost (working on one project means I can’t work on another),
• Stress and disappointment over unmet goals.

I can’t do anything about the lack of time and fighting a burnout is always a losing battle. But I can tackle the guilt. Instead of wasting weeks in that limbo time, I could be using it productively, working on something I feel motivated to work on. And trust me, there is always a project (or two) that’s begging for my attention.

There have to be rules

Giving myself permission to switch projects as soon as I feel like it sounds amazing, but we need to set some ground rules:

1. Before switching, create a handover document for your future self.
   • This will be necessary to get back into a project smoothly. In the past, my handover notes have been left in various places and were later difficult to find. I need to make this easier for myself.
   • The handover doc needs to state clearly where I am with the story, what problems are still unsolved, what are the next steps. This is necessary to not only not waste time later but also to avoid rewriting the book every time I get back to it.
2. Attempt to achieve a small goal every time you switch.
   • Don’t just switch and do whatever. Switch and set a small, realistic goal to shoot for while the project has my full attention. And once that’s achieved, set another goal.

Alright. I’ve got my plan set. How well it will work, we’ll find out by the end of the year. I’m going to return to this post and update it throughout the year to keep track of the projects I’m working on and to ensure I am making progress and capturing the maximum creativity and all that. Let’s go!

January 2025

Project: Merlin and the Flannan Isle Lighthouse Mystery

I started the year with an old project, a short story that is now becoming a novella. The Lighthouse Mystery is a prequel to The Merlin Paradox, and it’s based on a real-life unsolved mystery. I was previously stuck on it at around the midpoint and had not worked on it in years because I didn’t quite know how to conclude it.

Progress made before the switch: I made only a little progress wordcount-wise but the biggest win was that I figured out how to end this book. I wrote a full synopsis and made notes for myself. Next time I’m working on this story, perhaps I’ll be able to finish it at last.

Project: The Merlin Paradox Trilogy

I stopped working on the prequel because I felt motivated to work on my passion project. Volumes 1 and 2 are drafted. Volume 3 is only started. I had an idea how to address several of the problems with Volume 1 that previously eluded me. I jumped right in and started making the revisions to the story’s beginning. There is a lot to revise in the first two volumes because I initially wrote them as one volume. Structural changes are needed for both books to work on their own. The outlook is good.

I was in the mood to start the year right and draw Ruby. I had to scrap my first attempt, the colors I chose were all wrong, but the second attempt worked out. I gave it a few minor tweaks in Krita and voila! Meet Ruby, the primary protagonist of The Merlin Paradox.

June 23rd update

It’s hard to believe that a half of the year has gone by already. I didn’t achieve even a fraction of what I wanted to because my health took a nosedive. I don’t want to bore you with details, but the bottom line is that my life has monumentally changed. I can no longer do the things I used to.

Several months passed when I didn’t get anything done, taking it easy, being patient with the healing process, but my health hasn’t improved and won’t in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, I miss my stories. I miss art. I miss the connection to the community. I’m done waiting to get better. I need to adapt.

I’m writing this update right now while laying down on the floor on my floor bed: an arrangement of blankets and pillows. It’s far from comfortable, and I won’t last long, but that’s what my new life is reduced to. If that’s the only way to function, then that’s how I will function. No more feeling sorry for myself. No more wasting precious time.

Taking stock

Let’s give myself some credit. I wasn’t entirely unproductive. I continued revising The Merlin Paradox, and I’ve also returned to re-editing Soul Survivor. I switched between the two projects with no rhyme or reason, whatever I felt in the mood for.

I also started preparing to start a brand new chapter of my creative journey to offer art commissions. Actually, I got a commission before making an announcement. I started working on a portfolio page (which you can view already though it’s absent from the menu). And then? Health issues happened and it all got put aside.

I’ve now resumed working on my commission, but I don’t want to officially open shop until I have a better handle on my new reality.